Keep Listening
For several years LWVRA included Land Acknowledgement statements as a part of
our introductory message at meetings, seeking to recognize the troubled history of our nation. You may have noticed that they have faded away. There are many challenges to such messages. We began wrestling with just how graphic to make the message, what tone to take, how long to make it, which native nations to identify and myriad other questions. Then we added the challenge of avoiding a mere performative sense by seeking to add an action piece. You are likely to have heard or read such statements connected to a wide variety of venues and experiences. It became clear that most uses of such acknowledgements are simply inadequate, and rather than do more harm by doing it badly, they were paused.
There was a guest essay in the NYTimes last summer that I find helpful in thinking
about them going forward. Reid Walker, a member of the Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa Nation,
clearly explains some of these myriad difficulties, contradictions, unintentional offenses and
outright cluelessness that most land acknowledgements have included to one degree or
another. He uses direct cultural and historical explanations and anecdotes of attempts gone
wrong to elucidate why this practice has proven to be unhelpful. “Please Don’t Thank Us for the Land,” alternatively titled “I’m Native American. Land Acknowledgements are Infuriating,” is definitely worth your time.
[The NYT has reduced its number of free articles to zero. If you do not have access to the paper, in print or online, but you do have a library card, you can read this essay through the Ramsey County Library. Follow this link to the RCL and log in to your account to access it. If that doesn’t work, and for articles cited in the future, speak to a librarian for assistance. Your library card continues to open more worlds.]
One important point comes from the distinction between speaking as a host and as
a guest. In Australian indigenous protocol, a “Welcome to Country” would only be given by a member of the nation whose territory you are on. It is the act of a host to a guest. Land
acknowledgements have the incomer usurping the host’s role.
Sometimes an expression of gratitude can quickly move from recognizing dispossession to reassuring the dispossessor, when history is glossed over and no action to correct harm is instituted. Walker bristled at one acknowledgement that asked for approval of what had been done with the land, from the dispossessed “looking down on us.” No, they are not grateful for being replaced.
And very significantly, there is an underlying incompatibility between the Native American relationship to land, not as ownership, but as a relationship with responsibility to care for, and the Western European concept of land ownership and title brought to North America
with immigrants. Land acknowledgements cannot avoid implying that however it happened,
ownership passed from one group to another.
This barely skims the content of Walker’s excellent essay. Just remember “The form is too small for what it carries; there’s no way to spell out four centuries of dispossession in two
sentences.” To be of value, a land acknowledgement must “open a conversation…involve the tribe…lead(s) somewhere.”
Thank you, Reid Walker.
