While many of us celebrate Thanksgiving, we must also acknowledge that it is a holiday often observed in a way that erases the lived experiences of Indigenous people and ignores the ongoing impact of colonial oppression. In this episode taken from Fall Flex Day 2025, we hand the microphone over to Dr. Primavera Reza-Nakonechny. In this workshop, she breaks down the collaborative effort and complexity behind drafting a meaningful land acknowledgement, sheds light on the attempt to censor specific words in education, and the persistent attempts at historical erasure.

You'll also hear from some of the participants and myself as we reflect on how small but significant changes to our lessons can help center Native perspectives in our courses. We hope that this invites you to pause and reflect on your own teaching practices. Enjoy.

Resources:

Mt. SAC First Peoples Native Center (includes text of the Mt. SAC Land Acknowledgement)

Mt. SAC Native American & Indigenous Heritage Month

Mt. SAC Native American Student Support and Success Program (NASSSP) Grant

"Creating Student Impact: The First People's Native Center." Mt. San Antonio College Podcast, Episode 205, 12 Nov., 2024. Joining Podcast co-host Chisa Uyeki in conversation with Primavera Reza-Nakonechny & student Alisa Ciulla and learn about the founding of the center and its key role in empowering Native students, fostering identity development, and a strong sense of belonging.

"Crafting An Intentional Land Acknowledgement at Mt. SAC." Mt. San Antonio College Podcast, Episode 206, 26 Nov., 2024. Podcast co-host Chisa Uyeki interviews Mt. SAC First Peoples Native Center's Primavera Reza-Nakonechny & student Alisa Ciulla about the importance of language, the practices and meaning behind land acknowledgments, how Mt. SAC is working to craft a Land Acknowledgement with tribal input, and how we can go beyond statements into meaningful actions.

Bledsoe, R. "First Peoples Native Center Opens" Newsroom, 15, Nov., 2022, Mt. San Antonio College. Photos and news story on the Center's grand opening in 2022.

On censored words at the federal level: Connelly, A. "Federal government's growing banned words list is chilling act of censorship." Pen America, 1 Oct, 2025, www.pen.org/banned-words-list/.

Yourish, K., Daniel, A., Datar, S., White, I., & Gamio, L. (2025, Mar 10). These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration. New York Times https://mtsac.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/these-words-are-disappearing-new-trump/docview/3175748596/se-2 [link requires Mt. SAC sign-in]

California Community College Chancellor's Office

• American Indian and Alaska Native Student Success
• Land Acknowledgement and Tribal Consultation Toolkit

Land Acknowledgement Statements

Native Land Digital honors the sovereignty of all Indigenous nations, their lands, and their waters. We recognize that these boundaries and territories are representations of the sacred. This is an honouring of Indigenous resilience past, present and future.

Native Governance Center's Tips for Creating an Indigenous Land Acknowledgment Statement

LAist What to know about land acknowledgment, and why it's deeper than just a statement

National Museum of the American Indian, Honoring Original Indigenous Inhabitants: Land Acknowledgment

Run Time: 25:44

To Find the full transcript for this episode click HERE

So Thanksgiving can also be a time to honor Native people's survival, resilience, and perspectives. What words, practices, or acknowledgments affirm Indigenous presence and belonging.

Welcome to the Mount San Antonio College Podcast. I'm Chisa Uyeki, a Mount Sac professor and librarian, and I'm pleased to be your host for this season. Our goal is to keep you connected to our campus by bringing you the activities and events you may not have time to attend, to share the interesting things our colleagues are creating and innovative ways they are supporting and connecting with Mount Sac students. Join me as we explore Mount Sac.

Hi, everyone. Ivan Sanchez, one of the co hosts of our podcast. So, as we approach the holiday season, we felt it necessary to release this specific episode. So, so many of us celebrate Thanksgiving, and that's okay. But we must also acknowledge that it is a holiday often observed in a way that erases the lived experiences of Indigenous people and ignores the ongoing impact of colonial oppression. So in this episode, we hand the microphone over to Dr. Primavera, Reza Nakonechni. Just a quick note on the audio.

This was recorded live, so you'll hear the occasional sound of Primavera's beautiful pink beaded necklace and earrings, which were crafted by an Indigenous artist in Canada. In this workshop, she breaks down the collaborative effort and the complexities behind drafting a meaningful land acknowledgment. She sheds light on the attempt to censor specific words and education and the persistent attempts at historical erasure. You'll also get a chance to hear from some of the participants and myself as we reflect on how small but significant changes to our lessons can help center Native perspectives in our courses. So we hope that this invites you to also pause and reflect on your own teaching practices. Enjoy.

