The City of San Diego and local universities have adopted formal land acknowledgments, but Point Loma Nazarene University has yet to produce one of their own. Conversations around creating one on campus are currently in progress according to Walter Augustine, the associate vice president for diversity and belonging.
Plans to implement a land acknowledgment began in the spring of 2023, Augustine said, after a senior capstone project proposing the adoption was presented to multiple administrators including Augustine, former PLNU President Bob Brower, former Provost and Chief Academic Officer Kerry Fulcher and Vice President for University Services Jeff Bolster. Becca Bullen, an environmental studies 2023 alumna, was part of this project alongside Gianna Piva, an environmental studies 2023 alumna, and Julia Siu, a management communication 2023 alumna. Bullen said the intention behind the presentation was to encourage the university to begin building partnerships with the Kumeyaay nation.
“We felt like we had a responsibility to speak on something that we felt very strongly about, but how exactly that it’s executed, we felt it should be up to Indigenous people, specifically the Kumeyaay people, to lead that conversation,” Bullen said via phone call. “That’s why I kind of said it in the way of: Point Loma should form a committee to explore what this would look like.”
Last year, the Senate Diversity Committee decided to focus on Native American educational resources on campus, according to Kenzie Lopez, a third-year dietetics major and vice president of ASB. The committee realized that PLNU lacked a land acknowledgment and began educating themselves on the process of implementing one, Lopez said. Part of this research led Lopez to Chris Meddelin, the director of San Diego State University’s Native Resource Center. Meddelin said he advised Lopez that an acknowledgment would need to be more than empty words.
“Land acknowledgements, to a lot of Indigenous people, are performative when there’s no meaning behind it, when there’s no follow through, when there’s no action, when there’s also harm being caused,” he said via zoom.
Meddelin said these acknowledgments may come with additional steps in conjunction with the partners they work with.
“It could be access to certain areas, because we do know that some colleges were granted public land that they didn’t have a right to,” he said. “Spaces where tribes had villages or historical sites or burial grounds and just significant spaces that they should be able to access, even though it’s now university property.”
In this process, Augustine said their main goal is to build partnerships before proceeding.
“We don’t want to do this apart from representatives of the Kumeyaay nation,” he said. “And so part of what we’re doing right now is we’re in an exploration stage of educating ourselves, looking at reaching out to members of the Kumeyaay nation to learn more about their nation, about their ways and to learn from them.”
Lopez said that after beginning her ASB role this year, she reached out to Augustine to discuss the possibility of creating a land acknowledgment. She said that Augustine informed her of the circulating ideas, and they decided to join their efforts.
“One of the main goals I have is just to get this running, just to plant this seed,” she said. “I know it’s not going to happen, like maybe not within my time here that we’ll have something official. But being able to partner with the faculty here, that really means a lot. To even know that they were a part of this, it was totally separate.”
Alongside efforts toward a land acknowledgment, Augustine said that the former director of the Office of Multicultural and International Student Services, Maya Walker, was looking into creating an Indigenous affinity group. Miranda Williams, a fourth-year environmental science major, was working with Walker to get the affinity group on campus. Upon Walker’s departure, the effort has come to a standstill, Williams said.
“My goal with that was just to create a safe space for people who are also Indigenous,” she said. “And I know that there are other people on campus who are, I just personally don’t know who that is, but, that was my way of trying to find community within that.”
The first meeting of the senate diversity committee, which comprises faculty members and Indigenous students involved in working toward a land acknowledgement, occurred last week. Williams was at the meeting, and said it was a productive conversation that she hopes will continue.
“I grew up on a reservation, and I think it’s just really important because a lot of people don’t know about Native Americans, which is very crazy,” Williams said. “I’ve had conversations with people in the past where they don’t know that we still exist.”
In the meantime, current Indigenous resources on campus remain sparse, as the senate diversity committee on-campus engagement with Indigenous Peoples Day was limited to posters that linked a QR-code to kumeyaay.com
“We didn’t have enough time, unfortunately, to be able to pull something together,” Augustine said, “But we’re hoping that sometime this year we’ll be able to pull something together to maybe invite a speaker from outside to come in and to share a little bit more with our campus community about Indigenous people from the area.”
While there is no expected timeline of when a land acknowledgment is to be produced, Augustine said, the next step for the committee is to visit Barona Cultural Center and connect with its resources.
