Diversity and Equity Center

DEC Core Values:

• Building just relationships
• Loving accountability
• Speaking trust to power
• Reckon with power structures
• Reimagine and rebuild
• Cultivate justice as a practice
• Sustain with joy.

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Land acknowledgement

A land acknowledgement is a formal statement that recognizes and pays respect to the Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories and ancestral homelands we occupy and whose resources we use.

Central Washington University acknowledges the people who have been on this land since time immemorial. The Ellensburg campus is on lands ceded by the Pshwanapum and other bands and tribes of the Yakama Nation in the Treaty of 1855. The Yakama people remain committed stewards of this land, cherishing it and protecting it, as instructed by elders through generations. We are honored and grateful to be here today on their traditional lands, and give thanks to the legacy of the original people, their lives, and their descendants.

We also recognize the histories of land theft, violence, erasure and oppression of Indigenous communities. It is not enough to only make an acknowledgement. We have a responsibility as occupants of these lands to hear the call to action made by Indigenous peoples, and to support their ongoing fight for sovereignty, equity, justice, healing, and the protection of land resources.