Protocols, Guidelines, and Invitations
The work of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is made possible by the strength, resilience, leadership, and labor of Indigenous women and culture keepers.
We are also supported by many allies and accomplices of different backgrounds, engaging with the vision of Indigenous women led land return and rematriation.
Collectively we are all still in a world founded on the theft of the lives and land of Indigenous people. As a society we are just beginning to learn how to navigate what it means to acknowledge the history of the land we are on, to build meaningful relationships and collaborations that honor the past and engage with the knowledge, time, energy and resources of Indigenous people in respectful and reciprocal ways.
As we move towards transforming our relationships the land we are on, here are some tips for how to engage with our work, request a speaker, cultural consultation, land acknowledgement, offer an opportunity, or contact us.
PREPARE
A great way to prepare is to do some research before you even reach out and ask us for something! Check out our website for a ton of great resources and information.
STUDY UP
- Learn the history of the land you are on
- Learn about the relationship of your own family line to stolen land
- Find out about the issues impacting Indigenous communities today
- Start a study group or penpal with your friends or family about whose land you are on, settler colonialism, dismantling white supremacy, unsettling, land return and rematriation
- Learn about your local sacred sites, take an action to protect them
- Learn about the pressing environmental issues where you are, take an action
- Do your part to shift and redistribute resources to communities who have been historically extracted from
- Check out our Recommended Readings
Ask Yourself
- How have you benefited from stolen land?
- What structural advantages have you had?
- What is the intention of your request?
- What is your relationship to our work?
- What labor are you asking from Indigenous people?
- Who will benefit from what you want to do? How?
- How will this be reciprocal? What do you bring?
- How are you centering Indigenous leadership?
- How can this be transformative?
- Are you prepared to do the work?
REQUESTS
We appreciate opportunities to engage with different communities and share our work.
At the same time, many of us experience constant requests for our time, our energy, for culturally extractive information, and unreciprocated labor.
Be Respectful. We are not a clearinghouse of free information. A lot of the work we do is related to healing and historic harm, presenting the history of colonization and genocide is not easy.
Pay real honorariums, especially if you are connected to corporations and institutions. And then get those corporations to pay Shuumi Land Tax. If you dont have any funding, consider organizing a fundraising effort and coming back with your request in a couple months.
It helps us if you give us a minute to respond. We are navigating many requests and engage specific processes for decision making. Please refrain from contacting us through Sogorea Te’ members personal social media or via their family and friends for organizational requests.
To request a member of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust for an event,conference, or interview please use our Inquiry Form, including as much information as possible, including who, what, where why, dates/times/etc, 2-4 weeks in advance.
CONSULTATIONS
“I would love to pick your brain….”
A consultation is a request for information, advice, a discussion and/or feedback.
This is an important and essential way to engage with Indigenous voices, perspectives and leadership. If your project includes or represents indigenous people, culture, land etc, ask for Indigenous guidance and participation in its creation.
Consider, what is your intention with this information or representation? What will it be contributing to creating? Who will be credited? Who is getting paid? Who will have access to the project, research, interview, etc? How can you make this a more transformative interaction? Can you leverage your position. Please spend time with our questions for reflection before reaching out for a consultation.
To request a tribal, cultural, art, or other type of consultation please use our Inquiry Form.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Land acknowledgement is a way to recognize the original and ancestral people of the land you are on.
Historically, there are always Indigenous traditions around ways of acknowledging and entering other peoples ancestral territories.
There are many different contemporary and traditional protocols and practices around land acnowledgmeent. Today, many organizations, institutions, cities and people all different backgrounds are beginning to practice land acknowledgement as a way to recognize a small piece of this history and present day reality.
Indigenous people are still here. Acknowledging that is is important. Please do so in a respectful way. But just “acknowledging” occupation or presence on Indigenous lands with no other relationship or action, actually recreates extraction and erasure. We encourage our allies to go beyond Land Acknowledgements. For more information visit our Land Acknowledgement Page.
