With a genuine desire for collective healing, understanding, and partnership with SEIU 503, we offer this Land Acknowledgement to respectfully recognize the land and our Indigenous people.
SEIU 503 recognizes the Klamath tribe of the Southern Oregon plateau; the Burns Paiute of the high-desert east; the Coquille of Southern Oregon’s coastal forests; the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in the northern Coast Range; the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua in the Southern Oregon foothills; the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla in the Blue Mountains; the Confederated Tribes of Siletz in Oregon’s northern rainforests; the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw on the windblown southern coast; and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs on the sunny eastern slopes of the Oregon Cascades. And we would like to recognize all the other indigenous communities who have not been federally recognized.
The Acknowledgement recognizes that lasting progress begins and continues with a growing understanding of harms and works to challenge the legacies of Colonialism in order to move in the true spirit of community.
To implement the Land Acknowledgement is to respect those whose relationship to the land precedes ours and to collectively engage in fundamental measures that advance justice for our Indigenous people of the region–past, present, and future.
We acknowledge that our Union’s history, like many others, is fundamentally tied to colonial practices. Finally, we respectfully acknowledge and honor past, present, and future Indigenous workers of SEIU 503.