Land Acknowledgement

Illinois State University was built on the land of multiple Native nations. These lands were the traditional birthright of Indigenous people who were forcibly removed and have faced centuries of struggle for survival and identity in the wake of dispossession and displacement. We acknowledge that our campus sits on the lands that were once home to the Peoria, Kaskaskia, and Myaamia, and later due to colonial encroachment and displacement to the Fox, Potawatomi, Sauk, Shawnee, Winnebago, Ioway, Mascouten, Piankashaw, Wea, and Kickapoo Nations. We also express honor to those Indigenous people who we may have excluded in this acknowledgment due to erasure and historical inaccuracy.

As members of a public settler colonial institution, we acknowledge our responsibility not only to understand this history but also to actively confront the ways in which colonial policies and thinking continue in our personal and professional lives. While the drag community prides itself on diversity and inclusion, we acknowledge that this industry has been complicit and even instrumental in the past and present mistreatment, misrepresentation, and lack of representation of Indigenous drag queens, kings, and artists.

We at Drag Royalty are committed to creating change and progress inside and outside the drag performance industry and we ask that you join us on that journey.