VRA 2025 Land Acknowledgement

Portland is the traditional home of a diverse group of Indigenous Americans including the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many others who lived along the Columbia River. Today, Portland is home to a large and diverse Indigenous community. As the Visual Resources Association gathers in Portland for our 2025 Annual Conference just prior to Indigenous People’s Day, we acknowledge and pay respect to Native people of Portland, past and present.

The Visual Resources Association acknowledges an enduring legacy of colonialism in the practices, hierarchies, and technologies inherent to cultural heritage work. As such, it is incumbent upon us to recognize and lessen the ongoing, harmful impact of settler colonialism. This, however, is not a statement of passivity. As a profession, there are things each of us can do.

What members of VRA can do:

• 1. Support and uphold ethical stewardship:

• - engage in critical cataloging 

• - pursue equitable partnerships

• - decenter “neutrality”

• - appropriately enhance the visibility of underrepresented artists

• - create a harmful language statement

• - facilitate the repatriation of stolen collections

• - work to mitigate the climate impact of visual resources work

• 2. Support the hiring, retention, and promotion of BIPOC colleagues

• 3. Join the Equitable Action Committee

Material Support

In support of the Oregon Native community, we encourage attendees to explore and support Native arts and businesses during their visit:

• Bison Coffeehouse

• Indigenous Marketplace

• Javelina Indigenous Dining

• Native American Art @ Portland Art Museum

• Native Arts and Cultures Foundation

• Portland Indigenous Public Art

• Quintana Galleries

• Wapato Island Farm

• Arthur Werickson : Old Native Arts and Unusual Antiques

Resources for Self-Education:

About Oregon

• Identity, Resistance, and Belonging: A Policy History of Native Americans in Portland, Oregon

• Indigenous History of Oregon

• Land Acknowledgement, Portland Parks Foundation

• Leading with Tradition: Native American Community in the Portland Metropolitan Area

• Native American Community Advisory Council

• Tribal Communities in Oregon

• Oregon Historical Society Indigenous People's Day

• Overview of Portland's Nine Tribes

About Visual Resources Work

• Access Policies for Native American Archival Materials in the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

• Best Practices in Authority Work Relating to Indigenous Nations in the U.S.

• Collaborators’ Bill of Rights

• Creating subject headings for Indigenous topics : a culturally respectful guide

• Identifying Culturally Sensitive American Indian Material in a Non-tribal Institution

• Indigenous Knowledge Organization, X̱wi7x̱wa Library

• Local Contexts Labels & Notices

• Native American's twenty-first-century right to know

• Protocols for Native American Archival Materials

• Recruitment, Retention, and Experiences of Art Library Professionals

• "The Right to Know": Decolonizing Native American Archives

• Toward a Decolonial Archival Praxis: Digitizing the Lloyd Best Archive in Trinidad and Tobago 

About Land Acknowledgements

• Beyond the Land Acknowledgement

• A Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgment

• Guide to Indigenous Land and Territorial Acknowledgement for Cultural Institutions 

• 'I regret it': Hayden King on writing Ryerson University's territorial acknowledgement

• Native Land