About Friends of Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge

The Refuge Community

• Respects individual property rights by offering multiple mechanisms for land owners who choose to become part of the refuge system through conservation easements, management agreements and voluntary habitat improvement of privately owned lands.
• Encourages and expands outdoor recreational opportunities while enhancing the appreciation of the natural landscape
• Engages with local gateway communities to encourage commerce and build on their distinctive assets.
• Creates new opportunities for businesses and builds on the economic strengths of our region.
• Highlights the historic and cultural contributions of native peoples, farmers and today’s residents.
• Incorporates partnerships between private land owners, local business interests, conservation groups, state and local units of government and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in a mutually beneficial relationship.

FOHNWR Adopts Land Acknowledgement Statement

Land Acknowledgement Statements are used to recognize in a formal manner the fact that the lands and waters where we live, work, and play are the ancestral home of those who came before us. These places, where Indigenous people hunted, farmed, lived upon and honored the landscape upon which they made their homes, support wildlife, native plants, fungi, and countless other organisms and the environmental systems that support them. We share these spaces with those who came before—and those who remain—and we wish to express our deep respect for that ancient connection.

Many universities, as well as land-protection agencies and other conservation-minded organizations, have posted such Land Acknowledgement Statements, and often recite them at celebratory occasions on the land. Friends of Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge has adopted such a statement. You may read it, below, and find it on our website. We make this statement out of deep and abiding respect—for past, present, and future inhabitants and participants in these sacred spaces.

Land Acknowledgement Statement

As an independent grassroots support organization, Friends of Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge recognizes that refuge-area lands and waters are the ancestral home to many groups of Indigenous people who have dwelt here for millennia. We recognize that the Hackmatack name itself derives from the Algonquian people’s word for the tamarack tree. As we engage in ecological restoration of these protected lands, we acknowledge that we, in a respectful manner, seek to replicate many of the land management practices developed and applied by these Indigenous peoples.

We acknowledge that Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge is situated on or near traditional lands of the following sovereign groups who, along with others, lived in deep connection with these lands from time to time across the past several thousand years, and who remain spiritually connected to this land:

• The Council of Three Fires, which includes the Bodéwadmiakiwen (Potawatomi) , Anishinabewaki (Ojibwe or Chippewa), and Odawa (Ottawa) Nations.
• Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo)
• Myaamia
• Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux)
• The Illinois Confederacy, made up of several clans, including the Peoria
• Sauk and Meskwaki (Fox) ↗
• Waazija (Ho-Chunk /Winnebago)

The Friends of Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge welcome opportunities to form partnerships that may enable Indigenous communities to maintain a connection with their ancestral homelands. This land acknowledgement statement is a living document that may be revised to incorporate further input from Indigenous voices.

More information about Native people and their lands can found here: http://native-land.ca