Another black trans woman who I know personally was just arrested for self defense after a white cis man attacked her and yet I don’t see the “community” rallying for her.
If you want to actually be a useful ally donate to her cashapp: $badwitch85
At this point there could be a video of Doechii and Chappell Roan hitting a man with their car holding hands Thelma & Louise style and I'd still be like "well let's hear them out"
An indigenous student just posted on the university subreddit asking why everyone is always making fun of the land acknowledgments on campus bc it makes them feel like shit :(
and ppl were like “cuz it feels performative it’s not like they are giving back land or anything to help” and the student was like “actually we have a full tuition waver for indigenous students” and a bunch of people were like “oh I didn’t know that. well the land acknowledgment doesn’t say that so how should we have known” and like HELLO that is EXACTLY the problem—that no one on this campus pays any attention to Indigenous people!!!!
Someone else claimed “actually [the nation whose land we are on] got a pretty good deal so I think it’s kind of silly” and someone else was like “they were literally ethnically cleansed and forcibly removed over 5 times in 50 years and had to sneak back on trains and buy back their land with their own money” and then the other person was like “oh nvm my bad”
I’m not saying I want everyone here to have to take a native studies class because I have taught the 101 class with 250 students and I do not want to make it any bigger jfc but also THIS IS EXACTLY THE PROBLEM
My issue with land acknowledgement is that it often dismisses or ignores history/detail and gives credit only to whatever tribe comes up first on a Google search.
We need actual indigenous history classes, not 'We acknowledge that this land originally belonged to (reads off hand) the (anglicized version of an enemy's epithet for an ethnic group/ the wrong tribe entirely)
what I'm not understanding about OPs response is why they are describing land acknowledgements as if they were defending them from being phased out of existence.
students who felt that land acknowledgements were "performative" are, irrespective of what tuition waivers some institution might be handing out, correct. Although I don't like the word performative, because performativity has multiple meanings that are completely opposite. I can be performative (positive) when I pronounce that this land belongs to indigenous people and thereby grant them autonomy over the land and I can be performative (negative) when I pronounce that this land belongs to indigenous people and thereby make myself look like I did something, but actually I just said something.
The fact that the students at OP's institution, WHICH HAS a land acknowledgement, don't actually know the history of the local indigenous people and don't know to which degree the institution supports and/or hinders indigenous folks... IS one of the issues with that land acknowledgement. It doesn't, by itself, mean anything. It doesn't, by itself, do anything.
It's the Cuomo problem -- I remember BLM activists talking about how they realized, to their horror, that Cuomo had learned all progressive jargon, read Audrey Lorde, bell hooks, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou and many other black intellectuals extensively, spoke the language of activists fluently, knew how to make people feel heard... and was fighting BLM in New York. He lured progressive activists into a false sense of safety because they were relying on the (often reliable) assumption that someone who has bothered to learn this much is probably dedicated to the cause of Black liberation and wants to help. They confused literacy with support because they were using dedication as their benchmark.
One of my fundamental experiences with educational institutions that do land acknowledgements is that they overpromise and underdeliver. They promise to integrate indigenous ideas into, for example, the teaching and then don't just disappoint, they don't even try. The semester goes by with not a single class mentioning indigenous people outside of the land acknowledgement and there's no sense that the contributions were subtly, stealthily added. It just seems like the land acknowledgement was there to tick off a checkbox or to put some people at ease (who, I guess, don't pay attention the rest of the term?)
And it's never clear whether one should ask them to make good on their promises, because there's an uncomfortable sense that they don't actually know any indigenous thought. That students are meant to read between the lines and understand that indigenous inclusion is silly, that land acknowledgements are about demonstrating that the institution has the power to make visible and invisible, that the activists who called for land acknowledgements aren't here in the room, right? They won't know I didn't teach you. And if you tattle-tale, it will be a drop in the ocean of these massive institutions, won't it? These institutions have grown large, anonymous, impersonal, making decisions about countless lives. And while you could give individuals educators lots of trouble by pointing out their complicity with racism...they, the individuals are easily replaceable with other complicit people.
And the same goes for settler states, for the political sphere. If a politician in a settler state does good things for indigenous communities, I rejoice. But when they give land acknowledgements, my spontaneous reaction is to be reminded of the ongoing genocidal actions that they have not addressed, the uncertainties about how permanent any reforms they introduce are, the reminder of just how many decades it has been since official declarations of equality...decades of uphill battles that feel like they should have culminated in victory 30, 40 years ago.
I grew up next to my parents' bookshelf, with books about indigenous self-determination from the 70s and 80s, books that represented large, nationwide efforts of First Nations people to achieve if not national autonomy, then at least liberation from Canadian interference. If those activists had found wide support with the Canadian state, Canada would probably occupy far less land, and groups like the Secwepemp would not have their land stolen by companies with cartoonish names like Imperial Metals.
When I browse these 40-50 year old publications, I can certainly talk about all the positives: we see the indigenous solidarity culminating in a fight that was never given up, we see that national differences between the First Nations didn't stop them from working for their shared interests, we see that all of (the territory occupied by) Canada had people stand and rise up to make a stand for their rights as indigenous people, we see that there were powerful speakers who could clearly convey their philosophical perspectives and political concerns to cultural outsiders, and we see that the document outlasted some of its speakers and that future generations on another continent can read about this.
