Equity Work

Racial Equity Statement
The Center for Community-Engaged Learning (CCEL) is committed to centering racial equity in community-engaged work to realize more equitable communities. For the CCEL, effective community engagement entails both understanding and disrupting systemic inequities. We recognize that racial inequity has and continues to pervade our community and continues to cause inherent harm to all of us. We believe that racial equity is everyone's responsibility. We are all engaged in a lifelong process of learning and growth. 

Land Acknowledgement Statement
The Center for Community-Engaged Learning acknowledges that the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities occupies lands included in 1805, 1837, and 1851 treaties between the United States government and the sovereign Dakota nation. Due to the U.S. government's failure to uphold any of these treaties, these lands still rightfully and legally belong to the Dakota people. The Dakota are the only people indigenous to this place, and they have maintained a spiritual connection to and physical presence in it throughout history to the present day as part of the Twin Cities' large and vibrant Native American community.

Land Acknowledgement Purpose
We have two main reasons for making this statement. First, as members of a scholarly community dedicated to furthering knowledge, we recognize an obligation to know the history of our own institution, and of the geographical area in which we are situated. Second, as practitioners and advocates of community engagement, we see the events of the past continuing to play out today in the vast racial inequities plaguing our state in every issue our work addresses - housing, health, education, environmental quality, and more. Knowing Minnesota's colonial history can help deepen our understanding of systemic racism and historical trauma as root causes of current social realities, enabling us to more effectively work for greater equity.