Land acknowledgement
We acknowledge in Milwaukee that we are on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee homeland along the southwest shores of Michigami, North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida and Mohican nations remain present.
If you are not in Milwaukee, take a moment to explore native-land.ca so that you can visualize the indigenous territories, languages, and treaties in your area.
According to Shauna Johnson of UBC,
The concept of mapping has had a tremendous impact upon indigenous peoples for centuries. Since it was first developed, the indigenous ways of orienting themselves on their lands were redefined. As soon as lines were drawn on maps by European hands, indigenous place names, which are intricately connected with indigenous history, stories, and teachings, were replaced with English names, erasing indigenous presence from the lands. Traditional homelands were divided and classified into different geographic features, properties and imperial nations states, dividing and separating indigenous families. Languages and cultural teachings were lost as children were forced to attend residential schools and learn western ways of knowing.
It’s important to address how this relates to our subject matter today. Below is some information from NCAI:
The Census is a critical and powerful information source that will significantly influence American policy for the coming decade. It is the foundation of American democracy in that it determines the allocation of Congressional seats. It is also used extensively to distribute funds to tribal, state, and local governments, and it serves as a foundation for policymaking as well as research and program evaluation in think tanks, universities, and at all levels of government.
American Indians are an historically undercounted group in the Census:
Native people especially on reservations and in Alaska Native villages have been historically underrepresented in the census, and in 2020, new methodologies for enumerating the US population could put other groups at risk. In the 2010 Census, the Census Bureau estimates that American Indians and Alaska Natives living on reservations or in Native villages were undercounted by approximately 4.9 percent, more than double the undercount rate of the next closest population group.