Remembering Honoring Indigenous American History
The College of Sciences & Technology community recognizes that it is important to understand our history – especially histories too often hidden from us. Under our feet lay the ebb and flow of human migrations, civilizations, and the reworking of the land on which we reside. Most of the human history of the Greater Houston region belongs to the Indigenous Peoples of the Gulf Coast and is not touched upon substantively in traditional American history books in K-12 or higher education. Here - we want to recognize their civilization, cultures, and centuries of stewardship to this land and remember the catastrophe brought upon them by European and American conquest.
As a beginning, and in the hopes that we will make time to learn more, we acknowledge that this land we occupy in the Greater Houston region was previously inhabited by a number of Indigenous Peoples, including but not limited to the Karankawas, Akokisas (Ishak), Lipan Apache, Carrizo Comecrudo (Esto’k Gna), Coahuiltecan, Alabama, Coushatta, Bidai, Tonkawa, and Sana.
Greater Houston is still home to over 70,000 Indigenous/Native Americans representing several Indigenous identities. Today, over 6.7 million immigrants now inhabit this land.
Sources:
Dunbar-Ortiz, R (2014) An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States