Indigenous Land Acknowledgement

The Native American Studies Program Committee of West Virginia University helped to develop this land acknowledgement in 2019. The land acknowledgment is borrowed from the WVU Libraries Indigenous Appalachia Research Guide:

WVU, with its statewide institutional presence, resides on land that includes ancestral territories of the Shawnee, Lenape (or Delaware), Cherokee, and Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois--the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Tuscarora), and other Indigenous peoples.

In acknowledging this, we recognize and appreciate all those Indigenous nations whose territories we are living on and working in. Indigenous peoples have been in the land currently known as West Virginia since time immemorial. It is important that we understand both the context that has brought our university community to reside on this land, and our place within this long history.

We also recognize that colonialism is a current, ongoing process, and as scholars seeking truth and understanding, we need to be mindful of our present participation in this process.