Land & Labor Acknowledgement
Land Acknowledgment
Written by the ASHE 2025 Local and Community Engagement Committee
We acknowledge that Denver is located on the traditional territory and homelands of the Nuuchiu (Ute), Tsistsistas (Cheyenne), and Hinono’ei (Arapaho) peoples. Forty-eight Tribal Nations are also connected to and continue to be in relation with the lands that are now known as Colorado. Denver was a site for the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which sought to relocate Indigenous people from reservations to urban areas as a part of the federal government’s broader termination policy era. We honor Denver's thriving Indigenous community, comprised of citizens of Tribal Nations from across the country, and commit to supporting Indigenous sovereignty and ongoing relationship to place and land.
We acknowledge that the history of this place requires institutions of higher education to be responsive to the needs and expectations of a changed and still-changing student population. We commit to advocating for equity, inclusion, and justice in higher education to ensure access to educational opportunities, fostering diverse perspectives, care and respect for the people of this place, and creating an environment where everyone can thrive, contribute, and succeed.
We encourage you to review the Resources and Recommendations for Creating Land Acknowledgements developed by the ASHE Land Acknowledgement Working Group (LAWG) (2020) .
Labor Acknowledgment
Source: Solid Ground, https://www.solid-ground.org/what-we-do/labor-acknowledgement/
This Labor Acknowledgement is provided by Solid Ground, a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, WA, dedicated to ending poverty and undoing racism and other oppressions in the community.
Like most modern-day U.S. institutions, ASHE benefits from the unaddressed legacy of stolen labor at the foundation of this nation and its vast and inequitable wealth.
We respectfully acknowledge our debt to the enslaved people, primarily of African descent, whose labor and suffering built and grew the economy and infrastructure of a nation that refused to recognize their humanity.
While the 13th Amendment to the Constitution technically ended “slavery” in the U.S., we know that slavery’s ongoing impacts are still felt by countless people forced – through violence, threats, and coercion – to work in the U.S.
We recognize our debt to exploited workers past and present whose labor was and continues to be stolen through unjust practices.
We acknowledge our collective debt to the Indigenous peoples of this land whose labor was forced and exploited, the Chinese immigrants who built railroads that allowed for westward American development, Japanese Americans whose properties and livelihoods were taken from them while incarcerated during World War II, and migrant workers from the Philippines, Mexico, and Central and South America who have worked farms and canneries.
We recognize the immigrant and American-born workers of African, Asian, and Central and South American descent whose labor remains hidden in the shadows but still contributes to the wellbeing of our collective community.
We recognize that our economy continues to rely on the exploited labor of incarcerated people, largely people of color, who earn pennies an hour while generating billions in goods and services each year. And we know there are many other people, too numerous to mention, who are prevented from reaping the true value of their labor by unjust systems and cruel practices.
We mourn their loss of life, liberty, and opportunity.
We acknowledge that the theft of labor is the theft of generational progress. Nearly all people of color have been robbed of the opportunity and wealth that their ancestors might otherwise have passed on to them.