I also know that if these political representatives had won, if these talks with the Canadian government would be at least halfway successful, that part of the world would look totally different now. They absolutely had successes, I am sure their efforts have been worth fighting for. But clearly, settler colonialism in the 21st century continues its absurd post-Enlightenment existence (I know Enlightenment thinkers were often racist, but it is absurd for them to be racist -- because universal human rights are utterly inconsistent with the realities of racism).
Land acknowledgements can be a good thing. But they really aren't a thing worth talking about in most contexts I find myself in. I'm never in the position of having to talk to institutions unwilling to do one of these. I've never had to argue that there is an institutional negligence at the level of not acknowledging Native existence. For me, the struggles are often totally different ones. I find myself talking to people who spend extended time in settler states, sometimes grew up in them, and just know next to nothing about their indigenous neighbours. And then there's the large, impersonal, uncaring institutions. And the catering to the interests of settler colonialists, like the recent Ted Cruz rhetoric equating the legitimacy of America with the burying of the role of land theft in Native history, of the basic reality that Natives live with. When the main question I'm wondering is who is friend and foe in a large anonymous institution, a hollow announcement catering to my own values doesn't reassure me that history is moving in the right direction. So yes, I will make fun of land acknowledgements. Not to dismiss the activism of people who need them, not to make Native people feel unsafe, but because I find this robotic world I live in unbearable and want organizations to foster actual solidarity, not dystopian-sounding mimicry of solidarity.
Part of why "wokeness" can even take off as a term is because institutions, by doing things like land acknowledgements, create the illusion that marginalized groups control the powerful institutions or that the institution's support is genuine and thus the beneficiaries are minorities. So when some privileged person experiences the nightmare of the corporate world or the impersonal universities and colleges or the corrupt government, those kinds of performances guide some privileged folks to the false conclusion that they, due to their privilege, are the suckers of society. That's just one list item, the real list of why we have a big anti-woke backlash for the last 10ish years is much longer, but genuinely I would like it if institutions stopped implying that Native people are somehow achieving (the imaginary scary version of) landback through their activism.
In the end, each institution has its own strengths and weaknesses, and for some Native communities, the land acknowledgement will be interwoven with important institutional changes, like having elders in residence or institutions providing housing and support to local communities. But that's why I don't quite get OPs concern. Land acknowledgements aren't wrong, they don't have to go away, they often just represent the strong disconnect between institutions and all the people who live under them.
I’m sorry this is going to be a bit snippy but you have just written like ten paragraphs projecting a position onto me that I don’t hold, on a post that was supposed to be a private vent that somehow took off.
I am…….not trying to defend land acknowledgments? I am extremely aware that land acknowledgments have many deep issues? I am literally a Native person teaching Native studies? I also live in the US, not Canada, and I think many people in Canada do not realize how absolutely extreme the level of erasure is for Native people in the US. Land acknowledgments are near-standard in Canada. This is not true in the US.
The point of my vent post was not “we need to keep the land acknowledgment.” It was more like, the fact that non-Native students feel comfortable mocking land acknowledgments while being completely unaware of the experiences or EXISTENCE of Native students on campus, is because of racism. Like YOU may be making fun of land acknowledgments from an enlightened Indigenous ally perspective but trust me when I say Billy Joe from an all-white town in the Midwest who is only vaguely reminded Native people exist when he goes to the local casino is not expressing some kind of principled statement on Indigenous sovereignty.
I apologize for any distress my reply might have caused.
I really hope the reblogs on your post don't get out of hand.
"I am…….not trying to defend land acknowledgments?"
that's probably because you, like me, probably would not write a private vent post to be understood by others. But just so you know, it really didn't come across that you are trying to say this instead:
"the fact that non-Native students feel comfortable mocking land acknowledgments while being completely unaware of the experiences or EXISTENCE of Native students on campus, is because of racism"
given that it's a private vent post, I really won't push the issue. And hopefully you can see how the post can be misread...I'm guessing you can, given your clarifications.
But also, I think you and I are talking about very different kinds of "making fun of". I think you sort of addressed that too, in different words.
I don't really know how to read the ellipsis and question mark in the statement "I am…….not trying to defend land acknowledgments?" like I'm a big dummy somehow for not grasping your meaning. Your vent post is a vent post, it was private, it was not meant to be understood by people like me. It's easy to misunderstand for strangers like me. Don't mock me for not understanding it. Thank you.
In return I will say, I wasn’t trying to mock you for not understanding. I was and am kind of annoyed (not just at you but most people reblogging this post) but the ellipse is just me being slightly baffled and wasn’t trying to make you out to be a dummy. I would argue that the line “HELLO that is EXACTLY the problem—that no one on this campus pays any attention to Indigenous people!!!!” was a pretty clear statement of my actual concern but again, it was a vent so I wasn’t super concerned with communication. Anyway, I do appreciate the apology.
they're called draconian laws because they were instituted by a cute dragon girl with cute lil horns and a big cute tail and an unbelievably harsh sense of justice
Ugh. I'm sorry, can you go back to refusing to make eye contact with me, struggling to control your breathing, and occasionally blinking away tears. I know, I know, it's just that I've been with enough dissociative types that your dead-eyed forward stare looks kinda consensual, and it's really harshing the vibe.
huge fan of the depth of a good purple but another area that draws me is definitely around aquamarine/turquoise/seafoam. you can not go wrong once the green starts getting just a tinge more blue. a gal could certainly do worse than to pull over there and stay a while
amandla
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart
