Land + Labor Acknowledgement

The Los Angeles Jazz Festival along with The County of Los Angeles recognizes that we occupy land originally and still inhabited and cared for by the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash Peoples. We honor and pay respect to their elders and descendants — past, present, and emerging — as they continue their stewardship of these lands and waters. We acknowledge that settler colonization resulted in land seizure, disease, subjugation, slavery, relocation, broken promises, genocide, and multigenerational trauma.

This acknowledgment demonstrates our responsibility and commitment to truth, healing, and reconciliation and to elevating the stories, culture, and community of the original inhabitants of Los Angeles County. We are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work on these ancestral lands. We are dedicated to growing and sustaining relationships with Native peoples and local tribal governments, including (in no particular order) the

Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians

Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California Tribal Council

Gabrieleno/Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians

Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians – Kizh Nation

Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

San Fernando Band of Mission Indians

Coastal Band of Chumash Nation

Gabrielino/Tongva Nation

Gabrielino Tongva Tribe

Furthermore, we recognize a deep debt to enslaved people of primarily African descent whose stolen labor and suffering built the foundational economy and infrastructure of the region and nation. While the 13th Amendment to the Constitution technically ended “slavery” in the U.S., we know that slavery’s ongoing impacts are still felt by countless people forced – through violence, threats, and coercion – to work in the U.S. We recognize our debt to exploited workers past and present whose labor was and continues to be stolen through unjust practices. We acknowledge our collective debt to the Indigenous peoples of this land whose labor was forced and exploited, the Chinese immigrants who built railroads that allowed for westward American development, Japanese Americans whose properties and livelihoods were taken from them while incarcerated during World War II, and migrant workers from the Philippines, Mexico, and Central and South America who have worked Pacific Northwest farms and canneries.

We recognize the immigrant and American-born workers of African, Asian, and Central and South American descent whose labor remains hidden in the shadows but still contributes to the wellbeing of our collective community. We recognize that our economy continues to rely on the exploited labor of incarcerated people, largely people of color, who earn pennies an hour while generating billions in goods and services each year. And we know there are many other people, too numerous to mention, who are prevented from reaping the true value of their labor by unjust systems and cruel practices. We mourn their loss of life, liberty, and opportunity. We acknowledge that the theft of labor is the theft of generational progress. Nearly all people of color have been robbed of the opportunity and wealth that their ancestors might otherwise have passed on to them.