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The Collective respectfully acknowledges the traditional and unceded territories of the Ojibwe and others across Turtle Island where many of our community and team members reside and carry out their work.  

The STRONG Manoomin Collective is stewarded by two Co-Directors, currently Dr. Kim Marion Suiseeya, Duke University, located in Durham, NC, and Dr. Josiah Hester, Georgia Institute of Technology, located in Atlanta, GA, and a team of knowledge holders, scientists, educators, and partners across the Upper Great Lakes region. We are housed in the Center for Water Research at the Northwestern Argonne Institute for Science and Engineering (NAISE) on Northwestern's campus in Evanston, IL.  

As we build out the STRONG Manoomin Collective we hope to connect with current and potential partners who share an interest in advancing scientific and governance capacities as key climate resilience solutions. If you are interested in working with us, please contact us here or email the PI of the project. 

If you have questions, concerns, or feedback, please reach us here. 

Land Acknowledgements

Northwestern University

Northwestern is a community of learners situated within a network of historical and contemporary relationships with Native American tribes, communities, parents, students, and alumni. It is also in close proximity to an urban Native American community in Chicago and near several tribes in the Midwest. The Northwestern campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations. It was also a site of trade, travel, gathering, and healing for more than a dozen other Native tribes and is still home to over 100,000 tribal members in the state of Illinois.  Visit this page for more resources on Land Acknowledgments at Northwestern University. 

Duke University

Please note that land acknowledgements are on hold at Duke University due to their problematic nature of contributing to erasure (/past-ifying) of contemporary Native people, amongst other issues. See here for more information about land acknowledgments at Duke and here

Links to an external site. for an article on rethinking land acknowledgments.

Instead, we encourage you to: 

• Visit the RISE-US: Research for Indigenous Studies & Engagement website and sign up for the NASI listserv to learn more about Native American and Indigenous Studies and Research at Duke.

• Learn more about land acknowledgments and develop a personal action plan (see Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements Links to an external site.)

Engage with the Native American/Indigenous Student Alliance petition, which can be found here Links to an external site..

Engage with the Cherokee Scholars’ Statement on Sovereignty and Identity, endorsed by NASI, which can be found here Links to an external site.

Georgia Institute of Technology

Georgia Tech is built on the ancestral lands of the Muscogee Creek Confederacy, and the Cherokee Nation held land nearby. Both tribes were forced off of their land in the 1830s and marched the infamous Trail of Tears. Today, Georgia remains home to the Lower Muscogee Creek Tribe and Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee.  Land acknowledgements are traditionally used for Indigenous Peoples. However, we also know that this land was occupied by enslavers and worked by enslaved peoples; and Atlanta would not exist today without their labor. While this is an incomplete account, it is important to acknowledge the complex and layered history of the land. A land acknowledgement is one method of bringing history to light and opening a conversation about the responsibilities we have to the land and to each other. This land acknowledgement is adapted from CP 6012: THEORY AND HISTORY OF PLANNING at Georgia Tech. It was written by Elora Raymond and Brian Stone and can be found at this link.