We're not on colonial time here. We're in our own. We're on POC time, Indian time. So whenever folks you know are called to come into space and community with us, they can sign in with the laptop there. So we'll go ahead and get started. I'm Prima Vera Desa Nakonecni, newly doctora, and I just graduated in May.

Thanks.

Thank you. Definitely not work done in isolation. It's done with community. And so I thank the community members that are here on this campus. Some of my elders, Auntie Francisco, Uncle Raul Chavez, and Nick also, as well. Uncle Nick. You're getting an uncle title. Uncle Nick.

Some of my wisdom keepers here have helped me along that journey. And so my dissertation is centered around building a Native center within colonial higher education, specifically within a community College context, and it was done through a storytelling format, but yes. So I want to thank everyone for being here. I serve as a director for the Native center, and I also want to recognize some helpers in the room too, as well, like Bruce, Nixon, Hadecki and so many others have also eva as well. So beautiful. So many helpers that have brought indigenous presence and advocacy on this campus for many, many years before there was a formal center and a program here. So I always want to say thank you to those who have been helpers and the elders and the community. So we'll move on.

So here's a bit of our agenda. What we're going to be going over today, First People, is we try to center indigenous languages as often as we can, where we can. These are in my Tarahumara language. So VI is 1, OSA 2, 3, Nahual 4 and Madi 5. Not that this is the only language, but wherever, as our team is reconnecting with their indigeneity, we try to disrupt coloniality where we can disrupt the normative and center indigenous presence where we are able to within our capacity. But what we will be going over is the land acknowledgment, academic freedom, well, fun activities. You can get up out of your seats. And so this is the land acknowledgement.

This is our newest land acknowledgement for First People's Native Center. You heard me say it today, this morning. That was intentional. Today was the first time that we have spoken out loud the new land acknowledgment. It was intentional to release it on faculty flex day. So you are all the first ones to hear it. This was also a project a year in the making. You know, when I started, I'm also new to Mount Sac.

I've been here about a year and a half. When I started here, Mount Sac didn't have like a partnership, a true partnership with the local tribes. We didn't have anything quite yet. You know, there's a lot of healing and reparation work that needs to be done in that it's not so easy to reach out to the tribes and say, hey, can we have your input? You know, there's a long, a long, strained history between higher education and the tribes and specifically within here at Mount Sac and our local tribes that are here. So with our great wisdom keepers, our elders, Francis, Raul, so many students, advocacy on this campus had created some forms of land acknowledgments already. And so Francis and I, we connected with our local Gabrielino tribe. And after a year of, you know, really Building and intentionally relationship building with the tribe is how this land acknowledgement was now created. And that was with input from the tribe, back and forth with their council because they had some suggestions that didn't quite work with first with Mount Sac, and then on the Mount Sac side, we had some recommendations with the tribe.

So we kind of deliberated a little bit back and forth there. And then this is the final result where both parties are really, really proud of. And we like, we have their blessing the tribe, to use this land acknowledgment. Okay? And so that was in partnership with Francis, with myself, First Peoples, and also Jamie Rocha, who serves as the Gabrielino Shoshone council member. Jamie Rocha is also a Mount Sac alum. Her grandmother has a very powerful story. Vera Rocha, her grandmother was a student here at Mount Sac before, when Mount Sac was not very safe place, place for Indigenous presence. And her grandmother advocated for indigenous presence.

And she was ostracized. And she was essentially, she left Mount Sac because it was not a safe place for her to be here. Yet. Her grandmother then went to Santa Ana College in Orange county and did really great work there. And she is celebrated as an indigenous icon. And they have a statue and a lot of memorabilia for the grandmother there. So Jamie being here, a descendant of the grandmother of Vera, helping us with the land acknowledgement. This is healing work.

This is powerful, and that the tribe wants to work with us going forward and more intentional way. So we're going to have more projects, relationships, ways that we can heal and more intentionally create that relationship between the Shoshone tribe and specifically with this family. Because we have such a long lineage of Mount Sack alum and some healing and reparations we need to do there. There's a few things that we intentionally wanted to have, like that it's time immemorial that Indigenous peoples are resilient, and their ongoing contribution. The tribe really wanted to have Pemagunga, the village here. They want to have that centered in the language and known. And that colonization is occurring. An ongoing process like that was key points that the tribe really wanted to have.

