Relationship Violence Awareness Month (RVAM) brings people together to create and generate discussion and skill-building on how to prevent relationship violence in our schools, workplaces, and communities, Since most of our campus remains learning and working remotely, we won’t be able to physically come together this October to do this critical work in person… but it doesn’t mean that learning is cancelled!

The Women’s Center is creating weekly postings to help guide your self-learning that we’ll share with you each week in October. We’ve arrived at week 2!  Below is a short list of relevant webinars or events, podcasts or blogs, and on and off-campus resources dedicated to cultivating awareness about relationship violence, posting your skills and knowledge around the intersecting issues, and increasing access to important resources.

While some of the learning content we’re sharing is all-encompassing, we’re also narrowing down on  few key themes this year to include: The Covid-Crossings of Relationship Violence, Relationship Violence’s Matrix of Oppression, and Un/Healthy Relationships for Young Adults. Through self-guided learning, you can dig deeper by listening to a podcast, reading a blog, attending a webinar and more. 

We’ll also be sharing this content on social media so let us know what you’re learning or what questions you have in the comments! 

• Brave Space Forums with the Women’s Center discuss intersectional feminist topics. This year, our Brave Space Forums will have topics under the theme “COVID-19 Crossings”. Join us this week, Thursday, October 15th at 4pm for our Brave Space Forum: Gender in a Pandemic. We will be discussing the ways the pandemic has reshaped, interrogated, and made us reflect on gender roles. Click here to RSVP for this week’s event!

• Last week we shared the Power and Control Wheel, but have you heard of the Equality Wheel? The Equality Wheel offers a view of a healthy relationship that is based on equality and nonviolence. It is applicable to all forms of relationships; with friends, dating partners, intimate partners, life partners, or family members. One of the misconceptions about relationship violence is that it is usually discussed in the context of heterosexual relationships. However, this is far beyond the truth. Intimate partner violence is also an issue in the LGBTQ+ community. Because of this misconception, it was challenging to find an equality wheel that was not explicitly emphasizing one sole gender identity 

• Here is a recent news article titled “ Should You Call The Police If You Hear Your Neighbors Fighting?” A domestic violence expert explains why dialing 911 can sometimes cause more harm than good. This is part of a HuffPost series looking at alternatives to policing.

• TurnAround is an off-campus resource that provides services for all survivors of relationship violence. They also promote resources and information that bring awareness for intimate-partner and sexual violence. Follow TurnAround on their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter account, where they provide daily posts dedicated to bringing awareness regarding sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and human trafficking. For more information about their services, click here.

This blogpost was a collaborative effort between all members of the Women’s Center staff team. A majority of this post was written by student staff members.

Today is Indigenous People’s Day. Some may continue to claim this as “Columbus Day” but to celebrate Columbus is to celebrate colonialism, mass genocide, racism, and the (both historic and modern) oppression of Native Americans and all of the indigenous people.

To honor Indigenous People’s Day and the community it centers, the Women’s Center is sharing how we try to honor and acknowledge the Indigenous roots of our area, the land that UMBC occupies, as well as the long history of universities benefitting from the violent seizure of Native lands. 

In doing so, we would like to start by sharing the land recognition statement that we use (with thank yous to the Office of Equity and Inclusion, Dresher Center, and Dr. Ashley Minner from American Studies for sharing the newly official* land recognition statement with us, as well):

UMBC was established upon the land of the Piscataway and Susquehannock peoples. Susquehannocks ceded this land and, over time, citizens of many more Indigenous nations have come to reside in this region. 

For those residing in the area: this is not our land; we occupy it. Colonialism has long undergirded systemic violence faced by Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color.

We humbly offer our respects to all past, present, and future indigenous people connected to this place.

*as this blog was being written, UMBC released an official land recognition statement that is linked here

Full disclosure: as the Women’s Center has learned more about Indigenous peoples, our land recognition statement evolves. We also recognize that a simple statement is not enough. Land recognition can simply be a performative step of solidarity, so that is why we seek to learn and build on this work. And also why we hope you’ll read on.

What is land recognition and why is it important?

A land recognition is a formal statement that recognizes and respects Indigenous Peoples as the traditional stewards of a region. It recognizes the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous people and their traditional territories. 

Recognizing the land where we reside is an expression of gratitude and appreciation to those whose territory you reside on. It’s a process of honoring the Indigenous people who have been living and working on the land from time immemorial (in spite of the notion that Indigenous people are a purely historical population/that Native Americans “don’t exist”). Land recognition is also a way of respecting Indigenous people’s inherent kinship beliefs when it comes to the land as these beliefs were restricted and stigmatized for so long.

