We begin by acknowledging Indigenous land and life – Michigan Technological University campus lies within the Ojibwa (Chippewa) ceded-territory homelands established by the Treaty of 1842 where 11 Lake Superior Bands of Ojibwa retain rights and responsibilities, as they have for nearly millennia. The MTU campus and surrounding landscape is a creation of geologic processes spanning a billion years, ranging from large lava flows, the deposition of copper and other gifts from the deep Earth, and the formation of Lake Superior. These processes shaped, and continue to shape, the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands, waters, and livelihoods of the Anishinaabeg— the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples and their many more-than-human relatives. While the Copper Boom and associated European diaspora to the Keweenaw have a significant place in local history, copper has shaped politics, cultures, and economies here for thousands of years. These dynamic and interconnected stories – geologic and Indigenous peoples – are foundational to the landscape’s past, present, and future.

Honor Native Land: A Guide and Call to Acknowledgement