Land Acknowledgment of the Minnesota Council of Churches

The Minnesota Council of Churches acknowledges that we are located on the ancestral homeland of the Dakota People. We are in close proximity to the territories of the Anishinabe and Ho-Chunk peoples. This land has been stewarded as a living relative by the Dakota for generations. The United States government effectively stole this land from the Dakota people through a series of unjust treaties and broken promises, followed by targeted efforts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced removal.

The Minnesota Council of Churches, born out of White Protestantism, recognizes our complicity in these matters. The United States government often carried out this injustice in cooperation with institutionalized white churches. The trauma of forced assimilation and the boarding school system is a stain that cannot be washed away. But we can repent of that past and turn towards a more just future.

We look now to the Dakota people and indeed all Native American communities located in the State of Minnesota as examples of resilience, resistance, and strength. We stand resolute in our commitment to oppose any threat to Indigenous culture or tribal sovereignty, be it political, industrial, or religious. We were wrong, we can do better, we will do better.