NDNU Publishes Land Acknowledgement
March 20, 2026
peoples, the original peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula, where the school stands today.A land acknowledgement is a formal statement that recognizes and honors the Indigenous peoples who have been the traditional stewards of the land. It is part of a larger commitment to truth, justice and right relationship that aligns with institutional values.
Our Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that Notre Dame de Namur University sits on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush peoples, the original peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland, and we affirm their sovereign rights as First Peoples. Our values, rooted in the Hallmarks of a Notre Dame Learning Community, guide this acknowledgment and our commitments that follow.
As a learning community committed to educating for and acting on behalf of justice, we understand that academic institutions, indeed the nation-state itself, were founded upon and continue to enact exclusions and erasures of Indigenous Peoples. This acknowledgment demonstrates a commitment to beginning the process of working to dismantle the ongoing injustices of colonialism.
Therefore, we affirm that honoring the dignity and sacredness of the Ramaytush peoples requires us to move beyond recognition to concrete action. We commit to actively working to reform the unjust structures that perpetuate the ongoing harms of colonialism through our curriculum and institutional practices, supporting the enduring presence and traditional stewardship of the Ramaytush community, past, present, and future.