Right now, we are working on trying to institutionalize this land acknowledgement for Mount Sac. I know that Mount Sac has various land acknowledgments right now. Part of the grant that First Peoples is under, one of the requirements is to create a formal land acknowledgement for that institution. So this is the beginning of it right now. This is the new land acknowledgement for First Peoples Native Center. And we are working on multiple Meeting including with Academic Senate on approval for this land acknowledgement and institutionalizing and gaining feedback from faculty and all shared governance. So that's what your input is so important to. Here are a land acknowledgement toolkit.

This toolkit actually comes from the Chancellor's office. There are some great nuggets inside this toolkit worth telling you. Examples of land acknowledgments, ways you can put it on your syllabus. A really big one is if you're on Zoom in the virtual world. I know a comment ask is, we're on zoom, why do we need a land acknowledgement, right? But it's like, oh, because we're still benefiting off of the institution. That institution is on stolen land and also profits from enslavement from indigenous peoples, right? So it gives you examples of what or suggestions you can put. Especially being on a Zoom World online format, it has some guidelines on do's and don'ts in land indulgements, including who says them, like who delivers the land acknowledgment? Because that's a common question too. And then most importantly, having tribal input.

So a land acknowledgment must have tribal input, you know, just to be like, respectful. And so the land acknowledgment that we had created with First Peoples does have that, you know, it has the tribal input in there as well. And who delivers the land indulgement. How a land indulgement looks like can change. It can fluctuate depending on the tribe's needs and what the tribe's input is. And again, that goes back to building the relationship with the tribe, right? Like intentional, honest relationships with the local tribe members.

Hello, my name is Graciela Batas and I work with Brunma Vera at the First Peoples Native Center. Mount San Antonio College acknowledges and recognizes that the land in which we occupy is the unceded ancestral territory of the Gabrielino Shoshone, Gabrielino Tongva, and Gabrielino Quiche nations, the indigenous people of this region since time immemorial. Mount San Antonio College is located near the Garellino Village, a Bemukonga known today as the City of Walnut. We recognize the Gabrielino people have suffered an immense loss of their people, culture, lands, water and other natural resources due to theft, murder, kidnapping, and enslavement. These injustices started with colonialization, and most indigenous people consider colonialization a current and ongoing process. Despite the atrocities and injustices committed against the original caretakers of this land, the Gabrielino remain to be a thriving community and continue to practice their traditions, heritage, sovereignty, self determination, and spiritual relationship to their land. The nations that make up the Gabrielino community continue to work to protect their sacred ways and homelands for future generations. Their descendants are a testament to the resilience and strength of the Indigenous peoples that call this land their ancestral home.

The Gabellino view this land as a source of healing, nourishment, and protection. As students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Mount San Antonio College, we honor the Gabrielino people by acknowledging their legacy and current lived experiences. We recognize this land acknowledgement as an opportunity for Mount Sac to advocate for Indigenous students through support of the First Peoples Native center and continued learning and shared knowledge for Native American and Indigenous peoples.

If friends would like to learn more about a land acknowledgement, the library. You know, Chisa interviewed us about a land acknowledgement for Mount Sac, and you can hear from a student's perspective. We were recorded and we have a podcast this episode. The podcast is on our website as well, and it has the student, Alyssa Celia. She just graduated this past sp spring. Her tribe is from the Pueblo Peoples. So beautiful. Alyssa speaks about a land acknowledgement as a wish or a blessing, like a prayer, but not in a religious sense.

A prayer is more as like a wish or like wanting to send her say thank you to Mother Earth. So she speaks about wanting to wake up every morning and do a land acknowledgment because it's such a beautiful gift to say thank you to Mother Earth. It's a really. It's a beautiful story. So I encourage folks, if you want to hear more about, learn more about land acknowledgments, the intentionality behind it, and especially from a student's perspective. And Alyssa speaks a little bit about experiences that she's had in her classroom, academic freedom. So, yeah, so this was a big one. This is basically the primary reason when she said I were writing the proposal, that this really stood out to us because restrictions on academic freedom and higher education reflect a broader pattern of silencing, one that mirrors the historical and ongoing erasure of Indigenous voices and experiences, especially because of the attack on DEI right now.

