Land Acknowledgement

Indigenous people have belonged to, inhabited and tended this place in the Shenandoah Valley for over 15,000 years, including Siouan, Algonquian, and Haudenosaunee communities. Their decedents still exist, but continue to be systematically erased by policies and practices that remove their histories and voices. Yet our nation and world has so much to gain by listening to their voices.  Enslaved African and Indigenous people lived and toiled on this land and their decedents continue to face systemic racism and white supremacist violence.*

 

*Inspired by the “Indigenous Land and Enslaved Peoples Acknowledgment” created by James Madison University’s Center for Faculty Innovation and my own experience in the peacebuilding field

 

Personal acknowledgement:

 

I feel it’s important for me to acknowledge that all of my ancestors, as far as I know, are of European settler origin and participated in the colonization of Turtle Island (North America), benefiting from the removal, genocide and attempted erasure of its indigenous peoples and cultures. 

 

As a white European American, not wanting to add to the harms already perpetrated by my ancestors and people group, I have been hesitant to receive training and become a practitioner of this (or any) Indigenous bodywork modality.  After learning the process Jenny Ray and her father Chas Thompson undertook with their elders and tribal leaders, to discern what specific information from their family’s lineage could be shared outside of the tribe and reservation, and how it was to be shared within the modern massage therapy and bodywork professions, I decided to humbly accept training offered by Cedar Stone School of Massage and their trainers.  I consider it a great honor to receive the gift of this endangered knowledge and I strive to carry it with integrity.