Nov. 18, 2021 

Dear Campus Community,

As we approach the Thanksgiving Holiday and prepare for the home stretch of our Fall semester, I wanted to briefly share some thoughts and reflections with all of you.

The Thanksgiving Holiday is always a complex and nuanced time of year. I very much appreciate the special and extended time with my family, and I am inherently drawn to our individual and collective focus on gratitude. However, I also experience some degree of cognitive dissonance, which is grounded in a visceral sort of tension given the holiday’s history of appropriation, violence, and historical trauma for Indigenous peoples (Bugos, 2019).

As such, I find myself reflecting upon CSUCI’s relationship with the Chumash people on whose ancestral lands our University exists.

Since arriving to campus in 2018, I’ve heard numerous calls for our campus to adopt a formal land acknowledgement – a statement that recognizes and honors the ancestral lands of the Chumash, now home to CSUCI. During my time as Interim President, I’ve developed a deeper understanding of this issue in a number of ways: through several conversations with Dr. Raudel Bañuelos, Chumash Cultural Advisor to our campus; through conversation with members of local Chumash bands; through participation in our two “Returning Home to Sat’wiwa” events this Fall – restoring the Round Mountain pathway in September and extending it in October to include an area to be used by the Chumash people for observing the Winter Solstice, celebrated there this winter for the first time since the 1800’s (a ceremony closed to the public, for now); and with the assistance of Dr. Jenn Perry and Dr. Colleen Delaney in learning about culturally appropriate practices and legally mandated requirements for stewarding these historically-significant and continuingly sacred lands.

What I have learned throughout this process is that it is essential for CSUCI to follow the lead of the Chumash people rather than presume to know the appropriate paths to take and language to use without their essential guidance. Therefore, rather than beginning with the creation of a land acknowledgement, I have decided to first pursue the work of creating a formal institutional structure, positioning local Indigenous people centrally in facilitating the conversations that will lead to the creation of a statement of acknowledgement, among other future campus commitments to honor the precious land on which we reside.

Toward that end, I have begun the initial process of creating a President’s Advisory Council on Chumash Protocols, and within that structure, a Cultural Resources Management Team designed to ensure compliance with cultural protocols and relevant legal mandates. This further illustrates our continuing focus and commitment to addressing systemic problems through structural solutions.

I sincerely hope that our desire to learn from our collective history – from the atrocities committed against the Native peoples of this nation and around the world; to the beauty of resilience and ongoing resistance to oppression; to the challenges and the victories experienced by those engaging the fight for racial and social justice – be unquenchable. May we all commit to doing better and being better through this work.

With this overarching context in mind, I hope that the upcoming break provides you with an opportunity for reflection, mindfulness, rest, and celebration of life.

Sincerely,
Richard Yao, Ph.D.
Interim President

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