And in a few minutes, I'm going to show you a list of the words and language that is in threat of erasure and is actively being targeted against. So, you know, in our presidency, the current federal administration is attempting to erase the following terms and language from the American lexicon. Now, these are all words that Chisa and I had pulled that are on that list of words that are no longer allowed to be used or in threat. And we know the colonized system was created to work against us and it's doing its job right now. So as our community, we are actively seeing people being let go from their jobs, cultural centers being shut down. Many of our tribes are federally recognized and they have lost funding. So we have tribes that are needing help for food and supplies, water. We had, you know, Uncle Raul Chavez brought one of our friends, Jessica Ross at the Baskin Tribe from Alaska.

She teaches trauma, Indigenous trauma. Not able to have her class not say trauma, not speak on, say Indigenous anymore. Websites are being scrubbed. This is erasure. Like that's active erasure. And in looking at academic freedom, how do we center that and disrupt coloniality and center our words? And also with the lack acknowledgement as a form of disruption. So many more words too, as well, additional words that represent the community, experience, history and livelihoods of our Indigenous and Native American communities.

Hi, this is Chisa Uyeki and I would like to share with you a few of the words from the list. You can find the full list of words at the link in the show notes. I've learned of the list of words that Primavera referred to from a New York Times article in March 2025 which reported that the Trump administration was requiring the federal government to purge websites and documents of hundreds of words that the administration deemed to be in conflict with their orders and policies. The list includes words such as cultural heritage, indigenous community, Native American and tribal, as well as belong, clean energy, political, historically, and women. This censorship has been as far reaching as school curriculum.

So now we're going to go into a little activity. I hope you all enjoy this. Here are some reflective prompts if you would like. Like what Phrases, policies or classroom practices. Have you noticed that unintentionally marginalized Indigenous students? So taking a critical look at the practices here at Mount Sac. Right. What words, practices or acknowledgments affirm Indigenous presence and belonging. And then how do you personally acknowledge the land and the first nations people in your teaching or professional role? These are suggestions for reflection for yourself.

Okay. That you want to reframe together into a more inclusive and affirming language. An example of that would be like Thanksgiving. So fall semester, Thanksgiving is coming up. It's a hot topic. It's one that we get asked a lot about too, Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving can also be a time to honor Native people's survival, resilience and perspectives. This is so important, especially as right now I'll tell you a personal story for me is as Back to school is right now, right.

And my girls, I have an 8 year old and a 5 year old, so third grade in kindergarten and I just, we did back to school and I met their teachers and as I was meeting my third graders teacher, I said, you know, our family, we do identify as indigenous. So I hope that, you know, we offer some sensitivity or understanding, especially as fall semester is coming up. There's a lot of Native American holidays, including Thanksgiving being a big one. And you know, want to make sure that we're being mindful of the myth of Thanksgiving. And I couldn't believe he. He laughed so hard. He like laughed in my face so hard. And this is just like two weeks ago.

He just laughed and laughed. And then he said, well, you know, there's many truths and everyone has their own belief. And anyways, you guys get. There's a lot I think in native community that we understand. This is like the trauma that we continue to endure. And this was like in the elementary school with my daughters. So it's still very present, it's still happening. It's happening in K through 12, it's happening here in higher ed.

So we want to be able to take what is going on right now and how do we reframe that, how do we center indigeneity, how do we help like empower that, give that resiliency aspect to it?

Okay, so we are being asked to form groups and we're reflecting and writing about what phrases, policies or classroom practices have we noticed that unintentionally marginalize indigenous students? What words, practices or acknowledgements affirm Indigenous presence? And also how do we personally acknowledge the land and the first nations people in our teaching or professional role. You'll hear from a couple of us about these questions and how we're reflecting on them.

I'll start. I'm Jeanette and I'm in the continuing education department and I teach music and brain health.

There you go.

I'm Bernard or Bernie. You call me Bernie. And I'm also in continuing education and I teach art classes.

My name is Heido and I'm in the math department. Currently I'm teaching statistics and calculus.

I'm Jennifer. I'm in continuing education and I teach regenerative gardening in local food communities.

My name is Malcolm. I am from the physics and engineering department, but you might know me as the curriculum liaison.

And I'm Ivan Sanchez. I'm in the sociology department, teach as a professor and. And then I also help Chisa out with the podcast, one of the co hosts. So it's nice to meet you all.

