The founders of the André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice recognize the historic displacement of Indigenous/Native peoples by means of involuntary removal, forced assimilation, ethnic erasure, and cultural appropriation. As the ancestral homeland of the Chitimacha, original inhabitants of Bulbancha, “place of many tongues,” the Choctaw name for the city, we acknowledge this as a place of unceded land. Not simply here but throughout the region first occupied by the Biloxi, Houma, Choctaw, Tunica, Atakapa Ishak/Chawasha, and Opelousas. We acknowledge the history, culture, and experiences of those who first lived here and were first stewards of this land.

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We also acknowledge the exploitation of labor exacted from Africans forcibly extracted from the continent whose skills, talents—progeny were integral to the making of not only New Orleans, its infrastructure, economy, and culture, but also to this nation and that of others. Neither of these groups has been forgotten, nor their descendants, nor other members of exploited or marginalized communities both here and elsewhere—each striving for dignity, self-determination, equity, justice, civil and human rights—survival.

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 “2541” serves as the site and citation of fugitivity and marronage, reclamation of history, culture, narratives, agency and space, and as embodied memory honoring past generations and future ascendants.