the land we inhabit

First, please note that OHIO is an Iroquois word for great river.

The Athens County Foundation acknowledges that we gather, work, and live on the ancestral lands and/or historical territories of Native American peoples.

In Athens, we want to particularly acknowledge the Adena, Hopewell, Osage, and Shawnee who were once living in what is now Athens County.

We reflect on their great contributions and on the forced and violent removal of Native Americans from their lands and the colonial history of oppression that continues to this day in the United States of America, including various oppressive maneuvers that allowed European colonizers to wage war to forcefully seize land, desecrate it, convert it to their own uses, and force indigenous peoples to move outside the state.