Table of Contents
Mission Statement
Our mission is to create projects that serve as symbols of our commitment to Indigenizing our community. By honoring the cultural significance of Indigenous peoples far and near, we aim to cultivate a space that celebrates the wisdom and traditions of these communities. Our projects will serve as a platform for learning and healing, where community members can come together to reconnect with the land and each other. Through these projects, we hope to promote the recognition of the land with the people inherently tied to it, as well as biodiversity and sustainability that is taught through the teachings of traditional knowledge. We believe that the engagements with these projects will serve as a powerful tool for promoting cultural revitalization, awareness, social justice, and for passing down information for generations to come.
PROJECT UPDATE: On May 9, 2023: Professor Lucas Wilson planted ten sweetgrass plugs in the designated no-mow zone on the Mandelles hillside. Signage about sweetgrass, written by the Indigenizing Lanscape group will be installed in this garden space shortly.
Aim of the Project
The aim of this project is to create a website with information about how to Indigenize Mount Holyoke Campus and re-indigenize the land that the college occupies. This project proposes several different ideas on how this can be done and why.
- Explaining the history of the land in an Indigenous perspective to contextualize why we are doing this project.
- Changing the land acknowledgements on campus to be more interactive and engaging
- Creating and changing signage across campus to continue the acknowledgement of Indigenous land and where we stand currently.
- Planting Sweetgrass on the campus to engage students and classes in the cultural significance of Sweetgrass.
- Planting a Four Sisters Garden for the same purpose of engaging students in native culture.
Land Acknowledgement
Now you must be asking, why we did not come up with our own land acknowledgment and just using the college’s provided one? Well, there are multiple factors to consider, such as the intensive research that goes into creating one, a divided position on making one available, as well as, our stance on land acknowledgements being one of the first step towards “Indigenizing” the campus. See Land Acknowledgement for further information.
About Us
We are a group of students facilitating this as a final project for our Decolonizing Museums class (Spring 2023).
Annie Smith ’25, Georgia Camacho ’25, Leah Manning ’24, Afsana Islam ’24, Nez Young ’25
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Dr. Lucas Wilson, Rachel Sayet, Kay Mattena, Katie Dick, Chris Painted Turtle Harris, Angie Patterson, Kijua Sanders-McMurty, Ellen Alvord, Aaron Miller, Chris Domina, Professor Auslander, Ren Block and the Decolonizing Musuems Class of Spring 2022.