The Organic Center has staff around the United States, but no matter where we sit, we acknowledge that we are on the unceded ancestral territory of indigenous tribes. The process of colonization is not in our past, but is ongoing and still adversely affects indigenous people throughout the land that is now called the United States.

We currently have staff sitting on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, who were and continue to be the original inhabitants and stewards of what is now the San Francisco Peninsula, along with Miwok, Yokuts, and Patwin, as well as other Ohlone peoples. In the California region, the gold rush of 1848 brought with it state-sponsored violence, disease, and seizure of land- killing around 80% of California’s Native Americans, with the remainder being forced onto reservations without access to their homelands.

We have staff on Shawnee, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Osage land in Kentucky, near the trail of tears that forcibly displaced over 60,000 Native Americans between 1830 and 1850, resulting in thousands of deaths from exposure, disease, and starvation. Indigenous peoples have always lived on the land that is now called Kentucky, and continue to live there today, despite the commonly cited myth that the Kentucky region was merely a hunting ground, originating from land speculators and perpetuated as a way to absolve settler colonists and their descendants from grappling with their history of land theft, genocide, and white supremacy.

Finally, our headquarters sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank/Anacostan/Piscataway people, who have served as stewards of the Washington, D.C. region for generations.

In the USA, we are all on Indigenous land. The Native Land website is a helpful resource to search any location and learn about what Indigenous groups originally--and in some cases still--live there.  Keep in mind that the impacts from the atrocities of the past are still felt today.