UNC Area Studies Centers Land Acknowledgement

We acknowledge the land and sovereignty of the native peoples in North Carolina and by extension indigenous communities around the world that have been subject to negative effects of colonization, displacement, and historical erasure. We reject this historical erasure by actively honoring the native peoples in whose homelands Chapel Hill now sits, including the Eno, Occaneechi, Shakori, and Sissipahaw. This land was and continues to be of great importance to native peoples and their descendants. We also acknowledge that indigenous communities globally have been and are being separated from their sovereign lands, restricted in their exercise of traditional cultural practices, and subjected to stigmatization and discrimination in both overt and structural ways. Just as UNC funded development in its early institutional life with the sale of lands that were home to the Cherokee and Chickasaw nations, we acknowledge that institutional practices in academia and beyond can continue or exacerbate the disempowerment of native peoples in the US and internationally. We join the call for scholarship and collective action that further the goals of increased visibility and respect for native peoples, critical reflection, reconciliation, decolonization, and justice.