Land Acknowledgement

I am honored to be fortunate enough live and work on the traditional territory of many nations in Arizona, including twenty-three Native Nations that have inhabited this land for centuries. Ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples in my current location include the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Pee Posh (Maricopa) Indian Communities, and before that, the Hohokam people. Where I live and work has been and continues to be the Home of Indigenous peoples since time immemorial, whose care and keeping of these lands allows us to be here today.  I honor the Elders of both past and present, as well as future generations, of the Hohokam peoples and the Akimel O’odham and Pee Posh nations and express gratitude for their stewardship of the Land occupied.

I do want to take a moment to acknowledge and talk about the Internet and its role in Land Acknowledgement. We have the tendency to see or think of the Internet as being removed from Land and Colonization. But simply, that isn't true. Just because we do not physically see the Internet, doesn't mean it doesn't have physical infrastructure. The Internet is run out of servers that are in buildings that exist on Land that use fiber cables beneath the ground to connect communications. These buildings depend on the use water from the Land to run and keep cool. These are just small examples in which the Internet does take up physical infrastructure and occupies vast unseated Lands within both this country and many others. I also want to take a moment to recognize that not all human beings on this Land are here under the same circumstance. Some human bodies have been taken away from their Land, their Ancestors, stolen and bought here, which is a very different existence than those who live here under colonization.

Sure, anyone can write a Land Acknowledgement, but I really believe that it's important to start by acknowledging the harm that late-stage capitalism causes whilst simultaneously holding hope in my heart. I believe in both, and in non-binary, thinking here, of knowing that we can hold two truths at the same time, and do the work collectively in these cases; including this one way of writing a new narrative because it starts with ourselves.