Land Acknowledgement

(Model Statement)

We acknowledge that the main campus of Clemson University occupies the traditional and ancestral land of the Cherokee People. Clemson’s main campus is built on land seized through US military and diplomatic incursions culminating in the Treaty of Dewitt’s Corner in 1777. This is also land on which people enslaved by the Pickens, Clemson, and Calhoun families lived and worked, and that was transformed into the campus of Clemson University through convict labor. 

We make this acknowledgement to remember the histories of violence that anticipate our gathering here, to recognize Indigenous and Black claims to life and land, and to recenter those claims as we commit to better ways of caring for each other and for this land. 

Along with this acknowledgement, we ask: what responsibilities and commitments can we make to foster more honest and generative relations with this land and with each other? Can we, wherever we go, acknowledge Indigenous claims to the land we occupy? Can learning about the lifeways and lifeworlds of the original and rightful caretakers of the land we occupy guide our own changing relation with the places we are and the communities that belong to those places? How can we share our learning with others?