The Kathryn M. Buder Center at Washington University in St. Louis occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Osage Nation, Otoe-Missouria, Illinois Confederacy, Quapaw, Ho-Chunk, Miami and many other tribes as the custodians of the land where we reside, occupy, and call home.

We recognize their sovereignty was never ceded after unjust removal and encourage your own research on tribal removal, tribal sovereignty and the history of the land you reside.

We promote the inclusion of tribal history and the incorporation of contemporary thoughts and actions into your work.

In offering this land acknowledgement, we affirm and support Tribal sovereignty, history and experiences by elders past, present, and seven generations yet to come through their continued connection to this land.

Land acknowledgements honor a place’s Indigenous people – past and present – and recognize the history that brought us to where we are today. They are meant to recognize how we have inadvertently benefited from the history of colonization, removal, and genocide of Indigenous people. Land acknowledgements are a starting point. They should not be the only way you recognize or support Indigenous communities and histories. Today, there are over 183,400 Native Americans living in the state.