Land & Labor 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, acknowledgement and action 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. 

Land Acknowledgement

GW’s campuses in the District of Columbia border the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers, a historic center of trade and cultural exchange between several tribal nations. For generations, the Piscataway and Anacostian Peoples have resided in this region and served as stewards of the local land and waterways. Following European genocide and other harms that continue today, the Piscataway people continue to call this region home, honoring and celebrating their culture and relationship with the land.

(Adapted from AT&T CIPP @ GWU)

Labor Acknowledgement

We acknowledge that much of what we know of the United States & GW today, including its culture, economic growth, and development, has been made possible by the labor of enslaved Africans, their descendants, and their ascendants who suffered the horror of the transatlantic trafficking of their people, chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and other harms that continue today. We are indebted to their labor and their sacrifice, and we must acknowledge the tremors of that violence throughout the generations and the resulting impact that can still be felt and witnessed today.

(Adapted from the work of Dr. TJ Stewart)

• 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]