Land acknowledgement mural unveiled at University of New Mexico

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An Indigenous peoples’ land and territory acknowledgment was unveiled on May 5 and placed at the heart of the University of New Mexico campus.

The mural is placed on the main level of the Student Union Building acknowledges the university and its branches campus being on the traditional homelands of the Pueblo of Sandia and the Pueblo, Navajo and Apache people have deep connections to the land and have made significant contributions across the state.

“By respectfully honoring our history through an Indigenous land and territory acknowledgment, we are formally, and gratefully, recognizing Indigenous Peoples as a vital part of our Lobo DNA,” UNM president Garnett S. Stokes said. “Our land acknowledgment has become a foundational part of our identity as Lobos, and I am proud that today it is becoming—quite literally—a permanent part of our very infrastructure.”

Other universities have issued land acknowledgments across the country. One is Arizona State University, which also has a high Native student population and Native population in the state.

Stokes spoke on how student diversity today does not look how it did when the school opened in 1892. There were zero Native students in the beginning and almost none for the next 35 years, according to Stokes.

Then from and since the tenure of President James Zimmerman from 1927 to 1944, thousands of Native students have attended and graduated from the university.

Nearly 11 percent of New Mexico’s population is represented by 23 federally recognized Native nations, including 19 pueblos, three Apache nations, and the Navajo Nation. It makes New Mexico the third largest Native population per capita in the United States.