Land acknowledgement

 

I like to begin my Chicago Architecture Tours with a land acknowledgement. (I do it whether or not it's policy. It's MY acknowledgement.) Something like this:

"This tour, like all tours by the CAC, takes place on the unceded traditional homelands of the Coucil of Three Fires: the Ojibway, the Potawatomee and the Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami and the Ho-chunk nations." (I should go on to note that it was also the site for gathering, trade, travel and healing for more than adozen other .native tribes.)

Some have noted that since these native tribes left nothing that is featured on CAC tours.

But that is wrong.

What is this place called? 

Chicago, Illinois. 

Not New York, or Los Angeles, or Philadelphia, or Washington. Its not named for our English history, or our Mexican heritage, or a philosophical ideal, or a famous man from our past.

But Chicago, Illinois. 

We wouldn't know where we were without the Natives, or at least we couldn't name it. 

The natives even show up on the city seal.

This was Native land until Europeans took it away from them. 

Architects consider "existing conditions" (if only to later erase them.)

We should at least acknowledge those "existing conditions."