About the image: Sheila Dunn (B.F.A., ’06) studied painting at Colorado State University. “I paint what is sacred to me,” Dunn says. This painting of Moraine Park, Colorado, captures the place in Rocky Mountain National Park that is most sacred to her. She donates 10% of sales to conservation organizations, including the Conservation Alliance in Bend, the Grand Canyon Trust, and the Oregon Desert Land Trust.
The Land Issue
This issue of Impact is dedicated to land in all its complexity — as fact and metaphor, as debt and legacy, as record and narrative. On the 150th anniversary of the University, we have attempted to chronicle the myriad ways in which land demands our attention, informs our work, and determines our future. The Colorado State University Land Acknowledgement below was developed collaboratively by a committee of Indigenous campus and community members and formally adopted by the University in 2019. The land acknowledgment will be integrated into campus culture and history to express truth, gratitude, and respect. Read the full magazine here.
CSU Land Acknowledgment
Colorado State University acknowledges, with respect, that the land we are on today is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute Nations and peoples. This was also a site of trade, gathering, and healing for numerous other Native tribes. We recognize the Indigenous peoples as original stewards of this land and all the relatives within it. As these words of acknowledgment are spoken and heard, the ties Nations have to their traditional homelands are renewed and reaffirmed.
CSU is founded as a land-grant institution, and we accept that our mission must encompass access to education and inclusion. And, significantly, that our founding came at a dire cost to Native Nations and peoples whose land this University was built upon. This acknowledgment is the education and inclusion we must practice in recognizing our institutional history, responsibility, and commitment.
