The NNA-CO is a distributed office across three locations at Alaska Pacific University (APU), the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), and the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder). We honor and acknowledge the Indigenous peoples, nations, and traditional territories of the lands in which the offices reside. These include the traditional territories and ancestral homelands of the Dena’ina people (APU), the Dena people of the lower Tanana River (UAF), and the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute, Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Pueblo and Shoshone Nations (University of Colorado).
The Navigating the New Arctic program supports research conducted on traditional territories and contemporary and ancestral homelands of Indigenous peoples living across the Arctic, who have stewarded and lived in relationship with these lands and waters since time immemorial.
The NNA-CO acknowledges the role that universities and Arctic research has played, historically and into the present, in disrupting the land relations of Indigenous peoples. We support conversations that are happening within Arctic research on centering equity in research, in supporting Indigenous leadership in research, and in developing capacity for reciprocity on the part of non-Indigenous researchers who are guests and visitors in the Arctic.
We encourage NNA funded researchers to incorporate a land acknowledgement into their work for the traditional lands and territories where their research is conducted as a first step in supporting a greater awareness of Indigenous land relations. In addition, we encourage researchers to work towards increasing equity within their own research projects as an important foundation for knowledge co-production and weaving knowledge systems together to develop new insights about the changing Arctic.
Resources for Creating a Land Acknowledgement
A Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgment
The Native Governance Center co-hosted an Indigenous land acknowledgment event with the Lower Phalen Creek Project on Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2019. The event featured panelists: Dr. Kate Beane (Flandreau Santee Dakota and Muskogee Creek), Mary Lyons (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe), Rose Whipple (Isanti Dakota and Ho-Chunk), Rhiana Yazzie (Diné), and Cantemaza (Neil) McKay (Spirit Lake Dakota). Afterwards, they created this handy guide to Indigenous land acknowledgment.
You are on Indigenous Land
This brief report, written and complied by Melissa Shaginoff (Ahtna and Paiut), offers resources and considerations for recognizing Indigenous Peoples through land acknowledgment.
Doing Land Acknowledgements
This guide, by the Xwi7xwa (pronounced whei-wha) Library at the University of British Columbia, supports researchers working with Indigenous topics to create land acknowledgements, including virtual land acknowledgements.
Research, Communication, and Land Relations
This YouTube video is the first keynote lecture of the 2021 Inclusive SciComm Symposium, featuring Dr. Max Liboiron (Red River Métis/Michif) of Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements
This article from the Âpihtawikosisân, a blog by Chelsea Vowel (Métis), discusses the purposes, practices, and spaces for land acknowledgements.
Are you planning to do a Land Acknowledgement?
This short article by the editors of American Indians in Children’s Literature (AICL), Dr. Debbie Reese of Nambé Pueblo and Dr. Jean Mendoza, offers a list of suggestions for creating and delivering land acknowledgements.
Whose Land: Treaties and Agreements
Whose Land is a website that assists users in identifying Indigenous Nations, territories, and Indigenous communities across Canada. This website offers several videos of Indigenous perspectives about their homelands and land acknowledgements.