Land Acknowledgement and Labor Recognition

Land Acknowledgement

Virginia Tech acknowledges that we live and work on the Tutelo/Monacan Peoples’ homeland, and we recognize their continued relationships with their lands and waterways. We further acknowledge that legislation and practices like the Morrill Land-Grant College Act (1862) enabled the Commonwealth of Virginia to finance and found Virginia Tech through the forced removal of Native Nations from their lands, both locally and in Western states and territories.

Labor Recognition

Virginia Tech acknowledges that its Blacksburg campus sits partly on land that was previously the site of the Smithfield and Solitude Plantations, owned by members of the Preston family. Between the 1770s and the 1860s, the Prestons and other local white families that owned parcels of what became Virginia Tech also enslaved hundreds of people. Enslaved Black people generated resources that financed Virginia Tech’s predecessor institution, the Preston and Olin Institute, and they also worked on the construction of its building.