Ultimately, land recognition is a process of:

• addressing invisibility
• honoring Indigenous peoples
• raising critical consciousness
• building affinity to create alliances                    

How have universities benefitted from the expulsion and exploitation of Indigenous peoples?

In order to explain how specifically universities have benefitted from colonialism, we look to the 19th century and the oft lionized President Abraham Lincoln. In 1862, Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, which freely distributed “public domain lands” (scare quotes explained below) to universities as seed capital for the creation of “land-grant universities” or LGUs (more appropriately called, “land-GRAB universities”). These lands then raised funds for fledgling colleges, or LGUs, across the nation. The land gifted through the Morrill Act was land seized or ceded by Native Americans to the US government. Although many treaties were created in order to legally and officially exchange land ownership, almost all of these treaties were products of coercion and exploitation of the continued systemic degradation of Indigenous people.

Once the government gifted these land parcels to institutions of higher education, the lands were then either sold to speculators to generate university endowments or universities became speculators themselves on the lands given to them. 

All told, the land-grabs, when adjusted for inflation, were worth about half a billion dollars. 

Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, “Land-Grab Universities,” High Country News (2020)

In other words, it’s not enough to recognize the land that universities are built on; we must also recognize the land from which universities build a significant profit. In fact, the grants were as big or bigger than major cities, and were often located hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their beneficiaries (this is exemplified by our very own University of Maryland; more below). 

Campuses in the US are inherently built on stolen land, but they are also built by stolen land. 

To see how your college or university directly benefits from land grabs, you can see Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone’s interactive map of the United States and the way the Morrill Act parceled away Indigenous lands.

A university to highlight (in the case of the University System of Maryland) would be the University of Maryland, which, as you can see via Lee and Ahtone’s data, benefitted from 1,456 Indigenous land parcels across the US totaling 202,971 acres.

It can be difficult to imagine how big that much land is, so in terms universities might particularly appreciate that’s:

• 156,132 football fields
• 37,587 Capital One Fields (with a combined capacity of 37,587,222 people social distancing at 5 square feet)
• 152 UMD College Park campuses 
• 406 UMBC campuses
• 3.5 Baltimores

Tribal nations who originated on this violently ceded land include the Chippewa, Ottawa, Kansas, Great and Little Osage, Oto, Missouri, Sioux (Wahpeton and Sisseton Band), Sioux (Medewakanton and Wahpekuta), Chippewa of the Mississippi and Lake Superior, and the Omaha.

Are land recognitions enough?

No.

As we said at the top, land recognition, if not backed by research and a commitment to learning, is performative activism at best. So… what can we do?

Well, we can’t fix the history of land-grab universities. Unless we not only give back stolen land (land which is now used for grocery stores, gas stations, warehouses, entire neighborhoods, baseball stadiums, and cemeteries among other things), but commit to reparations, we can’t fix anything. As Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy is quoted: “The more work that we do with decolonization and reconciliation, the more you start to realize there is no reconciliation without the return of stolen land.”

The more work that we do with decolonization and reconciliation, the more you start to realize there is no reconciliation without the return of stolen land.

Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy

The first step to doing better, is by acknowledging and understanding this history. This is a teeny tiny step, but it’s a step. The information above is by no means complete and it is also mostly from the two-year reporting of Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone of High Country News. You should read the full article here.

Beyond reading and learning (many more resources below), the Women’s Center student staff has also generated some good ideas that we’re ready and willing to share.

Suggestions for going beyond land recognitions

For UMBC in particular:

• Conduct outreach toward the Piscataway Conoy tribe through their Tribal Council and discuss how to make a more readily available path to higher education for those who we owe our campus to 
• More research on UMBC’s Indigenous student populations, especially in differentiating American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN), Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI), and other Indigenous students
• Address the alienation Indigenous students may feel rather than simply asking them to participate in “diversity” initiatives. 
• Implement a Land Recognition policy for all school-funded events
• Include a Land Recognition on all UMBC affiliated websites (we are one step closer as of today with an official UMBC land recognition statement)
• Whenever possible, discuss how programming, curriculum may relate to Indigenous people and their history and interests
• Structure classes to allow students to explore non-normative pedagogies such as those informed by Indigenous cultures and scholars
• Redirect profits made from Indigenous land to supporting the education of indigenous students
• Going beyond awareness of the injustice and actually doing work to challenge the injustice. This means working with the Piscataway Conoy Tribal Council to understand their specific wishes on this. 
• Work with offices like Initiatives for Identity, Inclusion, and Belonging (I3B) and/or the Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) to create intentional space for Indigenous identifying students on UMBC’s campus
• Support, amplify, and create platforms for Indigenous voices
• Create large-scale events, campaigns celebrating Indigenous People’s Day
• Highlight and encourage research that identifies the inequities Indigenous students face 

