Land Acknowledgement

The Orientation, Class Year, & Families Programs team would like to acknowledge that GW occupies space that is on the ancestral homelands of the Piscataway, Anacostan, and Nacotchtank people. The Division for Student Affairs and The George Washington University acknowledges the painful history of enslavement, genocide, and forced removal from this land, and honor and respect the many diverse Indigenous, Native, and Aboriginal peoples still connected to this land on which we gather. Truth and acknowledgement are necessary in building mutual respect and connections across all barriers of heritage, culture, identity, and difference.

As the first program students and families experience as they start their journeys at GW, and in fulfilling the educational mission of the University, the Orientation, Class Year & Families Programs team is committed to doing our part - starting with introducing and facilitating conversations surrounding difficult histories, actively providing resources and opportunities to connect across cultural differences, and through this work contributing to a more inclusive and socially aware GW community. 

For more information & to learn more, please view the resources below. These resources are by no means exhaustive, and we encourage you to conduct your own searches to learn more about the history of Indigenous, Native, and Aboriginal peoples in Washington, D.C.

• Piscataway Tribe

• NATION to NATION: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations [Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian]

• The Trail of Broken Treaties [National Park Service]

• Native Peoples of Washington, DC [National Park Service]

• Native Americans [George Washington's Mount Vernon]

• Indigenous Tribes of Washington, D.C. [American Library Association]

• Once As It Was Map of Washington, D.C. [DC Native History Project]

• A Native American tribe once called D.C. home. It’s had no living members for centuries. [Washington Post]

• The Anacostan Tribe Once Lived on the Land Now Known As D.C. [Washington CityPaper]