With grief, outrage, and our deepest sympathy over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many other Black people at the hands of police, and in recognition of the millions of other daily outrages that Black people suffer, we commit our support to the Black community at the University of Oregon, in the city of Eugene, across the settler state now known as Oregon, and in the world in the fight against anti-Black racism.
We understand that for any solutions at the UO to make a real impact, Black people themselves must lead the discussion. In this spirit, the Native American Studies program and the Native American Strategies Group urge the University of Oregon to meet this ongoing national emergency with the resources and actions that it calls for:
Meet the June 5 demands of the Black Student Collective.
Disarm and defund UOPD. Armed police officers make students of color less safe on campus, not more safe.
Remove monuments to White supremacy on campus, including the Pioneer statues, the name of Deady Hall, and the racist mural in Knight Library. The President’s message of June 10 is a start.
Increase funding for academic and support services programs that address racialized structural inequalities. In a time when anti-Black police violence is a national emergency as big as COVID-19, and when racialized structural inequality causes wildly disproportionate deaths among Black communities and communities of color, it is imperative that we fight these problems with the same determination and commitment as we fight COVID-19.
As faculty, staff, students, and community members living and working in Kalapuya Ilihi, the traditional Indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people, we are here to support wherever we can in the fight against anti-Black racism. We commit to educating ourselves and interrogating anti-Blackness in our own disciplines and communities. We commit to teaching against anti-Blackness as a consistent practice in our classrooms, offices, homes, and communities. We commit to hold up Black students and community members as our own relatives and to implicate ourselves in Black survival and in service to Black lives and futures.
Black Lives Matter.