CAUFC Land Acknowledgement Statement:

We gratefully acknowledge that California is the traditional land of Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather. We offer our respect and gratitude to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge the ongoing struggle of Indigenous Peoples to maintain their sovereignty and cultural heritage – a heritage that acknowledges trees and plants as the first citizens and pays tribute to the teaching of trees. We are here to listen.

Borrowing from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s metaphor^[1] of the Plantago major, we acknowledge that we may not be indigenous to California but intend to naturalize and live like good neighbors – to “become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it.”

^[1] Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Place. Milkweed Editions: 2013. Pages 213-215 Chapter titled In the Footsteps of Nanabozho: Becoming Indigenous to Place