Indigenous Engagement

If you are joining the 2025 NASPA Annual Conference in person, you will be visiting a place known in pre-colonial times as Bulbancha, a Choctaw word that means “place of many tongues,” recognizing its function as a trading hub for many peoples of distinct heritages and linguistic groups. The Choctaw, Houma, Chitimacha, Biloxi, and other Indigenous peoples have lived on this land since time immemorial. 

NASPA acknowledges that we will gather on the land of the four federally-recognized tribes in Louisiana: the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe of Louisiana. We also acknowledge of the state-recognized tribes of Louisiana, which include the Addai Caddo Tribe, the Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muscogee, Choctaw-Apache Community of Ebarb, Clifton Choctaw, Four Winds Tribe Louisiana Cherokee Confederacy, Grand Caillou/Dulac Band, Isle de Jean Charles Band, Louisiana Choctaw Tribe, Pointe-Au-Chien Indian Tribe, and the United Houma Nation. (https://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/nola-tribes) 

For thousands of years, Bulbancha has been a place of gathering, trade, and cultural exchange, at times for mutual benefit and at other times for persecution and profit on the backs of Black and Brown and Indigenous bodies. This is a site of complex and overlapping histories, a place whose history and present offer examples of resistance, refuge, deeply rooted connections with land and water, spiritual and artistic traditions that are very much alive, and self-determination. 

Your presence in this place should be coupled with the labor and context of how you came to occupy this place, and your relationship with and to this land. If you are joining the NASPA Virtual Conference, the same work can and should take place with regard to the place where you live and learn. We encourage you to situate yourself in this labor, and to know that who you are, in relation to where you are, is a vital cognizance grounded in humility and empathy. 

The language above has been developed by members of current and past Conference Leadership Committee Indigenous Engagement Work Groups. We also thank Tulane University for sharing resources developed with members of the United Houma and Tunica-Biloxi Nations.