The Land Back Ceremony 2026

After years of work, friendship building, committing to long term relationship with tribal people, conversations, working together on Native projects and programs, the Kessler Keener Foundation was pleased to present a Land Back Ceremony this year.

At the Return of the Original Boise Valley People’s gathering on June 18th 2026, the trustees were pleased to return the 2.8 acres on N. 39th Street, near 36th Street and Hill Road, to the Original Boise Valley People, LLC. OBVP is a non-profit organization, that represents the original Shoshone, Paiute and Bannock people who were relocated from their homelands of the Boise Valley to the Burns Paiute Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, and the Fort McDermitt Reservation. The Trustees hope that this land will continue to welcome the public, and from now on include interpretation about the Original Boise Valley people as well as present day Bannock, Paiute and Shoshone peoples.

Here are some excerpts from Edwin Keener’s speech:

“Some background to share: Our parents were both public school teachers, members of First Presbyterian Church, Boise, engaged throughout their lives to better the lives of all community members. They believed in using their wealth to help the community in which they lived. Wealth is a community asset to be shared. 

That being said, our parents did not know the truth about Boise Valley Indigenous peoples, the original inhabitants, and settler colonists who removed the first peoples from this land. In our parents’ time these truths about white settler colonist confrontations, thefts and erasure of original peoples were not allowed in educational materials, nor was it included in white social circles and institutions. But not knowing never erases the crime or complicity.

Now in our times, we are thankful for Indigenous, Black, Latinx and other peoples telling their stories and sharing their truth with us as we grow in understanding.

We are very, very grateful for friends and collaborators within the Native community here in the Boise Valley, in Duck Valley, at Ft. Hall and the Nez Perce homelands; thankful for conversations, generosity, working together on projects, for being invited into homes and places of education, work, into community centers, for powwows and social gatherings, for sharing your culture and traditions and for your generosity of spirit and friendship. And thankful as well for many non-Native folks who’ve provided insight, investigation and energy for our work.

Finally, I am speaking now to those of us who have benefited from and privileged by our White identity, we who have benefited through laws, policies, practices, prejudices and tradition. I did not personally create the systems of racism, but I have certainly benefited. Now is our time to take seriously our own actions of humility, reparation, and reciprocity. Through land back processes and sharing our own resources and wealth we can begin to repair the broken systems from which we continue to benefit. 

Many in our privileged society would see this land as property which our family could have sold for $800,000 to a developer. But knowing what we now know, we can make a better choice. We now acknowledge that this land was never ours to hold. We honor the relationship between this land and generations of the Original Boise Valley People, their ancestors, their descendants, and those yet to be born.”