In honor of Native American Heritage Month in November, the Social Justice Club is helping students and staff understand the history of East Lansing. As part of their mission to spread awareness, they are working on a project to create and place plaques with a land acknowledgment in front of all ELPS schools.
The project was developed after a group of students noticed that some teachers have land acknowledgments that note the tribes that ELHS schools occupy at the end of their emails, while others don’t. According to social justice club member Chloe Vickers (11), the project is important for others to feel like their school sees them.
“It was kind of something that had to be done,” Vickers said. “We just want everyone to feel like their staff and students are listening and caring for them.”
(Photo by Rahma Aato)
In order to get the project started, the Social Justice Club met with the school board to discuss this issue and propose using district funds to place plaques. QR codes will accompany these plaques, leading people to a subpage on the ELPS website. The page will have various resources, including literature, curriculums for teachers and organizations supporting Indigenous people.
Part of that website will contain the teacher’s email signature that students noticed, which states: “Please note that East Lansing High School occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Three Fires Confederacy Tribal Organization.” According to club adviser and Spanish teacher Diana Sanchez, land acknowledgments have been brought up in classrooms in many instances but rarely brought into conversations.
“I don’t feel like I’ve had many opportunities to learn myself as a student, and even going through Michigan State University, which resides on the same exact land, it was never something that was talked about,” Sanchez said. “I know there are some teachers that kind of talked about it, but not as much as they should have.”
On the website, resources will state that East Lansing occupies the land of Anishinaabeg (Ah-nish-in-ah-beg), specifically belonging to the people of the Three Fire Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi people. Michigan was turned over to the United States after the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw. The United States had ideas of expansion which caused many treaties to be signed under pressure. These treaties often lead to efforts to erase Indigenous culture by stripping away rights and forceful relocation.
Social Justice club member Sierra Lewis Farver (11) feels it is important that staff and students are educated about the history of the land occupied by the high school.
“I’m Indigenous myself, I’m Navajo, and we’re not invisible,” Farver said. “We want to be seen and I think this will help us feel more included.”
While the club doesn’t yet have an end date for the project, they hope to have the website ready by January. Ultimately, Vickers sees it as a way to make everyone feel included.
“Honestly, we want everybody just to know that their teachers and their staff and their students care about them and care about the issue,” Vickers said.
