Indigenous Rights Movements & the Law

Land Acknowledgment Resources

Northwestern is a community of learners situated within a network of historical and contemporary relationships with Native American tribes, communities, parents, students, and alumni. It is also in close proximity to an urban Native American community in Chicago and near several tribes in the Midwest. The Northwestern campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations. It was also a site of trade, travel, gathering and healing for more than a dozen other Native tribes and is still home to over 100,000 tribal members in the state of Illinois.

After a long history of misuse and mistrust, Indigenous data require special care from librarians and others who manage them. Yet libraries and data reposi...

This position paper on Indigenous Protocol (IP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a starting place for those who want to design and create AI from an ethical position that centers Indigenous concerns. Each Indigenous community will have its own particular approach to the questions we raise in what follows. What we have written here is not a substitute for establishing and maintaining relationships of reciprocal care and support with specific Indigenous communities. Rather, this document offers a range of ideas to take into consideration when entering into conversations which prioritize Indigenous perspectives in the development of artificial intelligence.

The University of Oregon is located on Kalapuya Ilihi, the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people. Following treaties between 1851 and 1855, Kalapuya people were dispossessed of their indigenous homeland by the United States government and forcibly removed to the Coast Reservation in Western Oregon. Today, descendants are citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon, and continue to make important contributions in their communities, at UO, and across the land we now refer to as Oregon.*

California College of the Arts educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. Benefitting from its San Francisco Bay Area location, the college prepares students for lifelong creative work by cultivating innovation, community engagement, and social and environmental responsibility.

Following is a slightly extended version of comments I made as part of a panel, “Courage and Social Justice in Our Time,” which was held at the University of Alberta on March 14, 2016. My fellow panelists included:  Dr. Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez, Associate Professor,

Our goal in this article is to remind readers what is unsettling about decolonization. Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools.

Article: The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance

Six Ojibwe tribes in Wisconsin are suing the state in federal court to stop the fall wolf hunt, arguing their treaty rights are being violated.

It's a tradition that has dated back centuries for Indigenous people, but for many non-Indigenous Canadians, officially recognizing the territory or lands we stand on is a fairly new concept that is a small but essential step towards reconciliation.

The statement was assembled in consultation with leaders of the Tohono O'odham Nation and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and with Native American scholars at the university.

Indian boarding schools held Native American youth hostage in exchange for land cessions.

For the Tohono O’odham people, the mountains are sacred. The story is told that, I’itoi, their creator, lives in a cave below the Baboquivari peak. One day, Tohono O’odham farmers who wanted to expand their land asked I’itoi to move the mountain. But the greediness of the men forced the top of the mountain to break off and the rain to stop feeding the farmers’ crops. Even as the land turned brittle in the heat, the Tohono O’odham people never left. They were here long before their land was divided, first by a border, then again as fences were built and gates closed. Now they fear they will be divided once more. There is no O’odham word for wall, the people say. They promise each other they will stay and fight.

More than three years after the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah was drastically shrunk in size, tribal leaders and activists are hopeful that Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland would soon recommend its restoration.

Group of 10 tribes inhabiting the area since thousands of years will be responsible for protecting the land dubbed Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ

MDAH has transferred the remains of 403 Native Americans and eighty-three lots of burial objects to the Chickasaw Nation. This is the largest return of human remains in Mississippi history, and the first for MDAH.

Many of the nation’s universities were created with stolen wealth.

Expropriated Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system.

A web application to accompany a publication by High Country News (https://www.hcn.org).

Ultimately, it's about getting Indigenous lands back in Indigenous hands.

By Glen Coulthard, Voices Rising (Indigenous Nationhood Movement) There is a significant and to my mind problematic limitation that is increasingly being placed on Indigenous efforts to defend our …

Private land ownership isn’t a solution to Native American poverty.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Late on a fall evening in 2001, Alyce Slim and her granddaughter stopped at a gas station on the Navajo Nation after searching for a traditional healer for leg ailments...

The ASU Library has crafted its first-ever Indigenous land acknowledgement — the beginning of a healing process and what many in the library see as a launch pad for deeper conversations about integrating and prioritizing Indigenous knowledge systems.

A new agreement between the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and UArizona affirms the university's commitment to helping the tribe's members reach their higher education-related goals.

There's growing tension about the politics of territorial acknowledgements. Hayden King, an Anishinaabe writer and educator, spoke to Unreserved host Rosanna Deerchild about what they mean in today's political climate, and how they can be improved. Here's part of that conversation.

From education plans for students to a workshop series for professionals and workplaces. Learn or educate about the land you are on.

Thanks to Allison Jones and others for putting this together! Please note: this is NOT a perfect resource! It is very likely that if you do not do any further research or verify our results, you will err in your acknowledgements. We recommend contacting the nations you get in your results directly, to learn more about […]

Our Mission Native Land Digital strives to create and foster conversations about the history of colonialism, Indigenous ways of knowing, and settler-Indigenous relations, through educational resources such as our map and Territory Acknowledgement Guide. We strive to go beyond old ways of talking about Indigenous people and to develop a platform where Indigenous communities can […]