SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A resolution establishing an official city of Sacramento Land Acknowledgment passed unanimously during Tuesday's city council meeting.
With its passing, this means a Land Acknowledgement statement would be read at the beginning of every Sacramento City Council meeting, its subsidiary committees, boards, and bodies and so on.
In late October, the city Sacramento's Racial Equity Ad Hoc Committee passed an item calling for adoption of a Land Acknowledgement at the beginning of every Racial Equity Ad Hoc Committee meeting.
The hope at the time was to get it in front of the city council, who would then adopt it city-wide. That task happened Tuesday.
ABC10 spoke with Chairman Jesus Tarango of the Wilton Rancheria Tribe following the passing of the item with the Racial Equity Ad Hoc Committee. Tarango said the importance of the Land Acknowledgement simply comes down to recognition and respect.
"You know, our people were here, this land was settled, even though history will teach you that people felt that it was unsettled," Tarango said in the October interview. "And so for us, it's just acknowledging and recognizing their original inhabitants of the land that we are currently on and just honoring those ancestors that were here. And also, you know, I think it speaks to, we're still here as well."
What is a Land Acknowledgement?
The Sacramento Native American Health Center (SNAHC) defined the acknowledgement as, "a formal statement, a public recognition, of the Indigenous Peoples who have been dispossessed and displaced from their ancestral homelands and territories due to a variety of colonial and historical reasons."
Here is the read out of Land Acknowledgement passed by the city council.
Please rise for the opening acknowledgements in honor of Sacramento’s Indigenous People and Tribal Lands. To the original people of this land. The Nisenan people, The Southern Maidu, Valley and Plains Miwok, Patwin Wintun peoples, and the people of the Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento’s only Federally recognized Tribe. May we acknowledge and honor the Native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento’s Indigenous People’s history, contributions, and lives. Thank you.
