Land Acknowledgment

*draft updated 1/3/2021*

The Sống Collective is based on unceded Lenapehoking (“land of the Lanape People”) territory, which spans from Western Connecticut to Eastern Pennsylvania, the Hudson Valley to Delaware, with New York City at its center.

We recognize that this land was forcibly taken and sovereignty was never ceded. We acknowledge the brutal history of genocide, the displacement, and the dispossession of Indigenous people from their ancestral lands.

We acknowledge that after stolen lands, there were also stolen people. We respectfully recognize and thank the generations of enslaved and displaced people who built, and continue to build the country that we occupy today.

We also recognize the long violent history of colonization and imperialism that has displaced generations of people from their ancestral lands, including ourselves. As Việt-identifying folx who were resettled here in the U.S., we acknowledge our own complicity in enacting and contributing to the violence against and the erasure of Indigenous communities and other communities of color.

As Việts of Kinh (the ethnic majority in Việt Nam) ancestry, we also recognize the long history of genocide, displacement, and oppression against Indigenous populations in Việt Nam that still continues in this very moment.

We acknowledge the legacies of colonization embedded in our technology, the land, and the structures we use to connect with one another and its disproportionate impact on Indigenous communities and communities of color globally.

We commit to honoring our collective ancestors past, present, and future who have, and continue to, steward the land. We invite our community to learn the history of the people who have walked the Earth before us. We invite our community members to take accountability for themselves, one another, and to become better stewards of the Earth. We call for the building of a new world that fights for true freedom and liberation of all who exist on this planet.