Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, Cahoon Professor of American History, participated in reading the Land Acknowledgment adopted by Emory’s Board of Trustees last year as part of a video released on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 2022. The acknowledgement (included below) recognizes the members of the Muscogee (Creek) people who lived on the lands where Emory’s Atlanta and Oxford campuses stand today before being displaced in 1821. A historian, documentary film producer, and member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, Lowery came to Emory in July 2021 after holding positions at UNC Chapel Hill and Harvard. She co-chairs the Indigenous Language Path Working Group, convened following the reappointment and expansion of President Fenves’ Task Force on Untold Stories and Disenfranchised Populations. View the video of the Land Acknowledgment here: “Emory’s Land Acknowledgment recognizes displaced Indigenous nations.”

Emory University acknowledges the Muscogee (Creek) people who lived, worked, produced knowledge on, and nurtured the land where Emory’s Oxford and Atlanta campuses are now located. In 1821, fifteen years before Emory’s founding, the Muscogee were forced to relinquish this land. We recognize the sustained oppression, land dispossession, and involuntary removals of the Muscogee and Cherokee peoples from Georgia and the Southeast. Emory seeks to honor the Muscogee Nation and other Indigenous caretakers of this land by humbly seeking knowledge of their histories and committing to respectful stewardship of the land.