Land Acknowledgment
Approved for Use By Heading Home Advisory Committee on 07/15/2021
We know that American Indian people, People of African Heritage, Black, Indigenous and People of Color disproportionately experience homelessness and housing instability due to systemic racism and oppression. It is of the utmost importance that we acknowledge the lands that we reside on and the trauma that has and continues to occur in order to better serve in a culturally responsive, trauma informed and person-centered approach as we work to end homelessness. We collectively acknowledge that St. Louis County is located on the traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people. Our buildings reside on land that was cared for and called home by the Ojibwe people, before them the Dakota and Northern Cheyenne people, and other Native peoples from time immemorial. Ceded by the Ojibwe in an 1854 treaty, this land holds great historical, spiritual, and personal significance for its original stewards, the Native nations and peoples of this region. We recognize and continually support and advocate for the sovereignty of the Native nations in this territory and beyond. We acknowledge the collective and historical trauma Indigenous People, People of African Heritage, Black, and People of Color have endured and experienced as a result of systemic racism, and we acknowledge our own ignorance and complicity. We have all inherited the repercussions of this unjust system and the impacts and outcomes have rippled forward to what we feel and experience today, including but not limited to the work we do to support people experiencing homelessness and housing instability. We pause for a moment of silence to acknowledge the human lives lost as a result: Isaac McGhie, Elmer Jackson, Elias Clayton, Ahmed Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Estavon Elioff and countless other lives of People of African Heritage, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color [at this moment, we invite others to speak names of people who are missing, murdered or lost due to systems of violence and oppression]. We hold them in our hearts, we honor their lives, and we commit to doing all we can to dismantle racist systems of oppression in our communities, and within ourselves. By offering this land acknowledgment, we affirm tribal sovereignty and will work to hold the St. Louis County Heading Home Advisory Council and our work accountable to American Indian peoples and nations as well as those communities most impacted by homelessness.
Read more