Skip to Main Content
UAFS logo

Land Acknowledgments: Local Indigenous Peoples

Local Tribes

The spaces in which we offer our services were previously inhabited by sovereign nations for time immemorial.  The Mississippian Civilization's political hub - Spiro - was in the region from 800-1300 C.E. The Caddo, Osage, and Quapaw followed. The 1830 Indian Removal Act forced the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole into the region, as well as these Five Nation's African-descended slaves known today as the freedmen.

According to Native Land Digital, Fort Smith is on Caddo, Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, O-ga-xpa Ma-zhoⁿ (O-ga-xpa or Quapaw), and 𐓏𐒰𐓓𐒰𐓓𐒷  𐒼𐓂𐓊𐒻  𐓆𐒻𐒿𐒷  𐓀𐒰^𐓓𐒰^(Osage) lands.

This page contains further information on tribes and territories. Many thanks to Pebley archivist Shelley Blanton for compiling many of these sources.

Partial bibliography

Ambo, Theresa Stewart, and K. Wayne Yang. “Beyond Land Acknowledgment in Settler Institutions.” Social Text 39, no. 1 (March 2021): 21–46.

Asher, Lila, Joe Curnow, and Amil Davis. “The Limits of Settlers’ Territorial Acknowledgments.” Curriculum Inquiry 48, no. 3 (January 1, 2018): 316–34.

Blenkinsop, Sean, and Mark Fettes. “Land, Language and Listening: The Transformations That Can Flow from Acknowledging Indigenous Land.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 54, no. 4 (August 2020): 1033–46.

Cooks, Leda, and Jennifer A. Zenovich. “On Whose Land Do I/We Learn? Rethinking Ownership and Land Acknowledgment.” Communication Teacher 35, no. 3 (January 1, 2021): 222–28.

Dillard, Madison, Sarah Beals, Rosa Gutierrez, Samantha Gilmore, and Lucor Jordan. “De-Pioneering Higher Education and Land Acknowledgements.” Applied Anthropologist 40, no. 2 (July 2020): 6–10.

Hughes, Bethany. “Guesting on Indigenous Land: Plimoth Plantation, Land Acknowledgment, and Decolonial Praxis.” Theatre Topics 29, no. 1 (March 3, 2019): 23-32.

Huntington, Henry P. “What Do Land Acknowledgments Acknowledge?” Environment 63, no. 4 (July 2021): 31–35.

Llana, Sara Miller. “What Are Land Acknowledgments, and How Do They Help Indigenous Peoples?” Christian Science Monitor, April 2, 2021.

Robinson, Dylan, Kanonhsyonne Janice C. Hill, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Selena Couture, Lisa Cooke Ravensbergen. “Rethinking the Practice and Performance of Indigenous Land Acknowledgement.” Canadian Theatre Review, no. 177 (Winter 2019): 20–30.

Wark, Joe. “Land Acknowledgements in the Academy: Refusing the Settler Myth.” Curriculum Inquiry 51, no. 2 (January 1, 2021): 191–209.

Indian Land Cessions, 1818-1835

Trail of Tears

Trail of Tears National Historic Site

Trails of Tears Across Arkansas State Parks

Fort Smith Conference (1865)

The Journey of Survival: Indian Removal through Arkansas: This interactive map is a project by the Sequoyah National Research Center at UALR. It includes over 80 sites in the state of Arkansas that were either significant in the Indian Removal journey or that served as witness sites, including Fort Smith and Van Buren.

General and Multidisciplinary Databases

The databases on this multidisciplinary list may contain further sources on land acknowledgment.

 

More Tools for your Research

Why "peer-reviewed"?

Peer-reviewed journal articles have gone through a special review process (peer review, naturally). This means scholars of a discipline have read an article carefully and determined that it makes a worthwhile contribution and was researched correctly. This is why instructors prefer you to use peer-reviewed articles -- it guarantees that your sources are good ones.