We acknowledge that the land on which USD is built is the traditional and unceded territory of the Kumeyaay Nation. We pay respect to the citizens of Kumeyaay Nation, both past and present, and their continuing relationship to their ancestral lands.
At the University of San Diego, we begin many events, gatherings and meetings with this Land Acknowledgment, cultivating mindfulness of where we are and the history of this place. We also regularly begin with a prayer, seeking to ground ourselves firmly in our purpose and mission, establishing that solid foundation before diving deep into the numerous important issues that typically occupy our time and attention. This way of proceeding – with the Land Acknowledgement and prayer – is intended to help us be mindful of our history, purpose, mission, what we most deeply want to be about, why we do what we do.
We often celebrate the beauty of USD, frequently citing the vision of Mother Rosalie Hill, RSCJ, one of our founders, who conceived of beauty as the starting place for her most compelling educational philosophy. “There are three things that are significant in education: beauty, goodness and truth,” Mother Hill wrote in 1945. “But the only one that attracts people on sight is beauty. If beauty attracts people, they will come and find the truth and have goodness communicated to them by the kind of people here.”
While most appropriate to acknowledge the wisdom of Mother Hill and Bishop Charles Francis Buddy (the other founder of the university), the Land Acknowledgement helps us trace our roots back further than their partnership in the 1940s, providing a more expansive and accurate picture of the history of this striking location. In addition to assisting us in thinking more critically about our history, the Land Acknowledgment facilitates the consideration of who we are, and who we are not, in right relationship with.
This reconsideration has been unfolding over the past several years, leading us to rethink some aspects of campus life that were too often taken for granted. For example, in 2019 we renamed several spaces on campus to better reflect our commitment to being in right relationship with all our ancestors. These shifts included changing the name of Serra Hall to Saints Tekawitha and Serra Hall. By placing the name of Kateri Tekawitha (the first Native American Catholic saint) alongside that of Junipero Serra, we sought to recognize that indigenous peoples preceded the Catholic missionaries who settled here. Holding the stories of Tekawitha and Serra together was also done to encourage our community to continue to grapple with the topics of colonization, the spread of Christianity, and the impact both had on Native populations.
Another of the changes announced is 2019 was the shift from the name Missions Crossroads to Mata’yuum Crossroads. Mata’yuum is a Kumeyaay word meaning “gathering place.” This alteration reflects our community’s acknowledgement that the founding and expansion of the mission system – while motivated largely by love and a passionate desire to share the good news of Christianity as understood by the missionaries – had terrible, sinful impacts on indigenous communities throughout California.
The Land Acknowledgement is an ongoing expression of this larger reconsideration. It is designed to keep the difficult questions and unattractive parts of our history – issues we would often rather glide past – in front of us. By helping us avoid looking away from this history in all its complexity, the Land Acknowledgment plays an important role in animating our vision. Only by addressing the fullness of our history may we become the engaged, contemporary Catholic university we seek to be. The innovative, compassionate changemakers we hope to educate – those who will go on to address humanity’s urgent challenges – will benefit greatly from the ability to think critically about, understand and engage the tensions, contradictions, imperfections and complicity embodied in the beautiful and painful aspects of our history. In this way, the Land Acknowledgement not only helps us remember our past it helps point the way to our future.