Land Acknowledgement and Resources

The Cleveland Archaeological Society respectfully acknowledges the many Indigenous peoples who once made Ohio their home. They were forcibly expelled from the state in the early 1800s under the policies of settler colonialism, a legacy that continues today. Their tribal affiliations are named below, together with those of some of the Native peoples who live in Northeast Ohio today, maintaining their heritages and contributing to Cleveland’s diversity and vitality. The families of many current residents came to the region in the mid-1900s under the federal Indian Relocation Act, which encouraged Natives to leave their reservations and assimilate into urban populations with the aim of erasing Indigenous communities, cultures, and identities.

The Society also recognizes the conflicted relationship that the field of archaeology has often had with Indigenous communities regarding such issues as the handling of sacred sites and the lack of consultation with descendant tribes about their knowledge, views, and wishes in Indigenous matters, among other topics. The Society hopes to contribute to diminishing such conflicts by promoting Indigenous perspectives and voices through its programming and other operations. This acknowledgment was developed and adopted in discussion with members of Cleveland’s Indigenous community, to whom we are grateful.

The Native nations who signed Ohio treaties in the 1700s and 1800s include the Anishinaabeg (Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi); Lenape (Delaware); Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) (Seneca, Cayuga); Myaamia (Miami); Kaskaskia, Piankeshaw, and Wea, today of the Peoria; Shawnee; and Wyandotte. The Indigenous peoples who today live in Northeast Ohio mainly represent the Anishinaabeg (Odawa, Ojibwe), Choctaw, Diné (Navajo), Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), and Lakota (Sioux) nations, but also many others.

Further reading and listening about archaeology and the Indigenous history of the United States and Ohio appears below.

Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone)
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
Yale University Press, 2023
Winner of the National Book Award and Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction, among other awards

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
Beacon Press, 2019
New York Times Bestseller

Sonya Atalay (Anishinaabe—Ojibwe)
Community-based Archaeology: Research with, by, and for Indigenous and Local Communities
University of California Press, Berkeley, 2012

Mary Stockwell
The Other Trail of Tears: The Removal of Ohio Indians
Westholme Press, 2016

WYSO Public Radio, Yellow Springs, Ohio
The Ohio Country
Hosted by Neenah Ellis and Chris Welter
A 12-episode podcast about Ohio’s Indigenous history, 2024