Place is everything: remembering responsibilities between and beyond land acknowledgments

ABSTRACT

Land acknowledgment statements in higher education have become pervasive performative gestures that serve to relieve settler guilt and manage public memory. This article details the distribution of stolen Indigenous lands to universities, and identifies problematics of university land acknowledgments. I offer the concept of “impoverished memory” to discuss the insufficient, duplicative means by which universities acknowledge land, and “felt memory” to Indigenize critical memory politics of land, peoples, and nonhumans. To fight against the machines of colonialism within universities and beyond, I offer specific scyborgian anti- and decolonial actions that are specific to place and for Indigenous futures.

KEYWORDS:

• anticolonial
• land acknowledgment statements
• land grab universities
• scyborg theory
• Morrill Act
• settler colonialism

Acknowledgment

Thank you to Meredith Bagley for gifting me the language of “impoverished memory” to describe insufficient land acknowledgments. Thank you to Meredith, Robin Boylorn, and Dhruv Modi for the robust feedback on this piece in service to anticolonialism.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Graeme Wood, ‘Land Acknowledgments’ Are Just Moral Exhibitionism. The Atlantic, November 28, 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/against-land-acknowledgements-native-american/620820/.

2 NDN Collective. “LANDBACK Updates: From Launch to Looking Forward,” October 28, 2020. https://ndncollective.org/landback-updates-from-launch-to-looking-forward/. The movement demands the dismantling and defunding of white supremacist structures, return of public land to Indigenous peoples, and change to a policy of Free and Prior Informed Consent.

3 la paperson, A Third University Is Possible (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017).

4 Ibid.

5 Lincoln sanctioned a mass execution of Dakota Sioux warriors and has a fraught history with Indigenous peoples. See David Martínez. “Remembering the Thirty-Eight: Abraham Lincoln, the Dakota, and the US war on barbarism.” Wicazo Sa Review 28, no. 2 (2013): 5–29.

6 Dolores Calderon, “Uncovering Settler Grammars in Curriculum,” Educational Studies 50, no. 4 (July 4, (2014): 313–38.

7 Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, “Land-Grab Universities.” High Country News, March 30, 2020. https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.4/indigenous-affairs-education-land-grab-universities.

8 These universities are University of Arizona, the University of California system, Colorado State University, University of Minnesota, University of Missouri, Montana State University, North Dakota State University, University of Nebraska, New Mexico State University, South Dakota State University, Utah State University, Washington State University, University of Wisconsin, University of Wyoming.

9 Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, “Land-Grab Universities.” High Country News, March 30, 2020. https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.4/indigenous-affairs-education-land-grab-universities.

10 Ibid.

11 Mishuana Goeman, “Beyond the Grammar of Settler Landscapes and Apologies.” Western Humanities Review (January 1, 2020): 31.

12 Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40.

13 Felt memory is inspired by felt theory. See: Dian Million. “Felt theory: An Indigenous feminist approach to affect and history.” Wicazo Sa Review 24, no. 2 (2009): 53–76.

14 Christie-Peters, Quill. “Body: An Acknowledgment.” Canadian Art, December 3, 2020. https://canadianart.ca/features/body-an-acknowledgment/.

15 Dian Million. “Felt theory: An Indigenous Feminist Approach to Affect and History.” Wicazo Sa Review 24, no. 2 (2009): 58.

16 Brook McIlroy, “Hoop Dance Indigenous Gathering Place at Mohawk College.” Accessed February 17, 2023. https://brookmcilroy.com/projects/hoop-dance-indigenous-gathering-place-at-mohawk-college-2/.

17 Universities typically lowercase the words Nations, Tribes, and Indigenous, though they should be capitalized to express respect.

18 Carole Pateman, Charles Wade Mills, and Charles Wright Mills. Contract and Domination. (Polity, 2007), 29.

19 Daniel Voth and Jessie Loyer. “Why Calgary Isn't Métis Territory: Jigging Towards an Ethic of Reciprocal Visiting,” in Visions of the Heart, eds. (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), 107.

20 Lee Mawhinne, “Giving up the Ghost, Disrupting the (Re)Production of White Privilege in Anti-Racist Pedagogy and Organizational Change.” (Master’s Thesis, University of Toronto, 1998).

21 Doug Erickson, The Ho-Chunk’s Ancestral Home. On Wisconsin. https://onwisconsin.uwalumni.com/the-ho-chunks-ancestral-home/#:~:text=Decades%20of%20ethnic%20cleansing%20followed,future%20of%20collaboration%20and%20innovation.

22 Mishuana Goeman, “Beyond the Grammar of Settler Landscapes and Apologies.” Western Humanities Review 31 (January 1, 2020): 31.

23 Amna Khalid and Jeffery Aaron Snyder, “How to Fix Diversity and Equity.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 27, 2021. https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-to-fix-diversity-and-equity.

24 We must listen to Indigenous peoples and work to bring specificity to our institutions’ reckoning with these questions. While one Indigenous Nation may fully demand the return of their land from a given university, as is the case with the Pokanotek Nation and their protests at Brown University, another may know too well the trauma of land displacement and not want to cause that pain to families but rather petition the return of only public lands.

25 For example, one Nation may want the university near their land to cover fees for all of their Tribally enrolled students in perpetuity and create capacity-building and the funding of Tribal projects, as is the case with the KōKwel Nation. Another might view restorative justice as having the university pay the Nation an “honor tax,” a voluntary tax practice that has gained notoriety after residents in Northern California wanted to pledge funds to the Wiyot Nation. Coast Salish Tribal Nations want a physical space, a Coast Salish longhouse, to be created on the Western Washington University campus for students to gather and engage in their cultural practices, requesting $4.9 million in Washington’s 2021–2023 capital budget. See Western Washington University. “Coastal Salish Style Longhouse,” 2023. https://www.wwu.edu/tribal-relations/longhouse (accessed October 12, 2022).

26 la paperson. A Third University Is Possible (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017).

27 Ibid.

28 Although UC Berkeley has made rematriation commitments to adhere to Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, an audit by the state found that it had close to 10,000 remains in 2022 and the rematriation process is moving slowly. Native UC Professors have powerfully pushed for a moratorium on research and teaching of these ancestors. See also: Jenna Kunze. Slow Repatriation Efforts Plague UC Berkeley. Native News Online, November 14, 2022. https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/slow-repatriation-efforts-plague-uc-berkeley. By the end of 2022, University of Alabama made 78% available for rematriation to Tribes. As of February 2023, it still has not made the remains of 2,900 ancestors and almost 4,000 belongings (funerary objects) available to Tribes. See: Maven Navarro. The Crimson White, February 15, 2023. https://thecrimsonwhite.com/108004/news/ua-yet-to-return-thousands-of-native-american-remains/.

29 See: Cmaadmin (EDU), “Protestors Tear Down Controversial Statues at U of Oregon.” Diverse Issues in College Education, June 15, 2020. https://www.diverseeducation.com/demographics/native-americans/article/15107095/protestors-tear-down-controversial-pioneer-statues-at-u-of-oregon.

30 Matthew Wildcat, Mandee McDonald, Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, and Glen Coulthard, “Learning from the Land: Indigenous Land Based Pedagogy and Decolonization.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 3, no. 3 (2014). https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/22248.

31 Sandy Grande, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).

32 Gardner Seawright, “Settler Traditions of Place: Making Explicit the Epistemological Legacy of White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism for Place-Based Education.” Educational Studies 50, no. 6 (2014): 554–72. Seawright summarizes Linda Martin Alcoff’s argument.

33 Eva Mackey, Unsettled Expectations: Uncertainty, Land and Settler Decolonization (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2016).