On Native ground: As ‘land acknowledgments’ proliferate, Indigenous peoples want actions, not words

The lands of Ann Remy’s Lenni-Lenape ancestors once spanned from New York to Delaware, covering all of the Philadelphia region and the whole of New Jersey.

No longer, of course. The land was taken and stolen, swindled and bought, then sold again and again across hundreds of years.

Now that’s being recognized, as governments and big institutions spill acres of words to publicly acknowledge that they sit on property that rightfully belonged — or belongs — to others. But the rise of these “land acknowledgments” is fueling debate over their value, whether they constitute meaningful affirmation or serve to salve largely white sensibilities.

“It would be nice if they went a step further,” said Remy, a Penndel activist with the Coalition of Natives and Allies, “with events to educate people, or using the original names for places.”

Critics say the declarations posted on the websites of dozens of corporations, colleges, and museums too often mark the start and end of concern for issues that harm Native Americans.

“Actions speak louder than words,” said Terry Shepard, a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community of the Mohican Nation, who lives in Bryn Mawr. “The statements are better than ignoring the history, but without any action behind it, it’s kind of a superficial gesture.”

More colleges and schools could provide scholarships to Indigenous students, seat tribal members on their directing boards, and add courses on Native American history and speakers, he said. Museums should mount more exhibits and programming, and work with tribes to return sacred objects housed in their collections. Businesses can offer internships and jobs.

As Indigenous People’s Day arrives on Monday, the governments of Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, and Portland, Ore., or their agencies, have made acknowledgments or have them in the works.

“On one hand, land acknowledgments are hugely important, because beyond acknowledging land, it’s acknowledging people,” said Debra Yepa-Pappan, a Chicago artist and Native activist. On the other hand, “I wonder if people feel they’re following a trend. Sometimes I wonder if it comes from a place of white settler guilt.”

She’s been inundated with requests to consult on appropriate language. The key part, she tells organizations, is acknowledgment is only a start, that “now you’re committed to doing work that will benefit Native people.”

For some groups, “that’s where things kind of stop,” said Yepa-Pappan, a member of Jemez Pueblo and a community engagement coordinator at the Field Museum. Now she declines to assist those that are unwilling to join the growing “land back” movement and return property to Native communities.

Beyond a statement, the Field Museum mounted the exhibition “Native Truths: Our Voices Our Stories” and posted a video discussion among Native women leaders who question whether land acknowledgments are merely “a shiny new object.” In its statement, New York’s Lincoln Center Theater commits to developing works that reflect the cultures it has displaced, to “begin to confront the racism from which Lincoln Center Theater has benefited.”

The University of Pennsylvania is explicit about forced displacement, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art speaks frankly on its website of broken treaties and fraudulent agreements.

“Land acknowledgment is the first step in recognizing how settler-colonialism affected Indigenous people,” said Erin Sheffield, general manager of People’s Light theater. “We are eager to take meaningful action.”

In the last two summers, the Chester County organization staged outdoor theater that highlighted Lenni-Lenape and Ute stories. It’s working with Native American consultants and actors on a new play, and plans a staff screening of Fighting Indians, a film about a Maine high school that strenuously resisted giving up its “Indian” nickname.

A land acknowledgment is a formal statement that recognizes Indigenous peoples as the original owners and stewards of the land on which this country was built.

Today, Indigenous peoples have lost 99% of the land they historically occupied, a team of researchers found last year. Many tribes that hold land have been systematically forced onto less valuable, less productive properties, excluding them from key sectors of the economy, the study noted.

The question, Native peoples say, is whether the institutions offering acknowledgment truly understand what they’re acknowledging.

The creation of the United States is an immigration story, but not the one that most people think of. Europeans who settled on these shores killed, chased, and cheated Indigenous people, supported in that effort by the colonial government and then by the U.S. federal government.

The federal Indian Removal Act of 1830 violently evicted Native Americans in order to expand U.S. land holdings in the Southern states. More than 100,000 were forced to relocate to what became the state of Oklahoma, and thousands died of disease and starvation on the way — the Trail of Tears.

The 1887 Dawes Act directly claimed an additional 90 million acres of Native American land. The law required tribal lands to be allocated among individual tribal members, not held in common — and the “surplus” land offered to white settlers. That created a patchwork of properties held by an array of owners, and continues to limit the ability of Native peoples to marshal large land areas as an economic force, the Indian Land Tenure Foundation found.

“The general public [needs] to acknowledge what got them there,” said Cris Stainbrook, who is Oglala Lakota and president of the Land Tenure Foundation, which assists Natives in recovering their homelands. “In a lot of cases it was murder, it was swindle, it was illegal takings. But if you don’t face up to it, something is missing out of the acknowledgment.”

The first formal land acknowledgment he heard, Stainbrook said, was at a county commissioners’ meeting in South Dakota. He expected the oral statement would be followed by plans for action, that maybe the county had a property it wished to return.

It didn’t. And that’s the problem.

“It requires more sincerity,” Stainbrook said. “Alleviating someone’s guilt, that’s what a lot of those statements are about.”

At the same time, a growing “land back” movement has scored some successes.

In September the City of Oakland announced a plan to return five acres of park property to local Native Americans. In April the Rappahannock Tribe reacquired 465 acres of their homeland in eastern Virginia, and in June about 1,000 acres in central New York state were returned to the Onondaga Nation.

Private landowners in Chester County and South Jersey have given acreage to Natives.

The loss of her ancestors’ territory, said Remy, remains painful. Not merely because it was taken, but because of what’s been done to it. When she drives through New Jersey she sees mega-warehouses and malls, and a floor of concrete that turns the streets to rivers when it rains.

“A lot of people think ‘land back’ is us coming back and kicking everyone off. It’s too complicated for that,” Remy said. “A lot of Natives want water rights, to protect the water. And sacred spaces. And gravesites, of course. That’s the type of ‘land back’ that would be beneficial. And keeps it open for everybody.”