We acknowledge that we live and work throughout the ancestral and sacred lands of the Chickasaw, Kaskaskia, Kickapoo, Mascoutin, Mesquaki, Miami, Odawa, Ojibwe, Peankashaw, Peoria, Potawatomi, and Sauk Nations and peoples. We also express honor to those Indigenous people who we may have excluded in this acknowledgement due to erasure and historical inaccuracy.  The parts of what we now call Illinois were coercively acquired by the US federal government through land cessions by Native Nations in more than two dozen treaties that span the period 1795-1833.  These lands were the traditional territory of these Native Nations prior to their forced removal; these lands continue to carry the stories of these living Nations and their ongoing struggles for survival and identity.  As we recognize this process of settler-colonialism, we must consider ways that we may support the social justice work of contemporary indigenous communities living now in Illinois.

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