At Bard Graduate Center we study the material world, seeking knowledge about the past and striving for critical understanding of our present and presence here.

We respectfully acknowledge this place as Lenapehoking—the ancestral homeland of the Lenni-Lenape—and recognize New York City as a past, current, and future home for many Indigenous people.

Land Acknowledgements honor customary Indigenous protocols for the thanking of hosts and call attention to ongoing realities of colonial dispossession. We also remember and honor the essential contributions of others who travelled to these lands against their free will.

Critically examining our placement in the historical fabric of New York City is part of our effort to work toward more equitable futures.

Adopted by the Bard Graduate Center faculty in October 2020. Those who convene events at BGC are encouraged to make a land acknowledgement as part of their welcome statements. To ensure that the land acknowledgement feels alive and dynamic each time it is spoken, the committee that authored it recommends using the text above as a template that can be tailored to suit the individual speaker’s style and the audience for the event.