Okay, so I guess we'll answer the questions. What phrases, policies, or classroom practices have you noticed that unintentionally marginalize Indigenous students? I can't think of any off my head, but one thing that I notice is that there is, like, not a lot mentioned that the absence. I feel like the absence of it is where we're. We're falling down. So that's my thing on that.

I took this seminar because I thought I could maybe learn something because I don't care about it.

So, yeah, to me, it seems like the absence of it was a major part of it. I've been teaching. I'm a nat junk. So I've been teaching only a few years. And really I haven't noticed much of the, I guess, acknowledgement of Indigenous people. So I'm surprised we didn't have a center for them until recently.

So I'm really new. I started in January. But the nature of teaching, gardening and food communities. I talk about Native plants. I talk about the history of the land that we're growing on. So it comes up a lot for me. And I try to keep everything. Speak in the present about the different ways of growing that have been used throughout time and are still being used and not have hierarchies of technology in terms of what works best, what you should be doing for yourself in your backyard.

But I can definitely improve, and I need some guidance on how to navigate conversations in the classroom around these topics. So that's why I took this one.

For the response of what phrases, policies, have you noticed unintentionally marginalized Indigenous students? I did actually come up with one, and I thought I was short, but it looks like I'm the only one who came up with something. But it's also, paradoxically, also a positive. When we say our campus, what do we mean by our campus? Or more specifically, if I say, oh, it's my campus. I'm not a Native American, in case you didn't know that. Well, that could easily unintentionally marginize Indigenous peoples. And then. Oh, sorry to follow up. If we use our campus in the right way, that could also be a positive acknowledgement.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I wanted to piggyback on the idea of absence because there's a lot of our textbooks in sociology treat nativeness and Indigenousness as something that's peripheral to the American experience. And I don't think it ever really. They ever really take the time to put in the center. And so that's something that I notice is in textbook a lot of times there Will be a little section for native americans, but it doesn't ever feel like they put them at the center of the American experience.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the questions that I'm really excited about is there's a question where what are we doing in our classroom to help for myself, you know, working in music, One thing that I did this summer as an example, I took my students on a tour around the world. And so we, through music, we visited China, we visited India, Colombia, Brazil, South Carolina. We discussed the gullah music from Africa, and Virginian bluegrass music. So I gave them a little taste of, you know, things from around the world. And I want to continue on that vein and talk about drum circles. That's something that I want to have in my classroom, and I'm probably going to reach out to the center here to get some guidance on how I can get my hands on some instruments, Because I know that the drum circles, they mean something. And I always refer to that in class because we do rhythm exercises, and I always mention ancient tribes.

They use these drums as a form of communication in celebration. You know, they have their different drum patterns that mean different things. But, you know, that's sort of like I'm just scratching the surface. I haven't really gone in myself. You know, I just sort of know that that's, like, an overview of what it's all about, and I need to go deeper for myself so that I can bring that to my students. So drum circles is, you know, sort of a way that I can get an inroad in and help bring the native experience into my classroom to my students.

So, yeah, and I was looking at the reflection where they also talked about. They also talked about words, and I couldn't think of any specific words that are used in the classroom, But I was thinking action speaks louder than words. And I was also thinking I could teach some native American art in the classroom and the processes that were used.

Art.

Native American culture is full of art. I lived in Washington state for about 15 years, and everywhere you go, the medical centers, they have, you know, dugout canoes, they have drawings and paintings, the drums that you're talking about that are painted on, and it's just there in the culture. Eventually you become a part of it, because you just see it all the time. And so the acceptance, I think, shouldn't be, like, a forced acceptance, which that's probably not the right word, but it should just feel as natural as, like, us sitting here and the action that we take. Like, oh, look at this. Oh, here's a way that I'll do that, like with French Impressionists. Here's the French Impressionist movement. These are the artists.

These are what they created. This is the European movement. This is what they did, the Renaissance movement. But I never hear, I shouldn't say never, but I rarely hear about anything about Native American art in this area, which is actually a very rich area for that. It should be, it should be more prominent.

Thank you for listening to the Mount San Antonio College Podcast, brought to you by Mount sac's POD Office and created in partnership with Avant House Media. Original music created and edited by Neera Azira. Be sure to check out our growing library of over 230 episodes and let us know your thoughts. You can reach me Chisa Ueki at C U Y E K [email protected]. wishing you an amazing year and happy listening.