Indigenous Peoples & Land Acknowledgment | MASS MoCA (original) (raw)

It is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) rests on the ancestral homelands of the Muhheaconneok or Mohican people (People of the Waters That Are Never Still) and the Wabanaki peoples. Despite tremendous hardship in being forcibly relocated from these lands by Dutch, English, and US colonizers, today the Muhheaconneok or Mohican community resides in Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. The Wabanaki Confederacy, also known as The People of the Dawnland, include the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki Nations, who are indigenous to the lands with the English placenames Maine, Vermont, northwestern Massachusetts, and parts of Canada, and continue to reside in these areas. We pay honor and respect to these ancestors past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all.

This acknowledgement and list of resources are a living document, which we will continue to update as we continue to learn. The Native Governance Center offers some ways to stand in solidarity with Indigenous people. They write, “Solidarity can look like: donating time and money to Indigenous-led organizations, amplifying the voices of Indigenous people leading grassroots change movements, and returning land.”