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March 2025 Update
March 2025 Update
New Year, New Updates from the Decolonization and Reciprocity Working Group (D&R)
We at the Decolonization and Reciprocity Working Group (D&R) are excited to be back to campus for the spring semester, and share updates on our work this year. The following update will provide you with an overview of what we focused our efforts in Fall 2024, our plans for Spring 2025, and ways you can engage with us to support the journey toward a just campus culture, as well as right and reciprocal relations with the land we are on and Indigenous communities locally, regionally and globally.
One of the most exciting updates this year is the launch of our newly redesigned website. This platform will serve as a hub for sharing valuable resources, keeping you informed about our latest initiatives, and providing details on upcoming events. We’re proud to introduce our Living Land Acknowledgement Resource Guide, written by Alum Finn Farrell in collaboration with D&R working group members. This resource offers guidance on how to provide respectful land acknowledgements and highlights important action steps you can take to enhance meaningful change within y(our) communities. We hope it becomes a key resource for anyone interested in Hampshire College and beyond.
Creating the conditions for Indigenous students to thrive at Hampshire College is a core transformational goals identified by the D&R working group in Spring 2024. Providing Indigenous students with a dedicated space where they/we can gather, host events, have community meals, and build community is an important step the College can take towards achieving this goal. In Fall 2024, members of D&R and Indigenous students met with Senior Administrators with the hopes of identifying such a space. While we were not successful, we are still hopeful that we can work together to bring this vision into reality.
About the Spring 2025
About the Spring 2025
We are excited to share that we are organizing the 3rd Native Crossroads Festival on Thursday, April 24 from 3pm - 7 pm. The Native Crossroads Festival brings Indigenous culture keepers, organizers and scholars to share their work with Hampshire College, 5 College and local communities. This is an opportunity to engage in on-going learning about colonization and decolonization, Indigenous Sovereignty and building right and reciprocal relationships with the land, ecosystems, and Indigenous communities. In addition to educational events and workshops, the festival features Indigenous vendors who will be introducing the community to native material culture from the region and raising awareness on the historical and contemporary importance of buying from Indigenous people. This year's Native Crossroads Festival is organized by Hampshire College’s Decolonization & Reciprocity Working Group in partnership with Justin Beatty.
Beginning Tuesday, March 10, 2024 we are hosting the Land Acknowledgement Project, a six-week journey facilitated by D&R student leaders. This is an opportunity for the Hampshire community to reflect on and engage with questions of Indigenous rights, land ownership/ stewardship, white supremacy and social responsibility. Each week, we will present a new segment of the Living Land Acknowledgement co-written by D&R workshop group members, along with questions, activities and installations. These events will be around campus, with the first week being hosted in the Kern Cafe on Tuesday, March 11, Wednesday, March 12, and Friday, March 14 from 11 am to 1 pm.
The journey will end on Thursday, April 24th, at the Native Crossroads festival on Hampshire campus, where all the art and writing contributed by our community for this project will be exhibited. If you are interested in learning more abou this project contact Lucero Díaz (mld21@hampshire.edu) or Malena Price (mbp23@hampshire.edu).
Interested in getting involved? Reach out to Javiera (jbDO@hampshire.edu) to learn more about ways to work with us.
If you’d like to know more about our work or get involved with any of our upcoming initiatives, please don’t hesitate to reach out to any of the D&R members. Learn more about Who We Are here.
In community,
The Decolonization and Reciprocity Working Group
April 2024 Update
April 2024 Update
Happy Spring! This is the second community update from the Decolonization and Reciprocity Working Group (D&R). This update will provide a summary of our work this semester so far and information about upcoming events, particularly the Community Day of Learning this week! The D&R Working Group is charged to instigate and inform concrete action that moves Hampshire College in the direction of right relations with the land and Indigenous peoples. If you want a more extensive refresher on the history and purpose of the D&R Working Group, check out our first community update here.
Our work this semester has involved both institutional planning, programming and education. On the planning side, the group has convened a Land History and Land Acknowledgement Subcommittee, which includes members of the D&R group as well as leadership from the farm and grounds, the archives and the office of sustainability. This group has been working on collecting and organizing information about the history of the land that Hampshire occupies and the work that has been done on the land over many years of stewardship by Indigenous and settler occupants.