Generally speaking

• Research! Get your stories from Indian Country Today, High Country News, Native Lens, or other Indigenous media platforms
• Learn about Indigenous studies through more than just a historical lens
• Whenever possible, discuss how programming, curriculum may relate to Indigenous people and their history and interests
• Structure classes to allow students to explore non-canonical pedagogies such as those informed by Indigenous cultures and scholars
• Redirect profits made from Indigenous land to supporting the education of indigenous students
• Ask Indigenous students what they need to be best supported 
• Create more programming that specifically centers Indigineity 
• Support Indigenous organizations by donating your time and/or money
  • Baltimore American Indian Center       
  • Native American LifeLines, Inc.  
  • Piscataway Conoy Tribe      
  • National Museum of the American Indian 
• Support Indigenous-led grassroots change movements and campaigns
  • Start here: Support local government initiatives to officially change “Columbus Day” to “Indigenous People’s Day” OR call your local representative and ask them why your state is still celebrating Columbus Day. Not sure? Here’s a list from 2019 of states that have made a change.
• Commit to returning land (local, state, federal governments around the world are currently returning land to Indigenous people)
• Support, amplify, and create platforms for Indigenous voices
• Create large-scale events, campaigns celebrating events like Indigenous People’s Day and National Native American Heritage Month (coming in November!!)

Resources:

• LandGrabU.org
• UMBC statement on land recognition
• Indigenous Land Acknowledgement Information
• “Land-grab universities” by Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, High Country News
• Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project
• Beyond the Land Acknowledgement: College “LAND BACK” or Free Tuition for Native Students, Hack the Gates
• Why Land Acknowledgments Matter by Chip Colwell
• Why capitalize “Indigenous”? by Christine Weeber
• Northwestern University Land Acknowledgement
• Native Lens
• Native Appropriations
• All My Relations Podcast by Matika Wilbur and Adrienne Keene
• Surviving Disappearance, Re-Imagining & Humanizing Native Peoples: Matika Wilbur at TEDxSeattle
• The Anti-Indigenous Handbook By Tristan Ahtone, Lorena Allam, Leilani Rania Ganser, Kalen Goodluck, Brittany Guyot, and Anna V. Smith

Nandi Cook-Creek is a Senior English major and Student Staff at the Women’s Center.

Content Note: I wrote this as an able-bodied, neurotypical person who lives in an urban area. To all who cannot relate to this, I mean to say that you are worthy of all the aspirations you have for yourself, however you arrive at them. 

     I need to admit something. As many times as I have made fun of my age-mates for “decorating” their living spaces with that one Pulp Fiction poster, or the Periodic Table of Marijuana, I have absolutely no idea what to do with my own home. Despite this, I find myself in possession of hundreds of square feet. Responsibility on this scale boggles my mind, but that’s not necessarily a new feeling. After all, the cozy-cute bachelorette pad in my mind is just another goal. Even when goals are very different from one another, I find that I take the same path to accomplishing them every time. 

     Being stuck in my home forces me to dream for it, and desire more out of it, so I am. Spending so much time with myself forces me to turn inward and create activities that I can really feel accomplished at the end of. So much of women’s achievement goes unnoticed and uncelebrated and under-valued. We see grandiose, man-centered narratives glorified in film, television, literature, and we internalize the feeling that our little lives are just that: little. 

     So, it’s important to assert that all the silly little bits and pieces of our lives matter. I believe that we can shift and re-organize our mindsets around celebration by setting up goals and intentions to knock them out. As an example, I’ll describe how I’ve been making myself take ownership of the house I have no idea what to do with. 

How to Trick Yourself Into Thinking You’ve Remodeled Your Home: A Goal-Setting Guide From a Hermit

Step 1: Prep

The first concrete action I took was going to Home Depot with a very short list: boxes, furniture sliders, and colored light bulbs. I know nothing of home improvement so I found myself walking in circles and asking employees for, “th-the things that you- you put them under furniture to move it”, but the trip was still a small success at the beginning of a big project. 

