Read on Twitter
For folks thinking about Land Acknowledgements & Zoom classes: we might talk with our classes about where we're all dispersed & that Zoom relies on servers at Equinix data centers in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Melbourne, New York, Tokyo, Toronto, Silicon Valley & Sydney.
Of course we can't practically offer acknowledgements for all those places & for many it wouldn't make sense. But considering it could be instructive about internet infrastructure & how present day capital makes accountability so difficult in relation to specific territories.
Also our geographically dispersed classrooms may afford opportunities for students to consider & research the indigenous histories of where they're Zooming from. We could even open some class sessions by inviting dispersed students to share acknowledgements for their locations.
Doing this could also be a way of acknowledging that these various forms of dispossession continue to reproduce themselves today in manifold racist and classist ways along various so-called "digital divides." https://twitter.com/kdeleon/status/1299386969873461248
Zoom will also soon be allowing paying customers to choose where their packets will be routed, mainly to avoid fear of data moving through China, but perhaps this could prompt other discussions. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/13/21219835/zoom-data-center-call-routing-china-security-privacy-encryption
And if you're unsure about how to approach Land & Territory Acknowledgements in general, I found this guide to be helpful http://landacknowledgements.org/ and of course this map that's been widely shared https://native-land.ca/
