Land Acknowledgment

This was written in what is present-day Los Angeles, the ancestral land of the Tongva, Chumash, and Kizh tribes; in Joshua Tree, the ancestral land of the Serrano, Cahuilla, and the Chemehuevi; and on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, the ancestral home of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. We honor the estimated 350,000 Indigenous individuals whose land was stolen to become what is now California, and the estimated 125,000 removed from their home in the Southeast. Storytelling is an opportunity to speak truth to the history and current reality of colonization and violence that define this country. It is a chance to imagine—to create—a different story for the future, in which this stolen land is returned to Native stewardship. The more we tell this story, the more it becomes real.