The CEOAS community acknowledges the barriers within STEM-related fields for minoritized communities. Specifically, in the Earth and environmental sciences, we have often neglected to recognize and address the inequities in former policy and law that remain embedded in current practice, and that greatly disadvantage Black, African American, Indigenous and students and faculty of color in our programs.

CEOAS is committed to supporting all undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty and staff, with the ultimate goal of building an effective and egalitarian scientific community.  CEOAS and Oregon State University must move forward in a way that fully acknowledges these inequities and actively acts to dismantle them. 

CEOAS recognizes, with respect, that the land we do research and live on today is the traditional and ancestral homelands of Native peoples and nations, who are the original stewards of the land.  Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR is located within the traditional homelands of the Mary's River or Ampinefu Band of Kalapuya.  Following the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855 (Kalapuya etc. Treaty), Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to reservations in Western Oregon. Today, living descendants of these people are a part of Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. 

Oregon State was founded as a Land Grant university, with a mission rooted in engaging in social, political, and cultural change. In 1862, the Morrill Act redistributed nearly eleven million acres of lands taken from Indigenous peoples to serve as investments into universities across the country.  At Oregon State University, these lands were sold to create funds that have contributed to the development of the University over time. 

We acknowledge the relationship between the creation of Oregon State University as a Land Grant Institution, the past and ongoing expropriation of Indigenous Lands, and the governmentally-coordinated genocide against Indigenous peoples.  We acknowledge the ways in which Oregon, Oregon State University, CEOAS, and the residents of this state have benefited from this past.