We collectively acknowledge that Vanderbilt University occupies the ancestral and traditional Lands of the Cherokee and Shawnee peoples. Today, the Cherokee and Shawnee people have nation boundaries in Oklahoma, after the Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the forced removal of southern tribes west of the Mississippi River. In particular, the University resides on Land ceded on November 8, 1795 in the Treaty of Hopewell.  We recognize, support, and advocate for the Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those forcibly removed from their Homelands. By offering this Land Acknowledgement, we affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold Vanderbilt University more accountable to the needs of American Indian and Indigenous peoples. 

I/we would like to begin by acknowledging that we gather in Lenapehoking, the Lenape People's ancestral territory. William Penn’s heirs dispossessed the Lenape with the fraudulent Walking Purchase of 1737. Subsequent broken treaties and violent conflicts forced the Lenape People from their homelands. The majority of Lenape communities settled in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario where they live today as federally recognized sovereign Nations. I/we urge those of us who benefit from their dispossession to commit ourselves to reckoning with history and the legacies of colonialism. Today we strive to be responsible caretakers of the lands we stand on and build ongoing reciprocal relationships necessary for conciliation with Indigenous peoples.