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Growing Number of Cities Weigh Tribal ‘Land Acknowledgements’
A tribal land acknowledgement adopted in Tempe, Arizona, recognizes that the landscape in and around the city including Papago Park in Phoenix, pictured are sacred to the O Odham and Piipaash, two tribes with long histories in the region. In Arizona and other states, some local governments are formally recognizing Native American connections to lands.
Mike Janes
Four Seam Images via The Associated Press
Doreen Garlid, a first-term city councilmember in Tempe, Arizona, pinched her leg under the table to keep from weeping as she read a Jan. 14 resolution into the record. The unusual resolution, popularly known as a land acknowledgement, declared that Tempe sits on traditional O Odham and Piipaash lands and celebrates the contributions the two tribes made to the region.
Shane Anton stood at the mouth of a hand-hewn irrigation canal that dates back centuries before the arrival of the first European explorers. The ancient waterway, 10 feet wide and about 5 feet deep, sits in a small desert park surrounded by tract homes in Lehi, a neighborhood in north Mesa. Our belief is we ve been here since time immemorial, said Anton, an Onk Akimel O odham and a member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, and the need to farm was always there.
The 4,500-foot-long-canal at Mesa s Park of the Canals is a tiny fragment of a system that once spanned more than 700 miles along the Salt and Gila rivers, bringing life-giving water to Anton s ancestors, the Hohokam, or as the contemporary O odham peoples call them, the Huhugam.