Acknowledgments
We are incredibly grateful to all those whose knowledge, attention, and expertise have made this publication possible. Thanks to the authors who contributed their words and images to this anthology. Their ideas, insights, and commitments will nourish expansive futures. Thanks to Kio Griffith for designing an intricate rainbow orb-web as cover art for the publication. Thanks to Danielle Hill for designing personal portraits of each contributor. Gracias and thanks to Cynthia Martínez Benavides and Carmen Lopez for their Spanish translations, and to Gerlie Collado for serving on the Editorial team and writing the preface to the book. This born-digital volume would not have been possible without the technical savvy, guidance, and cheerful support of the IOPN team: Mary Ton, Daniel Tracy, Alex Dryden, Heejoung Shin, Sam Tett, and Brenda Y. Flores Santiago. Thank you!
How does one locate a land acknowledgment for a born-digital work that inhabits the Internet? As changemakers, we commit to dismantling the stories, rhetoric, and systems that have resulted in dispossession. We recommit to investing in our cultures, languages, knowledge, traditions, spaces, imaginations, and mutualistic relationships.The impulse to create Et Al. began in Los Angeles, California on the ancestral land of the Chumash, Tongva, and Kizh peoples, where the editors of this volume reside. However, the authors in this collection live in different locations. IOPN is situated in the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, a land grant institution that acknowledges its historical context and recognizes that it currently resides on the lands of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascoutin, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw Nations. As an open source publication, Et Al. connects people with ideas via online servers, digital infrastructure, and devices on land occupied through settler colonialism and the plantationocene.
We set out to make a kaleidoscopic, justice-centered anthology showcasing myriad ways of asserting creative action through culture and the arts. We are pleased to share this work, and we are eager to see this web of connections expand and flourish in the years ahead. Finally, thanks to you, dear readers. We hope that the ideas and connections in this book inspire you to cultivate creative power in your own lives and communities.