The University of Southern Mississippi acknowledges the original inhabitants of the land upon which the Hattiesburg and Gulf Park campuses are built. We honor the unnamed ancestors who were the first to walk the Pine Hills and Gulf Coastal Plain, those whose origin and migration stories, medicine and plant knowledge are of this place.  We offer our respect to the living descendants of those people, and to those who still occupy this territory as a sovereign nation, The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. 

-provided by the Center for American Studies and Research faculty, 2022 

We want to respectfully acknowledge the enslaved peoples, primarily of African descent, who provided exploited labor to build and maintain many higher education institutions. We are indebted to their labor and to the labor of many who continue to work in the shadows for our collective benefit. We implore our community of higher education scholars and practitioners to continue to remember and honor those whose land we occupy and whose labor we benefit from throughout the conference. 

- adapted and shared with permission from Dr. Jason Wallace, Assistant Professor, USM