We thank, first and foremost, the conference committee members without whose dedication and hard work this conference would not have been possible. The co-chairs were Rowshan Chowdhury and Jarrel De Matas and the volunteers were Alejandro Beas Murillo, Chi Nguyen, Nicole O’Connell, Manasvini Rajan, and Ty Smart.
We would like to thank UMass Amherst English Department for creating this space for graduate students and preparing them for such academic platforms. We are extremely grateful to previous conference co-chairs, Thakshala Tissera and Mitia Nath for a detailed handover of their conference plan. We also thank Professor Wai Chee Dimock for a prompt agreement to provide the keynote address. Additionally, we appreciate the English Graduate Organization’s co-chairs Shwetha Chandrashekar and Chandler Steckbeck for their guidance.
Our gratitude goes to all those who graciously offered their services to either chair or moderate panels: Professors Stephen Clingman, Laura Doyle, Gordon Fraser, Randall Knoper, Donna LeCourt, Asha Nadkarni, Mazen Naous, Britt Russert, Malcolm Sen, Jon Berndt Olsen, and Dr. Subhalakshmi Gooptu. The moderators were Rowshan Chowdhury, Jarrel De Matas, Shwetha Chandrashekar, Mitia Nath, Nicole O’Connell, Manasvini Rajan, Ty Smart, Chandler Steckbeck, and Thakshala Tissera.
Last but not the least, we sincerely thank all the presenters from all over the world without whom this conference would not have reached this far. Thank You for all the support in organizing and managing our UMass Amherst English Graduate Organization Conference happening on April 30, 2022.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst acknowledges that it was founded and built on the unceded homelands of the Pocumtuc Nation on the land of the Norrwutuck community.
We begin with gratitude for nearby waters and lands, including the Kwinitekw -- the southern portion of what’s now called the Connecticut River. We recognize these lands and waters as important Relations with which we are all interconnected and depend on to sustain life and wellbeing.
The Norrwutuck community was one of many Pocumtuc Indian towns, including the Tribal seat at Pocumtuc (in present day Deerfield), Agawam (Springfield), and Woronoco (Westfield) to name just a few. The Pocumtuc, who had connections with these lands for millennia, are part of a vast expanse of Algonqiuan relations. Over 400 years of colonization, Pocumtuc Peoples were displaced. Many joined their Algonquian relatives to the east, south, west and north— extant communities of Wampanoag, including Aquinnah, Herring Pond, and Mashpee, Massachusetts; the Nipmuc with a reservation at Grafton/Hassanamisco, Massachusetts; the Narragansett in Kingstown, Rhode Island; Schagticoke, Mohegan and Pequot Peoples in Connecticut; the Abenaki and other Nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy extending northward into Canada; and the Stockbridge Munsee Mohican of New York and Massachusetts, who were removed to Wisconsin in the 19th century. Over hundreds of years of removal, members of Southern New England Tribes would make the journey home to tend important places and renew their connections to their ancestral lands. Such care and connection to land and waters continues to the present day.
Today, Indigenous Nations in southern New England continue to employ diverse strategies to resist ongoing colonization, genocide, and erasure begun by the English, French, Dutch, Portuguese and other European Nations, and that continued when Tribal homelands became part of the United States. Native Americans from Tribal Nations across the U.S. and Indigenous peoples from around the world also travel into these Pocumtuc homelands to live and work. This land has always been and always will be, Native Land.
We also acknowledge that the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a Land Grant University. As part of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, Tribal lands from 82 Native Nations west of the Mississippi were sold to provide the resources to found and build this university.
This Land Acknowledgement is the first step in the university’s commitment to practice intellectual humility whilst working with Tribal Nations toward a better shared future on Turtle Island. We aim to foster understanding, deep respect, and honor for sovereign Tribal Nations; to develop relationships of reciprocity; and to be inclusive of Native perspectives and thriving Native Nations far into the future. Members of Massachusetts-based Tribal Nations who are kin to the historic Pocumtuc contributed their insights in composing this acknowledgement -- namely Tribal representatives from Mashpee, Aquinnah, and Stockbridge Munsee. As an active first step toward decolonization, we encourage you to learn more about the Indigenous peoples on whose homelands UMass Amherst now resides on and the Indigenous homelands on which you live and work.