About Us

The Land & Waters

Michigan is the ancestral and contemporary land of the Anishinaabeg, the Three Fires Confederacy of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadami, as well as the Wendat people. Native people have stewarded the land and waters of Michigan for millenia, and continue to do so through their individual, collective, and governmental efforts. 

Everyone here must grapple with Michigan’s shared history of forced removal, unjust treaty negotiations, corrupt land grabs, cultural theft, and other strategic efforts to erase Indigenous people and cultures – especially through the systematic use of boarding schools. Equally, we must learn how Native people of Michigan have survived, thrived, and continued to challenge oppressive settler colonialism. We must support Native efforts to revitalize languages, to share cultural knowledge and arts, to practice religious and ceremonial traditions, to reclaim land, to exercise sovereignty as Indigenous nations, to advocate and organize for human and ecological rights, and to live openly and fully as Native people in today’s world.

With this in mind, we dedicate ourselves to learning from all of our relations, to teaching about the diversity of Indigenous peoples, and amplifying work that centers Native people, land, languages, histories, and cultures. We pledge to do this work throughout our lifetimes, across our relationships, and in the pursuit of a stronger, more vibrant future that honors the first people to care for our land and waters.

We know that land acknowledgements alone do not create change. Acknowledgements like these of the land and water can be performative and center people with power and privilege who want to feel good about recognizing the place, rather than honoring the lives and work of Indigenous people who call Michigan home. We hope that our acknowledgement is a call to action, a way to recognize the past while pushing us to learn, engage, and act in ways that foster a better future.

This acknowledgement and call to action was developed in collaboration with the educators in the teacher cohort of this project in 2025.