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AstroTours.org is committed to becoming an anti-racist organization. We mourn the murder of George Floyd and all victims of racial injustice and police brutality. Black Lives Matter. We stand in solidarity with protests across the nation and globally calling for justice and accountability.
The Night Sky is a common heritage of all cultures and peoples. The stars have played an integral part throughout history in both guiding oppressors to the lands of peaceful peoples (from Columbus to Cook) and in guiding oppressed peoples to liberation (from the underground railroad to the Jews of Egypt). We try to include these stories but In all sincerity, the current situation made us take a hard look at the voices within our organization and we realized that we have a lot of work to do.
We are a white-led organization with a white staff, and have a majority-white audience. We conduct tours upon the occupied lands of the Southern Arapaho people. We are a part of the scientific community that has been and continues to be exploitative of people of color. We're also part of an education system that has centered and valued the contributions and expertise of white people above those of Black people and people of color. Beyond this, we are living through a global pandemic that is having an outsized impact on people of color.
AstroTours.org has not been exempt from these patterns of injustice, and in fact we have benefited from our position of privilege. We acknowledge this, and know that we have much work to do. We also acknowledge that this statement itself is late in coming, and is insufficient on its own.
We are learning and listening, with particular attention to Black, Indigenous, People of Color voices in our community. We are working on creating pathways forward to further center and uplift these voices as we work towards becoming an anti-racist organization.