REPRESENTATIONS
Any kind of writing, art, research, project, or portrayal that includes an image of, reference to or are inspired by Indigenous people, Indigenous history, Indigenous issues, or Indigenous culture, creates a representation.
If your request includes the creation of a representation please consider:
Who created or will create this representation? Why? What power dynamics does this representation draw from, interrupt or recreate?
Consider all the possible politics of representation in your work and efforts.
If your representation includes a request from Indigenous people for information, time, energy, knowledge, and work, please see Consultations.
Representations can recreate or interrupt assumptions, stereotypes, inequality, and / or power relationships.
Always allow Indigenous people to represent themselves.
FUNDRAISERS
Hosting fundraising through your networks and communities is a great way to support our work, Many of our projects are funded through small individual contributions, grassroots fundraisers. If you are going to host a fundraiser please make sure to send us a message at info@rematriatetheland.org and let us know first.
Please use the fundraising accountability practices: If you publicly post our name to collect money on our behalf, we request also publicly post your donation receipts.
Consider how to build deeper reciprocity. Who really benefits if you use our name and images to generate social media content for a 10% off sale? Engage with our work.
We appreciate fundraising support efforts and also encourage institutional allies, businesses and organizations to move beyond sales based percentage fundraisers to give Institutional Shuumi Land Tax, to link their personal or business fundraisers directly to our website, to distribute our outreach materials, to redistribute resources, and come up with creative ways to collaborate.
SHARING OUR WORK
Please feel free to share our public social media posts, information about Shuumi Land Tax, and links to our website with credit to the artists and Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.
We appreciate tags and credit. please feel free to share public information from our website for small class projects or similar unpaid educational projects.
If you want to include our work in larger projects, places were presenters are being paid or in print, please reach out to inquire at info@rematriatetheland.org
PHOTOS AND DOCUMENTATION
Please ask before taking photographs of us on our land, at our sites, or offices.
Please ask before using images from our website or creating representations of our work beyond educational sharing. If you are engaged in a project hoping to use or create representations, please use our inquiry form and allow time for us to engage our decision making processes.
Please note: We do not collectively or individually sign release forms that seek to own or privatize images or intellectual property related to our work. We never consent for outside use of our images, land or work in terms of perpetuity, without our final oversight or for non-Indigenous profit making.
BOUNDARIES
- Practice Respect. Cultural knowledge is sacred. Refrain from asking Indigenous people questions about closed practices, ceremonies, and traditions.
- Avoid contacting people through personal social media platforms, family or in person with Sogorea Te’ requests. The fastest way to get a response is our request form or email: info@rematriatetheland.org
- Refrain from using/participating in Indigenous medicines and ceremonies that are known closed practices or not from your own lineage. A closed practice is one that is traditionally passed only within a specific lineage.
- Treat us as you would any other expert in their field.
- Allow Indigenous people to speak on behalf of their own lived experience.
TAKE ACTION
Do Your Part!
- Take Action! Build! Organize! Engage!
- For those settling in the East Bay, pay your Shuumi land tax!
- Do you have access to land, opportunities, equipment, skills, funds? See how you can use those resources to aid the efforts of Indigenous people.
- If you do not have disproportionate resources, maybe you can share something else like a skill or volunteer support or maybe you know someone who can. Talk to them!
- Support Indigenous businesses and artists
- Support Indigenous community workers, activists, and organizers
- Learn about and protect the sacred sites of the land you are on
- Organize to take down monuments to racists and colonists
- Organize to change racists or colonial names of local school, parks, etc
- Plant native plants in your neighborhood and communities
- Protect your local creeks and watersheds
- Be a good guest!
Thank you for engaging with us.
We appreciate you.
–Sogorea Te’ Land Trust
* Please Note: This is a collectively created living document and may change as we grow and develop our processes
