Are Land Acknowledgments Necessary?
The statements are a counterfeit version of respect and are displays of performative activism.
Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash
"The Public Theater stands in honor of the first inhabitants and our ancestors. We acknowledge the land on which The Public and its theaters stand—the original homeland of the Lenape people– and the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory. We honor the generations of stewards, and we pay our respects to the many diverse Indigenous peoples still connected to this land."
This is actually on the website of The Public Theater in New York City. It mirrored the words I heard each night I performed at The Paper Mill Playhouse last summer while performing in the pit of a musical at that theater. A message about the indigenous people who lived on the land we were on was broadcast to the audience and after hearing what was said, a few pit members looked at each other and wondered what it meant. We didn't overthink it the first few times we heard it but after a while, some of us found it patronizing.
After some research, I learned about 'land acknowledgments,' These are statements that supposedly recognize and honor the ‘Indigenous peoples’ who have lived on the land where an event or gathering is taking place. They typically include an acknowledgment of the Indigenous peoples who have a historical and ongoing relationship with the land, as well as a recognition of the impact of colonization on Native American communities. These speeches may be given in various settings, including public events, government or corporate meetings, schools, and other spaces.
Land acknowledgments are often seen as a way to recognize and honor Native Americans and are spoken or written to raise awareness about the history of colonization and the ongoing impacts of this history on the communities of people who formerly inhabited the land. Many seem to view land acknowledgments as a way to foster respect and understanding between Native Americans and everyone else. They view it as a way to build relationships based on mutual respect.
Photo by Cayetano Gil on Unsplash
While land acknowledgments may recognize the history of colonization and the Native Americans who once lived on the land before the European takeover, they do not necessarily address ongoing issues related to Native American land rights and sovereignty. People who live in Native American territories today face a range of challenges and problems, many of which are a result of the ongoing impacts of colonization and discrimination.
Many Native American reservations have high poverty rates, with limited access to education, employment, and other opportunities. Native American reservations are often located in areas that have been impacted by natural resource extraction, pollution, and other environmental degradation, which can negatively impact the health and well-being of communities. Their communities have higher rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity and often have limited access to healthcare. Native American reservations often lack basic infrastructure such as roads, water systems, and sewage treatment facilities, making it difficult for communities to access essential services.
Native American reservations face complex and interconnected issues that require comprehensive and culturally sensitive solutions. While non-Native communities need to support and work in partnership with Native American communities to address these challenges and build a more equitable and just society for all, will these land acknowledgments be sufficient to address these ongoing issues?
Could there be more concrete actions instead?
Land acknowledgments' seem to be merely symbolic gestures. They do not address the ongoing harm caused by hundreds of years of colonization. These statements are a passive way some people today can absolve themselves of responsibility for colonization's past and present impact without taking any meaningful action to address ongoing issues. I find it eerily similar to the rash of hashtag activism we’ve seen over the past ten years or so.
People often use land acknowledgments to appear supportive of Native American causes without taking actions to address problems on Native American territories. They use these statements to obscure and downplay the ongoing impacts of colonization and Native American dispossession, but most people already know the history of colonization and Indigenous dispossession and do not need to be reminded of it through feckless land acknowledgments.
Recognizing and respecting Native Americans and their traditional territories, can happen by default. When we learn history, we should be learning the ongoing impact of colonization. What will land acknowledgments accomplish other than to assuage the guilt of certain groups of people? Maybe we can find other methods of reminding ourselves of the need to take action to address the lasting effects of colonization and address the ongoing injustices of Native American communities.
Clayton is the founder and publisher of the social and political commentary newsletter Think Things Through and the host of the Think Things Through Podcast.
Twitter: @claytoncraddock
"Land acknowledgments' seem to be merely symbolic gestures. They do not address the ongoing harm caused by hundreds of years of colonization."
While you may be on point in critiquing such specific actions as trivial or symbolic, you might do well to recognize the global significance of this moment in history, as regards the legacy of colonization generally.
Whatever anyone's personal views might be, on the fact of peoples living on the former lands of other peoples, one would be extremely remiss in not assessing the way in which, yes, this war in Ukraine has reawakened the entire question of colonization.
If the Ukrainian people and nation are fighting for any one thing, it is exactly this: the right to live on their own ancestral homelands in a manner of their own choosing.
Taken in this light, the current war in Ukraine might well be regarded as the ultimate expression of an indigenous people's fight to do exactly this.
Americans may have a hard time decoding this war in this way, owing to nothing more than the fact that most Ukrainian people have pale skin, and trace their ancestries from Europe. But nonetheless, a close look at Ukraine's history for centuries shows much more common cause with the situations of indigenous peoples all over the world than might appear at first glance.
This is a very real thing, around the world, right this very moment.
As I write this, there are thousands of protesters in the streets in Australia to point out the fact that the day British ships first sailed into Australian waters, celebrated on this date as a national holiday for generations, was in fact the day an invasion began which came to cost the original inhabitants of that continent severely.
And this is but one example of how The Indigenous Question has come into a far harsher light since the invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago.
In following as much English-language press from Russian sources as I can manage, I find again and again examples of native peoples in the territory of what is now the Russian Federation, whose lands had been seized by force, by ethnic Russians, in past centuries and whose languages, cultures and folkways have been under incessant attack (known as 'russification') ever since. To read the history of the Uzbeks, Bashkirs, Yakuts, Tatars, Kalmyks, and as many as a hundred fifty others, the ancient Ukrainian Kozak civilization among them, is very similar to reading the histories of native American peoples, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn.
This issue has never quite gone away, nor has the stain of colonization ever stopped being a standing compromise to the integrity of newer ways of life implanted atop those which have been swept aside as nuisances and pestilences by invaders out to seize land by any means necessary. This holds true in the Americas, in Australia and the entire Pacific islands region, in northern Finland, in Ireland, throughout all of Africa, and across Russia.
And it is indeed the very reason Ukrainians have taken to arms for these past nine years.
To ignore this historic dilemma which is far from resolved is no longer an option, whatever one might think of the ways and means of keeping it in the light. There is some reason to question whether the very 'united' stature of these United States will even be able to survive it.
Unless, of course, one sticks one's head into the sands of American Exceptionalism once again, and pretends that there is something so unique about this one country that we have no motive to concern ourselves with what is happening around the world.
There isn't, and never has been, anything so exceptional about the USA that we are immune from the ever-changing tides and trends of world history as it occurs, whether we approve of it or not.
But one can always pretend.