The FAU CAPS Diversity Committee recognizes and acknowledges that we are on stolen land and acknowledges the indigenous people currently living on the lands, their ancestors, future generations, culture, harvest, language, poetry, and living songs. The purpose of this land acknowledgement is to honor the indigenous history and to state our commitment to protect these places and people.
Florida Atlantic University consists of campuses in Harbor Branch, Jupiter, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Davie, and Dania Beach residing on Jeaga, Ais, Tequesta, Taino, and Seminole lands. Generations of these indigenous people and tribes have resided on these lands for over 10,000 years. These lands were central to their creation stories as Jerusalem is central to Christian creation stories. There are sacred sites near and around these lands. The land and waterways continue to carry their stories including those for survival and identity.
Indigenous people have lived here and historically sustained their people primarily by fishing and gathering. Indigenous people from other Native nations in surrounding areas, such as the Calusa (what is now called Southwest Florida), have contributed and influenced these people, culture, and land in many ways. The violence directed towards these Native people continues in the erasure of their history from textbooks, in the appropriation and trivialization of their cultural symbols and icons, in the pollution and seizure of their water and resources, in the dehumanization of their dignity as people, and in the removal and indoctrination of their children.
CAPS is committed to think critically about the use of therapeutic approaches that impose Western values onto Black, Indigenous and People of Color. To fight against the on-going violence, occupiers of this land must listen and amplify indigenous people’s voices. CAPS humbly seeks to learn from Indigenous philosophies that promote harmony amidst the complex interactions of emotional and cognitive processes, spirituality, physical status and the land and environment.
