“The original people who blessed the land were the Lenni Lenape or Delawares, the eldest nation of the Algonquian confederacy. ..Others would come to rename it — would claim it with their guns and their plows, their dreams. Africans came too — captive, but with dreams of their own.”

– from The Bombing of Osage Avenue, Toni Cade Bambara, 1986.

BlackStar was founded in Philadelphia, in a lineage of global anti-colonial struggle, on land which has been stewarded by the Lenni-Lenape people for centuries.

We call in our Black, Indigenous, and Brown ancestors, who bent time and envisioned a freer, more tender world for us — one that we continue to reach for.

We honor all Indigenous peoples and their lands, and acknowledge the ongoing genocide and displacement of Indigenous and Black communities. Merely naming the people of this land is not an act of repair, nor is it a form of decolonization. After all, decolonization is an unsettling thing. We use this reminder as an opening to consider ongoing self-determination movements of colonized people across the world. From Palestine to Puerto Rico and everywhere in between.

The violence inflicted on our communities is immeasurable and irreparable. Still, we gather in the spirit of generous and joyful exchange and cultural expression. As Toni Cade Bambara has shown us, through cultural work we create space for imagination, critique, gathering, pleasure, love and radical care.