CCCC 2026 Land, People & Water Acknowledgement
As CCCC members gather for our Annual Convention in Cleveland, we offer the following statement to invite reflection on our geographic, historical, cultural, intellectual, and careweb communities.
On June 27, 2025, the “Enact Advance Ohio Higher Education Act” (often referred to as SB1) went into effect in Ohio. The legislation prohibits state institutions of higher education from taking positions on “controversial” beliefs, which are defined as “any belief or policy that is the subject of political controversy, including issues such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion” (Sec. 3345.0217.A.1). In response, public higher education institutions have issued directives against publishing statements such as Land Acknowledgements as part of official university business. As scholarly residents and visitors to Northeast Ohio, we encourage investigations into the histories of the places in which we live, work, and gather, including their forgotten and omitted legacies. Calling attention to the facts of indigenous peoples’ removal from their homelands should spur reflection, corrective action, and accountability, not controversy.
We seek to build relationships with the Native American community and to bring awareness to—and to counteract—the ongoing impacts of colonialism and racism on the people, land, and water of this geographic region. We honor the original stewards of the land where we convene our conference, including the Cayuga, Delaware, Miami, Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Seneca, Shawnee, and Wyandotte, as well as the unnamed tribes who have resided here. For millennia they occupied, traversed, lived from, and cared for these lands and waterways—indeed, the state’s name derives
from Ohi:yó, an Onöndowa’ga:’ (Seneca) term meaning “beautiful river.”
We also recognize the thousands of Native Americans who now call Northeast Ohio home, including descendents of first peoples and other tribal members living here in diaspora. We express our gratitude to all whose stewardship and resilient spirit has cared for the land and waterways of this region, and we acknowledge the right of the land and waterways to heal. As scholars and citizens, it is our responsibility to pursue policies and practices that respect the land, waters, and peoples, and to restore our relationships with them.
Additional Resources
As rhetoricians, it is our responsibility to understand the history of the places where we live, teach, and gather. It is our responsibility to understand how the history of these places shapes the knowledge making, storytelling, teaching, and learning of Indigenous, Métis, and Innuit peoples. As scholars and as teachers, we have a responsibility to learn and to speak the truth about the historical legacies of settler-colonial language and literary education in residential and settler school systems as well as about contemporary settler colonialism within our profession.
It is the responsibility of the Conference on College Composition and Communication to make actionable its commitments to healing relations and creating from this healing equal and reciprocal partnerships and alliances with Indigenous, Métis, and Innuit members of our profession.
To begin meeting this responsibility, CCCC affirms its commitment to
- Advancing citation justice broadly and, in particular, advocating for reading, teaching, and citing the work of Indigenous, Métis, and Innuit scholars, writers, knowledge creators, and storytellers. We call on our membership to also make and act upon this commitment.
- Ensuring that the organizers of each Annual Convention focus on connecting Convention attendees with Indigenous communities on whose territories we gather to teach and learn with and for all our relations.
- Encouraging panelists at our gatherings, regardless of the subject of their presentations, to reflect on whether or how their work meets the needs and interests of Indigenous, Métis, and Innuit students; acknowledges the contributions of Indigenous, Métis and Innuit scholars; and addresses an audience that includes Indigenous, Métis, and Innuit peoples.
Four books you should read that were written by CCCC American Indian Caucus members
Anderson, Joyce Rain, Rose Gubele, and Lisa King. Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story: Teaching American Indian Rhetorics. Utah State UP, 2015.
King, Lisa. Legible Sovereignties: Rhetoric, Representations, and Native American Museums. Oregon State UP, 2017.
Mukavetz, Andrea Riley, with Frances Geri Roossien. You Better Go See Geri: An Odawa Woman’s Life of Recovery and Resilience. Oregon State UP, 2021.
Wieser, Kimberly G. Back to the Blanket: Recovered Rhetorics and Literacies in American Indian Studies. U of Oklahoma P, reprint edition, 2017.
To learn even more, check out this annotated bibliography of scholarship on American Indian and Indigenous rhetorics, with a special focus on those works produced by NCTE/CCCC Caucus members: https://kimberlywieser.oucreate.com/americanindianandindigenousrhetbib/
Four books you should read about settler colonialism, academia, and anticolonial research, teaching, and writing
Garcia, Jeremy, Valerie Shirley, and Hollie Anderson Kulago. Indigenizing Education: Transformative Research, Theories, and Praxis. Information Age Publishing, 2022.
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books Ltd. and U of Otago P, 1999.
Wilson Shawn. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Fernwood Publishing, 2008.
Younging, Gary. Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples. Brush Education, Inc., 2018.