Staying stagnant for too long can feel like nothing you want to do matters. It’s hard to imagine new possibilities in the midst of your reality looking the same every day. To plan, to imagine, and to act on that imagination takes a kind of resolve. Oftentimes, the build-up and the first steps you take end up being enlightening and exciting, and it’s perfectly fine to just make up something to be excited about. 

Step 2: Plan

I paced and paced and paced around an upstairs room for almost an hour, just thinking of a game plan for when I’d actually go in and get my hands dirty. In my case, I had to pack up my sister’s whole life to make room for mine, so when I had my route totally mapped out I told her about it. After all, she lives here too. 

Telling people you trust about your goals establishes a sense of accountability. I don’t think most people are very fond of accountability, because it raises the stakes in a way. What if you fail? Someone will see! Wait though, because the secret, hidden side of accountability is that when people know what you want to do, then they know how to help you do it. 

Step 3: Execute 

I chose to dig in over the course of the weekend after my prep stage, the sooner the better. That Saturday I got up, ate breakfast, put on overalls (very capable clothing, for very capable girls), and I whipped myself into a packing frenzy for 7 hours. By night time I had hit a wall and couldn’t move another object, but I had done more than I even planned for in the best way possible.

Occasionally after planning, our goals can feel much too big and energy-consuming. That’s because they are when you’re just sitting there thinking about them. I really find myself comforted when I remember that objects at rest stay at rest, but when I get myself in motion I will keep going to a point where it makes sense to stop. It’s like thinking of yourself as a ball rolling down a hill, and being certain that you can trust yourself to build momentum, if nothing else. 

Step 4: Enjoy!

At the end of my first day cleaning, when my sister came back all cavalry-like with packing tape and more boxes, she looked around and was taken aback by the change a few hours made. I was almost spent, but I felt a rising pride in my ability to change my surroundings, even just a small amount. Then, when I woke up on Sunday I felt energized to do it again. 

Sitting down at the end of a day and just reflecting on all that you did is a good way of pouring back into yourself. It’s not always recognizable when we’ve been starved for acknowledgment and appreciation, until we finally start giving it to ourselves and we discover a trove of nice feelings that we couldn’t access before. When you’re ready to try something new or do even more, it’s so much easier to move from a place of appreciation and excitement. 

     Another fun term for this process is selfishness. This type of self-fulfilment, self-centering, and self-improvement is an impulse that marginalization shames out of us at a very young age. Regardless of our conditioning, here many of us are, stuck with our own company much more than we’d like. While we’re in this state I hope we can embrace that self-determination that allows us to explore ourselves in a way we’ve been denied for much too long. 

Relationship Violence Awareness Month (RVAM) brings people together to create and generate discussion and skill-building on how to prevent relationship violence in our schools, workplaces, and communities, Since most of our campus remains learning and working remotely, we won’t be able to physically come together this October to do this critical work in person… but it doesn’t mean that learning is cancelled!

The Women’s Center is creating weekly postings to help guide your self-learning that we’ll share with you each week in October. Below is a short list of relevant webinars or events, podcasts or blogs, and on and off-campus resources dedicated to cultivating awareness about relationship violence, posting your skills and knowledge around the intersecting issues, and increasing access to important resources.

While some of the learning content we’re sharing is all-encompassing, we’re also narrowing down on  few key themes this year to include: The Covid-Crossings of Relationship Violence, Relationship Violence’s Matrix of Oppression, and Un/Healthy Relationships for Young Adults. Through self-guided learning, you can dig deeper by listening to a podcast, reading a blog, attending a webinar and more. 

We’ll also be sharing this content on social media so let us know what you’re learning or what questions you have in the comments! 

• The Power and Control Wheel links the different behaviors that together form a pattern of violence. It shows how each behavior is an important part of the overall effort to control someone. More information can be found in “It Shouldn’t Hurt to Go Home: The Domestic Violence Victims Handbook”.

• Here is a podcast about how COVID has affected those experiencing relationship violence. When Staying Home Isn’t Safe – CNN Coronavirus: Fact vs Fiction Podcast 

• Here is an article called “Dealing with Teen Dating Violence” that explains who is affected by teen dating violence, how to offer help, and why survivors sometimes do not ask for help.

• We Believe You is a student-led activist, advocacy, and support organization for survivors and allies of sexual and interpersonal violence. They seek to bring about campus-wide awareness of social issues surrounding power-based violence and intersecting forms of oppression. Check out this link for more information about the survivors only discussion group, and this link for information about the general body meetings, which are open to everyone!