This is the land acknowledgement we used for our assembly as an act of remembrance, gratitude, and truth-telling:

We acknowledge that Lutherans in the Metropolitan Washington D.C. Synod, ELCA, worship, live, and work on the ancestral homelands of the Nacotchtank (also referred to as Anacostan), Piscataway peoples, Pamunkey, Putuxent, Susquehannock, and Yacocomico peoples; as well as the Doeg, and the Virginia tribes—including the Rappahannock, Pamunkey, Upper Mattaponi, Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Nansemond, Monacan, Manahoac, Mattaponi, Patawomeck, and Nottaway. We also recognize that the many inequities of money and power across our synod are based on past and present racial injustice, including the stolen labor of people of African descent.

As Lutherans of the Metropolitan Washington D.C. Synod, ELCA, we confess our ancestors participated in and benefited from the colonization of these lands. We repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery and its legacy of harm. We do not merely acknowledge this history, we lament it, and we commit to active repair and reconciliation with the Indigenous and Black communities whose land, labor, and lives built the ground we stand on today.