We are on Indigenous land

Upstander Project acknowledges the sacred land where we work, live, make films, teach, learn, and build community. This land, home to Massachusett people who live here today as they have for 13,000 years, is the place of the Blue Hills. We also wish to be good neighbors to all Nations and peoples here in the Dawnland region, otherwise known as New England, including Abenaki, Micmac, Maliseet, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Passamaquoddy, Pawtucket, Pennacook, Penobscot, Pequot, Wampanoag, and those we have omitted either due to colonial erasure or our own ignorance.

We recognize the repeated violations of sovereignty, territory, and water perpetrated by invaders that have impacted Massachusett and Indigenous people for the last 400 years and into the present. We extend our respect to citizens of these Nations who live here today, their ancestors who have lived here for over 500 generations, and to all Indigenous people. We also affirm that this acknowledgment is insufficient. It does not undo the harm that has been done and continues to be perpetrated now against Indigenous people and their land, water, and air. 

Today, Boston is also home to thousands of Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work here.

Acknowledge the land and take action

  1. Do your research to make meaningful Land Acknowledgements like this one.

  2. Listen, learn, unlearn, grow, act, and ask local Native people how you can be helpful.

  3. Speak up from the heart against offensive, condescending speech, writing, and behavior.

  4. Contest how public spaces are named and challenge popular narratives that erase Native peoples.

  5. Transform curricula, make it interdisciplinary and place-based, use View from the Shore/View from the Boat, highlight Native voices and authors, and support Native makers like Urban Native Era, B.Yellowtail, From the People, We are the Seeds, Abbe Museum, and Wampanoag Trading Post. (Let us know who else to add to this list, please.)

  6. Ask who’s at the table, whose voices are heard, who makes decisions, who gets funded, and whose issues are addressed.