Land Acknowledgement Statement

The Department of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas affirms the College’s Land Acknowledgement Statement, which reads:

The Indigenous history of the land the University of Arkansas campus sits on goes back to time immemorial, and across that expanse of time, many successive groups have lived here and created sacred legacies in this area. Fulbright College acknowledges Indigenous peoples were forced to leave their ancestral lands, including the Osage, Caddo, and Quapaw Nations with ties to Northwest Arkansas. We further recognize that a portion of the Trail of Tears runs through our  campus, and that the Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw and Seminole Nations  passed through what is now Arkansas during this forced removal. We acknowledge all Indigenous teachers, researchers and all other residents in our community and region today. We proudly offer Indigenous Studies in our college and seek continuity and connection to the past as we look to the future with increased collaboration with Indigenous governments and entities.

The Department of Anthropology additionally affirms that:

Our archaeologists, biological anthropologists, and cultural anthropologists have a longstanding commitment to working with Indigenous peoples. This involvement has seen our anthropologists support Indigenous communities, from repatriation projects to collaborative research projects. For us, the commitment to supporting Indigenous peoples and our Indigenous students and fellow scholars means a recognition of the ties between the past and the present and Indigenous peoples' contributions to our campus, state, and world. We pay our respects to Indigenous elders and knowledge-bearers. We acknowledge that the Trail of Tears that runs through our campus is but one of the routes of forced removal for Indigenous peoples. We also acknowledge that land is not inert, but integral to living and thriving Indigenous communities. As such, we affirm Indigenous peoples’ living cultures and support all efforts to build a thriving Native community on campus and beyond. Such an effort on our part must involve the acknowledgement of and teaching about anthropology’s problematic history and ties to settler colonialism, the furthering of a pedagogy that addresses Indigenous realities and histories, and a commitment to open and ongoing dialogue between our department and Indigenous communities.