Land Acknowledgments | Issue #5
The underlying principle of placefulness is a commitment to educating ourselves about the communities and wild places where we live, work, and play. Part of this education includes nurturing an appreciation as well as a realistic understanding of the history of the places we call home.
Deepending our personal relationships to the places around us means taking a critical look at their history - including the bad parts. For Teaching Tolerance, Coshandra Dillard writes,
When transgressions against humanity go unchecked, that injustice stays with us. And it doesn’t take much digging to see how the history of your students’ community shapes their lives.
When community members learn more about the complicated history of the places that mean something to them, it can lead to stronger, more equitable, and more connected communities. A shared understanding of the past can help us build a sturdier, more inclusive bridge to the future.
Indigenous History
Let’s take a deeper look into one aspect of local history: Indigenous history. For those of us in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, or other nations shaped by a history of colonialism, it is essential that we learn the names of the ancestral inhabitants of the places we live.
As an U.S. citizen, I live on land stolen from Native Americans. North and South America were not “discovered” in the way I was taught when I was taught as a child. In 1491, the year before Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, there were hundreds of languages spoken and an estimate of population near 58 million people spread throughout North, Central, and South America.
If you are unsure about which Indigenous groups historically or currently inhabit the land you now call home, know that this gap in your education was, at one point in history (and perhaps even now), intentional. Native erasure was and is a problem in the U.S. through the removal of people from native lands, forced cultural assimilation, and through ways of teaching that frame Indigenous peoples as relics of the past.
Crystal Echo Hawk writes,
American students learn some of the most damaging misconceptions and biases toward Native Americans in grades K-12. In fact, 87 percent of history books in the U.S. portray Native Americans as a population existing before 1900, according to a 2014 study on academic standards. For many Americans, we no longer exist.
I am not advocating for all of us to become experts on Indigenous history, but I do think we are ethically compelled to acknowledge that the relationship between people and the environment in the places we live did not start when the first white settlers arrived or our current cities and states were incorporated. Native peoples were here, and they inhabited this land, built cities and farmed or lived nomadically, long before much of the history we learn even began.
Land Acknowledgments
To address Native erasure and recognize the effects of colonialism across many parts of the world, schools, organizations, and other cultural institutions are beginning to incorporate land acknowledgments into their philosophies, communications, and events. A land acknowledgement, for those who do not know, is simply verbal or written recognition of the traditional Native inhabitants of a place, sometimes also called tribal acknowledgments.
Here’s one example: at the last Sundance Film Festival (which takes place in Utah), the organizers began each screening with 30 second pre-taped clips acknowledging the Ute people. In one of them, the director of Sundance Film Institute’s Indigenous Program, Bird Runningwater, states, “We would like to acknowledge the ancestral keepers of the land we are gathered on today, the Ute Tribal Nation. We thank them for allowing us to be here.”
A longer example from the University of Utah, released last month, reads
The University of Utah is situated within a network of historical and contemporary relationships with Indigenous peoples. Given that the Salt Lake Valley has always been a gathering place for Indigenous peoples, we acknowledge that this land, which is named for the Ute Tribe, is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Ute Tribes and is a crossroad for Indigenous peoples. The University of Utah recognizes the enduring relationships between many Indigenous peoples and their traditional homelands. We are grateful for the territory upon which we gather today; we respect Utah’s Indigenous peoples, the original stewards of this land; and we value the sovereign relationships that exist between tribal governments, state governments, and the federal government. Today, approximately 60,000 American Indian and Alaskan Native peoples live in Utah. As a state institution, the University of Utah is committed to serving Native communities throughout Utah in partnership with Native Nations and our Urban Indian communities through research, education, and community outreach activities.
The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (for clarity, not a government agency) in their call to acknowledgment list the below reasons for introducing the practice:
Offer recognition and respect.
Counter the “doctrine of discovery” with the true story of the people who were already here.
Create a broader public awareness of the history that has led to this moment.
Begin to repair relationships with Native communities and with the land.
Support larger truth-telling and reconciliation efforts.
Remind people that colonization is an ongoing process, with Native lands still occupied due to deceptive and broken treaties.
Take a cue from Indigenous protocol, opening up space with reverence and respect.
Inspire ongoing action and relationship.
Anthropologist and editor-in-chief of the digital magazine SAPIENS Chip Colwell writes that he’s “come to see the possibilities of land acknowledgment to confront the past while laying the groundwork for building a shared future.”
I, too, have a land acknowledgement on my “About” page; I think it would be wrong for me to write a newsletter about place and not acknowledge the importance of the place I live to the people and cultures who came before me, and whose descendents are still here to this day. Additionally, some of my writing about place is informed by Indigenous knowledge, and a land acknowledgment is literally the least I can do to show my thanks for how Indigenous world views have shaped my views and deepened my own relationship to the land.
You, too, can acknowledge the complicated history of your community and the lives and cultures that have shaped it over time by learning about the Native inhabitants of the place you call home. Let’s all make a commitment to learn more about the people who lived here many generations before our country was founded, and who are still here today.
Writing Prompt: Locate an online resource that contains Indigenous history for your local area. Which Native peoples have inhabited it over time? Write down the names of these tribal communities, and three additional things you learn in your research.
Thank you
The following resources helped me write this week’s issue as well as the land acknowledgment on my “About” page:
“A guide to Indigenous land acknowledgment” from the Native Governance Center
The Moab Museum’s storyline of the people of Southeastern Utah
“#HonorNativeLand: A Guide and call to Acknowledgment” from the U.S. Department of Arts & Culture, a grassroots action network
And, if you want to do more, look into organizations in your local area that are working to improve quality of life for Indigenous peoples and donate your time or resources! Two such organizations near me include the Full Circle Intertribal Center and the Navajo Water Project.