Our land and labor acknowledgment was developed in consultation with Thomas Green, vice president of the Neponset Band of the Massachuett Tribe at Ponkapoag, as well as with our Unitarian Universalist Mass Action’ Indigenous Justice Working Group. We continue supportive advocacy with both groups on our local and statewide levels.
[Adopted at the FPUU Annual Meeting on June 4, 2024]
The First Parish Unitarian Universalist-Canton is proud to be a major historical church of Canton, representing a consolidation of two of Canton’s oldest churches – the First Parish Unitarian, founded in the 18th century and the FirstUniversalist Church, founded in the 19th century. We recognize that our church’s history is complicated by the combined legacies of colonialism and slavery in the United States context.
We acknowledge the history of Indigenous peoples and the dispossession of their lands, including that these original lands in Canton and neighboring towns were named Ponkapoag by indigenous peoples. We pay our respects to the Neponset Band, among other bands, of the Massachusett Tribe, who have stewarded this land throughout generations.
We honor their continued presence here and throughout their diaspora. We also acknowledge that we in Canton do not exist independently from centuries of forced labor and economic extraction from enslaved and indentured Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC), including children, as well as poor white immigrants/residents suffering abusive child labor and economic exploitation.
And we want to affirm that although we cannot change history, we can and will work for justice, and that justice first begins in direct relationship with mutual recognition and acknowledgment of our shared history, experiences, and interactions. We celebrate and work in solidarity with BIPOC organizations leading the movement for our collective liberation, and we choose to build a diverse, multicultural Beloved Community casting out racism and oppression in ourselves and our institutions.
