Editors’ Land Acknowledgement Statement and Commentary

At Salem State University, we work to illuminate the ways in which our university came to occupy the land upon which we engage in teaching and learning. We also recognize the limitations of land acknowledgements and support the fact that the use of land acknowledgements do not take away from need for reparations in the form of giving land back (see the #LandBack movement).

The land occupied by Salem State University is the traditional and ancestral homeland of the people of Naumkeag [pronounced nah-um-kee-ahg] and the Pawtucket and Massachusett tribes. We acknowledge the genocide and forced removal of the people of Naumkeag and their kin, and we recognize the ongoing colonization and dispossession of Native homelands in the city of Salem and the state of Massachusetts. We respect and honor the Massachusett tribe and the many Indigenous peoples who continue to care for the land upon which we gather.

May this acknowledgment also mark a commitment to continuously learn and share the history of the Massachusett and other Indigenous people who have been and remain here, to make our own environmental impact on this land as sustainable as possible to work toward repairing the injustices continuously being committed on the Indigenous people of this land through renewed and ongoing engagement with the Massachusett and all Indigenous people in and around Salem State (for more information see: The People Here: Interrogating Indigenous Dispossession of the Land Occupied by Salem State University).

Resources: Native Organizations and Activist Movements:

Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness

North American Indian Center of Boston

First Light – Repairing, returning at the speed of trust.

LANDBACK – Building lasting Indigenous sovereignty.

NDN Collective: Defend. Develop. Decolonize.

Land Reparations & Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit

Seeding Sovereignty and @seedingsovereignty

Native-Land.ca and @nativelandnet

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Social work practice and disability communities: An intersectional anti-oppressive approach Copyright © by Elspeth Slayter; Lisa Johnson; Mallory Cyr; Michael Clarkson-Hendrix; Sandy Leotti; Sharyn DeZelar; Rose Singh; and Esther Son is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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