Teton County Land Acknowledgement

   We would like to recognize that the land on which we gather is the ancestral homelands of the Mountain Shoshone People, who have stewarded the land for thousands of years. Also, we recognize other and many  tribes who moved about with intention, and who also lived upon and cared for this area, the Kiowa, Lakota, Cheyenne, Bannock, Nez Perce, Crow, Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, and others. We thank them for their enduring strength and resilience in protecting this land, and aspire to uphold our responsibilities according to their example.We honor with gratitude these Indigenous Peoples, and the land itself.  We pay respects to their elders past and present. 

   We would like to recognize the stolen land of the Indigenous peoples living here, and in this region, and genocide against these groups of people who continue to thrive in  present day in the state of Wyoming, and in nearby areas including the Eastern Shoshone, Northern Arapaho and Shoshone-Bannock, among others. 

   We take responsibility to acknowledge the sovereignty, and the traditional territories of the  closest tribal nations that were stolen in creating the Wind River Indian Reservation, and the Ft. Hall Indian Reservation, through the broken  Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868, and that this treaty and others were used to remove tribal nations. We also acknowledge other histories of dispossession that have allowed for  colonialist growth, a harmful ongoing process, with Native lands still occupied due to deceptive and broken treaties.

   We would like to recognize as we meet in the valley below what is  commonly called the Teton Mountain Range, that the traditional Mountain Shoshone word for the mountain range is Teewinot, used to describe the range’s many pinnacles. 

   We also recognize that this acknowledgement becomes wholly meaningful when combined with accountable relationships, and informed action, and is a simple first step in honoring this land that we meet on, and the peoples who have lived and stewarded here for time immemorial .