Land Acknowledgement Statement

Affirming the importance of water and of place to both Indigenous and African-American people, Professors Gabrielle Tayac (left) and Wendi Manuel-Scott gather waters near the mouth of the Occoquan River to be poured into fountains of the Enslaved People of George Mason Memorial. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Creative Services

At the place George Mason University occupies, we give greetings and thanksgivings to the recognized Virginia tribes who have lovingly stewarded these lands for millennia including the Rappahannock, Pamunkey, Upper Mattaponi, Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Nansemond, Monacan, Mattaponi, Patawomeck, and Nottaway, past, present, and future; and to the Piscataway tribes, who have lived on both sides of the river from time immemorial. The education offered here is a credit to the land that has received our students. The good they will do in this world is the harvest of the soil upon which they stand, sit, and live.

—Authorized statement on which President Gregory Washington, since winter 2023, has based his commencement ceremony remarks.

History of Our Land Acknowledgment Statement

Native American Water Ceremony undertaken by Associate Professor of Public History Gabrielle Tayac with students of the Native American and Indigenous Alliance to dedicate the Enslaved People of George Mason Memorial. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Creative Services/George Mason University

Universities across North America have adopted land acknowledgement practices to recognize the Indigenous peoples whose ancestral homelands institutions now occupy. They also call attention to the historical and ongoing erasure of Native nations and knowledge systems. The practice of tribal land acknowledgments precedes White settlement of North America and continues today as a protocol of recognizing relationships with and among Indigenous people and spaces. At their best, land acknowledgments are not symbolic gestures but starting points for more meaningful commitments to justice, Indigenous visibility, respectful relationality, and building of our worlds otherwise.

We recognize that acknowledgment alone is not justice. We affirm the spirit of ethical remembrance, relational accountability, and collective learning.

In 2019–2020, faculty-student collaborations began, under the guidance of Dr. Gabrielle Tayac (Piscataway), Dr. Wendi Manuel-Scott, and Dr. George Oberle, to create an inclusive and ethically grounded land-acknowledgment practice. In 2021, the first widely used version of the land acknowledgment was publicly shared at university events such as the MLK Commemoration Ceremony and ARIE Town Halls. It received broad support from the campus community. This is that statement:

Land acknowledgment engages all present in an ongoing indigenous protocol to enact meaningful, reciprocal relationships with ancestors and contemporary tribal nations. As a state university, we have a responsibility to include and support indigenous communities and sovereign tribes in our work.

At the place George Mason University occupies, we give greetings and thanksgivings

to these Potomac River life sources,

to the Doeg ancestors, who Virginia annihilated in violent campaigns while ripping their lands apart with the brutal system of African American enslavement,

to the recognized Virginia tribes who have lovingly stewarded these lands for millennia including the Rappahannock, Pamunkey, Upper Mattaponi, Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Nansemond, Monacan, Mattaponi, Patawomeck, and Nottaway, past, present, and future, and

to the Piscataway tribes, who have lived on both sides of the river from time immemorial.

By 2023, a modified version appeared at official university events, including commencements. In March 2025, the university formally identified a revised version of the original statement as the only “authorized” statement.

In honor of our entangled histories, we present the affirmations below as not a conclusion but a beginning. They represent a commitment to ethical memory, reciprocal learning, and justice-based teaching.

Affirmations

A golden hue bathes a running landscape fountain consisting of a vertical wall of water splashing down into a curved pool. Behind the vertical flow are visible the latter part of a quotation in reflective metal lettering: "... the diversity, the energy, and the creativity of all our people." Below is the attribution, "ROGER WILKINS." — Enslaved People of George Mason memorial on Roger Wilkins Plaza, Fairfax Campus.
Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

We are historians. We are tasked with finding and honoring history. We are especially committed to caring for our ancestors while helping to imagine a more just world. We believe that the stories of Native and African-descended peoples in the Americas are deeply intertwined. Both communities have endured the violence of dispossession, enslavement, removal, and systemic erasure, yet both have also cultivated profound traditions of resistance, survival, and spiritual renewal.

We acknowledged this shared past and present by giving water an essential role at the dedication of the Enslaved People of George Mason Memorial. Water ceremonies have always been and remain sacred to the Piscataway and other Indigenous nations. Natural waters have likewise served the spiritual needs of African Americans, including on Accotink Creek near our campus, which served as a baptismal site in the early twentieth century. As a metaphor for this joining of cultural streams, two faculty members instrumental in the memorial's creation gathered waters from Point of View, a university-owned spot on Belmont Bay, at the confluence of the Occoquan and Potomac rivers. Undergraduate students of Indigenous origin poured these waters into the memorial's fountain. A student choir sang the African American spiritual Wade in the Water.

In honor of our entangled histories, we present this affirmation as not a conclusion but a beginning. It is a commitment to ethical memory-making, reciprocal learning, and justice-based teaching.

We affirm that we are building toward:

caring for life, not destroying it;
building a beautiful, livable world for all, rather than a violent world for a few; and
truth-telling as a necessary part of healing, equity, and justice.

Land acknowledgment engages all... WATCH: In October 2022, CML's Gabrielle A. Tayac, associate professor of public history, engaged with students in the longstanding Indigenous protocol of recognizing reciprocal relationships with ancestors and contemporary tribal nations.