Joint CSJ St. Paul Community and St. Catherine University Land Acknowledgment Statement
We begin (our program/event/meeting) with honor and respect for the land and for the first people of this land.
We are on the ancestral homelands of the Dakȟóta People. We desire to honor and respect the first people and recognize their caring for our common home. Other sovereign American Indian nations including the Anishinaabe also have a long history with these sacred lands: past, present, and future. We, both personally and institutionally, continue to have a deepening awareness of our complicity, of the complex history of colonialism, genocide and broken treaties. We seek to understand the troubled acquisition of this land by unjust U.S. Government practices including the stealing of these lands and the forced removal from the birth place of the Dakȟóta people without any compensation to the American Indian communities. We acknowledge the past, current, and future impacts of this history on our relationship with our American Indian sisters and brothers.
In our commitment to social justice and the “love of dear neighbor without distinction,” we are called to acknowledge and to deepen our understanding of our participation in interlocking systems of oppression. We seek to journey farther together to respond boldly in working toward dismantling these systems.
We, St. Catherine University and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and Consociates, know that these words are inadequate, imperfect and must extend beyond this verbal Acknowledgment. This is only our beginning of a much larger journey of listening, learning, building relationship and advocating for and with American Indian nations for a more just world for all. Living Document 19 – Nov. 13, 2021