Land and Wealth Acknowledgment

In order to pursue its work, Bank Street College of Education must acknowledge that it exists on the ancestral lands of the Lenape people and that we are occupying Lenapehoking. We must also recognize that the College’s work is a small but necessary part of making reparations for slavery and the Jim Crow system, which have created vast social disparities represented today by racial disproportionalities in health, incarceration, life expectancy, economic well-being, and “persistent achievement gaps.”

With regard to education, these opportunity gaps are the result of official and de jure policies intended to deny equitable education to Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and poor children. While inadequate, this acknowledgement is an essential act in the ongoing struggle to live in balance with the land and the people of the land, which is foundational to Bank Street’s mission.