BackgroundIn recent years, the practice of land acknowledgments has arisen among individuals and organizations who wish to name and honor the ancestral people associated with the land where the speaker now lives or works. The purpose is to break the cycle of ignorance and delusion about indigenous displacement and genocide. Motivated by the Buddha’s teaching to investigate the root causes of suffering wherever they exist and to act with the intention of preventing future harm, we at IMCC respectfully offer the following land acknowledgment.Land AcknowledgementFor thousands of years, the people of the Monacan nation lived on, protected, and cultivated the land on which Charlottesville and surrounding communities now stand. This land was forcibly seized by white-bodied settler colonizers. We at the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville acknowledge the profound suffering inflicted on the Monacan people, past, present, and future as a result of these acts and as a result of policies rooted in erasure. We recognize the relationship the Monacan people of the present day have with the land where their ancestors are buried. |