Land Acknowledgment

Dear Community,

I wish to humbly acknowledge and be accountable to an important reality of my life and the work you see on this website. I am a white woman of settler/colonial heritage and I continue to benefit from settler colonialism as I live and work in Oakland, California.

Oakland is traditional and unceded Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone land. 

While this land has a deep history, the Ohlone people are still here. They are a community. This community has lived on this land for thousands of years, and they are still fighting for their land and basic rights.

(Read more about contemporary Ohlone history here.)

In order to acknowledge this reality with the respect it deserves, I make the following commitments:

• I have established a monthly payment to the Shuumi Land Tax (more information is here) in order to facilitate the return of Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone lands in the San Francisco Bay Area to Indigenous stewardship.
• I commit to receiving and integrating any feedback from the Ohlone people on ways that I can support and amplify their work; and to be an accomplice in their work when/where apppropriate.
• When traveling to work, I will make every effort to connect with local Indigenous communities; to ask permission to work on their land; and to donate 10% of the income earned on those lands, to those people.
• My activist praxis is and will continue to be deeply informed by my years of Indigenous solidarity work Idle No More SF Bay, among others. I vow to remain accountable to the Indigenous leaders who have generously taught me, and who have been beloved collaborators for many years.

As ever, I am receptive to feedback and to making my commitments even more robust. Please reach out to christy@christytending.com—especially if you are Indigenous.

For those of you who also have settler/colonial ancestry and/or continue to benefit from the privileges of settler colonialism, I encourage you to seek out, learn the history of, and make personal connections with the original peoples of the land where you live.

With care,
Christy

I want to honor and acknowledge The Sogorea Te Land Trust, whom I hired as consultants on the writing of this document.