Native American Land Acknowledgement:

We struggle for justice for Pacific Northwest Family Circle Loved Ones and all lives forever damaged or lost due to police violence or murder. We do this on the stolen land of indigenous people including the Multnomah, the Chinook, the Clatskanie, the Kalapuya, the Mollala, the Atfalati, the Wasco, the Wishram, The Yakama, The Cowlitz, the Clackamas, the Kathlamet, and many more not named here. Indigenous people thrived on this land since "time immemorial" before the arrival of colonizers. For 10,000 years, land currently called the United States sustained 50,000 generations of indigenous nations. People spoke hundreds of languages, and many peoples managed these lands through history.  It's likely that 15 million indigenous people were killed, and others enslaved, in the genocide colonizers used to establish control over the land now called the United States. Despite this, descendants of indigenous people from local tribes and elsewhere continue to live in what is now called the Pacific Northwest. Nationally, they continue to experience the highest rate of police violence. 

When today’s police kill Loved Ones, they are participating in a long arc of violence that is at least as old as the founding of the United States itself. May our understanding of the history of government-supported violence perpetrated on indigenous people inform our struggle for justice for Loved Ones and all lives damaged or stolen by police