We need your help in gathering this information! If you have any historical information or documentation about these lands and waters we call home, please consider submitting them to our Hampshire College Land Archive. This information lives in the offices and computers and minds of many members of our community, and we want to know what you have to share.
Collecting and interpreting this information will allow us to share a more detailed history of the land with the public, facilitate reciprocal relationships with the land, Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities in the future, and concretize an official Land Acknowledgement that is based in specific and decolonizing histories of the land we occupy.
Much of our other work this semester has revolved around the planning of the upcoming Community Day of Learning and Native Crossroads Festival on April 4th and 5th! We have a fantastic day of events lined up on Thursday, featuring Cheryll Toney Holley, Sonsq of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band, Justin Beatty, cultural educator, artist, powwow singer and emcee, and Sonya Atalay, Director of the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science at UMass. This two-day event will culminate on Friday in a workshop with President of North American Indian Center of Boston Jean-Luc Pierite, where students, staff and faculty will be invited to articulate the concepts of decolonization and reciprocity through creative expression. Space is limited for this workshop, Register here! You can find the full schedule and descriptions of CDL events on the website.
If you’d like to know more or to get involved, please reach out to Javiera Benavente (jbDO@hampshire.edu) or Finn Farrell (fmf21@hampshire.edu).
That’s all for now, folks. We’ll see you soon,
Finn Farrell, student member of the Decolonization and Reciprocity Working Group
February 2024 Update
February 2024 Update
We at the Decolonization and Reciprocity Working Group (D&R) are happy to welcome you all back to campus for the spring semester. We’re also excited to give you this, the first of many regular updates on our work. This update will provide a brief summary of our history and purpose, our work towards a concrete action plan for the college, and upcoming events where you can join us in supporting the work of decolonization and reciprocal relationships with the land and our Indigenous community.
Last summer, our fearless leader Javiera Benavente was charged by President Ed Wingenbach and Senior Vice President for Justice, Equity, and Antiracism Sheila Lloyd to put together a group that works towards the goals of decolonization and reciprocity at Hampshire. In light of the colonial violence and genocide that allows us to live, work and learn at Hampshire today, our institution must commit to concrete and expansive actions in service of decolonization that reflect the needs and wishes of our local and global Indigenous community, as well as the the Tribal Nations whose stolen land we call Hampshire College.
We are building on the work of the Spring ‘22 Common Good Residency planning group, which generated a set of recommendations for senior administration which would move Hampshire in the direction of right relations with Indigenous people and the land. With these recommendations in mind, the group has identified four priorities for immediate action:
Adopt an official, living Land Acknowledgement for Hampshire College,
Provide the necessary resources and support to Indigenous students and all BIPOC students so that they can thrive at Hampshire College,
Create and implement a land stewardship plan that is informed by Indigenous approaches and perspectives on relationship to land and land stewardship in on-going consultation with Indigenous-led land stewardship organizations, and
Support on-going community education and programming focused on Native American and Indigenous Studies.
Based on these priorities, we are generating an action plan to set us in motion. Our hope is to share this action plan with the senior administration and the campus community sometime this semester.In the meantime, there are some events to look forward to!
First, the D&R group supports the student-led Indigenous Community Circle, which includes both events open to all and meetings closed to only those who identify as Indigenous. Please join us for our first open event of the semester, a button-making social at the Wellness Center on Monday, February 5th at 5pm, or our first closed meeting to build community and set intentions for the semester on Monday February 12th at 5pm. These events are open to students, faculty and staff at Hampshire and the Five Colleges.
Secondly, get excited about the Community Day of Learning on April 4th, which will be a way for our campus community to deepen our knowledge and active commitment to Decolonization & Reciprocity. There are no classes and no advising on April 4th, and everyone is encouraged to attend as many events as you can and to contribute to this vital work.
If you’d like to know more or to get involved, please reach out to Javiera Benavente (jbDO@hampshire.edu) or Finn Farrell (fmf21@hampshire.edu).
That’s all for now, folks. We’ll see you soon,
Finn Farrell, student member of the Decolonization and Reciprocity Working Group
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