Honoring Traditional Indigenous Territories

It’s important to begin our time together by acknowledging that nearly everywhere we go, we travel through and live in traditional Indigenous territories—ancestral lands that Indigenous peoples have never ceded.  At the same time, they’ve remained at the forefront of protecting this precious Earth.  They have been stewards of these lands since time immemorial.  I honor their culture, sacred ways, sovereignty, right to jurisdiction, and languages—all of which should be seen and heard first. They have experienced ongoing trauma from systemic racism; attempts to separate Indigenous from their land, their culture, and from one another; a disproportionate rate of assaulted, missing, and murdered Indigenous females; misinformation; ignorance—all the injustices, all the violence.  I support truth and reconciliation calls to action.