A Statement on Indigenous Land and Colonial Spaces

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The University Press of Colorado, including its University of Alaska Press, Utah State University Press, and University of Wyoming Press imprints (collectively UPC), has roots in many institutions across Colorado, Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming, all of which function as colonial spaces within and on primarily unceded lands that are and were home to many nations and bands of Indigenous peoples. Those peoples and their lands are recognized in the institutional acknowledgments below. In addition, our staff live beyond those places, in and on still other homelands and territories that have long been, and remain still, places of life, tradition, and celebration, but also places of forced removal, suffering, genocide, and occupation.

As a publisher of scholarly books that draws its influence from colonial systems—systems of higher education that have long played a part in the suppression of Indigenous voices, the destruction of Indigenous communities, and the theft of Indigenous land—UPC sees the violent results of colonization on Indigenous peoples around the world, and most especially in the places where, and ways in which, our staff live and work. UPC commits to recognizing and communicating that impact and our role in it, and UPC commits to recognizing the sovereignty of the people and nations whose land we occupy, seeking ways to amplify the voices of Indigenous people both within our publications and beyond, and supporting efforts to return land to those nations.

UPC commits to deepening our understanding of sovereignty and land return as it relates to the tribal nations within our reach—including but not limited to the Arapaho and Shoshone in the Mountain West and the Yupik and Iñupiaq¹ in Alaska—with the hope that we will build relationships with these communities and find ways to assist their efforts through our publishing program or other avenues of support.

Updated 2/14/23; will update annually in July

¹Those tribal nations that have been named here represent those whose lands our institutions occupy and/or those about whom we have published most extensively.