"The Perfect Place to be Vulnerable:" A Land Acknowledgement by AKHF Board Member Jayson Owens

Each Forum Board of Directors meeting opens with a Board member sharing a land acknowledgement. Last month, Board member Jayson Owens offered this poem as the opening acknowledgement, after researching his own family history.

From Jayson: 

“When Kameron [Perez-Verdia, Forum President & CEO] first asked if I would do a Land Acknowledgement, I was hesitant. I often find these things to be performative. Frequently, they seem awkward and out-of-context. As I sat with the invitation, it occurred to me that the only way to do this with integrity was to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is what I find most often missing in modern communication. However, I find the Alaska Humanities Forum Board meetings to be one of the most thoughtful and intentional community events that I attend. So it seemed the perfect place to be vulnerable. With this piece, I acknowledge the pain of loss (mine and others), I take responsibility for my ancestral part in that pain, and I commit to a shared future which recognizes that history.”

I was called Comanche (Land Acknowledgement)

I was called Comanche before the time of Quanah
I was Hopi at Nankoweap before the vanishing
In this time, I am called grandson to Gene and Cate Barry
And great-grand son to John Barry,
who came across the ocean alone at 13.

I see you Dena’ina sisters and brothers
I look, and I work to see

They called it development, as if it had been empty space
They call it civilization, as if only chaos precedes
the capture and taming of bodies
the separation of spirit from land
the incarceration of dreams and the wind
choking ingenuity, choking creativity
It’s all built on lost souls
But all of it is connected.

So we breathe in, we breathe out
We inhale the earth, we exhale pain
We inhale the river, we exhale pain
We inhale the mountain, we exhale

You are here to celebrate the midnight sun still, still
You are here to celebrate the winter lights still, moving
We are here to remember those who came before, those yet to come
You were here before time, you were here to see the Rotten Land give way
and you will be here when time is past.

© Jayson Owens 2025

*Inspired by the Dena’ina people of the Upper Cook Inlet and interviews with S.C. Gwynne, author of “Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History”. With gratefulness and respect, I recognize the contributions, innovations, and contemporary perspectives of the upper Cook Inlet Dena’ina.