Land Acknowledgement

This year of learning we plan for an event that will elevate awareness around the struggles of our Muslim brothers and sisters. The Learning Launch will be a virtual event, not taking place on physical ground. Yet, each of us remains in the realm of the physical, even if we are not together in one place. Many of us live and work in northeastern Illinois.

Today, we acknowledge that Chicago and its environs occupy the traditional lands of indigenous peoples who have lived on these lands for 10,000 years.

They are the Three Fires Peoples—the Ojibwe the Odawa and the Bode’wadmi. We further acknowledge Ho-Chunk, Sauk, Fox, and Kickapoo. Today, Illinois is home to members of 150 different tribes, including Lakota Sioux, Dakota, Navajo, Zuni, Menominee, Oneida and Choctaw, Cherokee, Miami and many others.

Let us remember our collective responsibility to do right by indigenous peoples beginning with acknowledging the origins and history of these lands, but not ending there.

Let us reflect in the words of a prominent chief who has left the physical world.

Your Path. Everything is laid out for you. Your path is straight ahead of you. Sometimes it is invisible, but it is there. You may not know where it is going, but you have to follow that path. It is the path to the Creator. It is the path to doing good for others. It is the only path there is.