Land Acknowledgment
The Restorative Justice Practices we use today are adapted from the Indigenous peoples of North America, and are rooted in values and traditions that are a way of life for native people. Several First Nations Peoples have contributed to the use of circles among non-native people, including - The Hollow Water First Nation on Lake Winnipeg and members of the Carcross-Tagish and Dahka T’lingit First Nations in Yukon.
P2RC is located on the ancestral land of the Pawtucket and Massachusett Tribes. The territory of the Pawtucket stretches from the Piscataqua River in New Hampshire south to what is now called the Charles River in Boston. Nanepashemet was the Great Sac’hem of the Pawtucket peoples when the English colonizers arrived in the early 1600’s. The territory of the Massachusett Tribe stretches along the coast of Massachusetts from just south of the New Hampshire border to the border of Rhode Island. The Massachusett are the indigenous nation from whom the present-day Commonwealth of Massachusetts took its name. At the time of the English invasion, the Massachusett people were led by the Great Sac’hem, Chickataubut. Faries Sagamore Gray is the current Sac’hem of the Massachusett Nation. We acknowledge their elders both past and present, as well as future generations.
P2RC acknowledges that our organization benefits from a society founded upon exclusion, genocide and erasure of Indigenous peoples, including those on whose land we are located and whose practices we use. We acknowledge the forced removal and genocide that Indigenous people across this continent have faced, including the extraction of resources that threaten native people’s way of life, the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW), and the ongoing disregard of treaty rights.
P2RC donates a portion of our proceeds to the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness. We are committed to the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism in ourselves and in our communities. We invite you to name and acknowledge the land on which you live and work, and to support Indigenous People in the communities there.
Below are resources for learning more about and acknowledging the land on which you live:
Native Land Digital
U.S. Dept. of Arts and Culture: Honor Native Land
Native Governance Center: A Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgment
