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Posted on 07/03/2025 6:19:15 AM PDT by karpov
In recent decades, academia has created or implemented a truly jaw-dropping array of programs and ideas. And not in a good way. Whether “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) policies or Annual Sex Week, these new notions all seem aimed at chipping away at the foundations of a society based on common-sense, truth, fairness, and morality.
One such idea is the “land acknowledgment.” It is a statement that a particular event or organization is located on land that once belonged to specific indigenous tribes. Land acknowledgments first appeared in Australia in the late 1970s. They were adopted in Canada before coming to the United States. They appear to be spreading rapidly in academia and often appear on departmental websites or the personal sites of individual academics. They are also frequently announced at open public events, speeches, or meetings.
A cursory Internet search reveals that the University of North Carolina System—which is supposedly dismantling its DEI policies—is riddled with land acknowledgments, such as this one on a plaque outside of the UNC Charlotte student union:
With respect to the land and people who preceded us, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte acknowledges that we are on colonized land traditionally belonging to the Catawba, Cheraw, Sugeree, Wateree, and Waxhaw Peoples, all of whom have stewarded this land throughout the generations.
And at UNC Asheville:
The University of North Carolina Asheville acknowledges, with respect, that the land we are on today is ancestral land of the Anikituwagi, more commonly known as the Cherokee. We recognize the Cherokee as the native people and original stewards of this land.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
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Gay
These acknowledgements ignore the fact that most of the habitable land on this planet has been taken by conquest.
Yeah...from whom did those tribes get the land?
Does this mean the Romans still own Britain, France, Spain and the Mediterranean?
Yes. I might start giving such acknowledgements as soon as the French acknowledge taking my ancestral land in 1066. We can all apologize to everyone else.
Exactly, ALL land on planet earth is stolen land.
Natives are only important if they’re non-whites. Look at England.
The Indian tribes were constantly at war with each other, and most were nomadic or semi-nomadic. What the modern wokesters recognize as the original, aboriginal claims of first occupancy are actually derived from the travel journals of the first people of European descent who noted what Indian tribe was there when the first white explorers reached the area.
I.e., all such Native American land claims were assigned originally by White explorers and mappers. And many of the earliest stories we have of the tribes’ ancestral folk memories (which were themselves written down when white men arrived on the scene, so they are already selected and translated by outsiders) speak of the tribes’ long wanderings before they reached their current spot. As do, just for the record, the Jews’ origin story, which has Abraham coming out of Ur, but in that case, the Israelites at least wrote it down for themselves during the Babylonian captivity, when the oral tradition gave way to a written account.
In some parts of the world, Arab or Chinese explorers may have been the first literate recorders in a given region. But the principle is the same.
There are no true indigenous people in the Americas.
What we call Native Americans or indigenous were just here first during the ice age. Granted it was a very long time ago, but they are not indigenous in the true sense of the word.
I think Canada has it right by calling them First Nations. They were here first, but not native.
Maybe Sheridan can whip up a series about it.
OK, let's give it back. You first. Give all university land back to the "Anikituwagi" - clear it off first and make sure it is in the same condition as when it was "colonized."
Ditto for anyone making such statement - give the "colonized" land your home is on back to whatever respective tribe you think still owns it. Otherwise you are an evil colonist who stole land from noble tribes who were here first.
Show us how to do it.
Ditto for anyone making such statement - give the “colonized” land your home is on back to whatever respective tribe you think still owns it. Otherwise you are an evil colonist who stole land from noble tribes who were here first.
And then go back to Europe. Of course, most likely you’ll wind up just getting “Culturally Enriched” from all the “New Europeans”.
When it is Muslims colonizing Europe, the US or any other lands foreign to them, it is a great thing called "diversity" and "multiculturalism."
In Texas the number of Hindu Temples is competing with the number of Mosques.
1-9 is too many - in ANY state.
...too true, but Australia is all in! Signs everywhere apologizing and acknowledging that most of Sydney is stolen native land, sorry to the natives about that... obnoxious amount of signage. ymmv
Here’s my land acknowledgement.
“I own a house, it’s mine and you can’t have it.”
“nomadic or semi-nomadic” ...journals of the first people
two different thoughts are illogically mixed together.
1) Native Americans on the coast from Massachuetts to Seattle were not nomadic. Many plains Indians were.
2) Our hollywood media depicts the plains Indians so that is our image of Indians.
3) Did Squanto going to Europe and then returning in time to welcome and translate for the Pilgrims “nomadic”?
4) When Shoshone Sacagawea traveled across the entire continent most of which was not yet part of the USA was she nomadic?
Throughout history, those who write the history books make (up) the history. Example, my daughters history books did not tell the Vietnam War the way I made it my #1 study in 1961 and served in ‘66-’67.
Some Indian cultures were rising towards settled agriculture — the mound builder cultures of the midwest are a great example — but even these tribes were usually at war with each other and moved around. What we see in the archaeological record is a succession of cultures, with one group periodically displacing its predecessor. It is remarkable how modern woke land acknowledgments always overlook the long record of pre-Columbian war, massacre and displacement among the tribes. The woke academics simply endorse the claims of the people who were present when the white tribe arrived and started taking notes.
Since the North American Indians were pre-literate, they didn’t leave a written record, but the pottery styles, arrowheads, spear points, and other tools show the changes.
The question always arises: what happened to the losers in these tribal wars? Sometimes the losers were exterminated. Sometimes survivors might be absorbed into the conquering culture. Sometimes survivors drifted away to amalgamate with other tribes elsewhere, or they retreated to more inhospitable places to eke out a precarious existence in exile. This pattern has been played out virtually everywhere in the world as people passed through a comparable stage of development.
It’s interesting at any given Eastern Woodlands Indian site to examine how long it was continuously inhabited. Perhaps for decades, but over time, people still moved around. The Sioux are a great example. We associate them with the northern plains because that is where they made their final stand against the onrushing (white) culture of permanent settlement based on fixed land tenure and agriculture. But the Sioux’ own folk tales say that they had wandered onto the plains from regions far to the east, and probably in Canada, and around the Great Lakes region.
The Sioux were pushed onto the plains by other tribes. And had they lost a few more wars, they might have ended up in the deserts with the Apache, Utes, and others. The great boomerang of the Plains Indian cultures came when they acquired horses, which had been reintroduced to North America by the Spanish settlements. That revolutionized Plains hunting and warfare, and turned a bedraggled collection of loser tribes, long ago forced out of the richer lands to the east, into a formidable force. The flowering of the Plains Indian horse culture was itself a product of the European arrival. It took place with remarkable speed, and was over and done in less than 200 years. It is a remarkable anthropological case study.
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