Land Acknowledgment
Long before Furman University’s existing campus was created in the 1950s, before the words “a mountain river laves her feet” were written into the alma mater in 1907, and even before the land on which students attend classes and university business is conducted was plowed for cotton and corn, it was home to the Cherokee.
Furman formally acknowledged this history in a ceremony on Thursday, November 14, 2019, with representatives of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
We Acknowledge
We acknowledge that Furman University occupies traditional land of the Cherokee People, a land where the Catawba and other indigenous people might also have found food. Long before our Alma Mater sang of the mountain river that laves ‘our mother’s’ feet, the Cherokee honored that water, the land through which it flowed, and all the creatures living on the land with them. From the natural world, they also learned to live and form communities of respect. It is with gratitude that we, too, honor the land and the people who have stewarded it through many generations. We also must acknowledge that we benefit from the Cherokees’ loss of land and commit to remembering the human cost of colonialism. This Land Acknowledgement challenges us to learn from the Cherokee people and to draw from their wisdom about community, resilience, and the meaning of life which this land nurtured.
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Land acknowledgment recognizes campus was originally home to the Cherokee
Furman formally acknowledged this history in a ceremony on Thursday, Nov. 14, with representatives of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
