I've mentioned this before but as I learn more about Indigenous history here I can't help but see more and more problems with how land acknowledgements are done. Like they're already bad cause they're so often simply a way for insititions to acknowledge that the land was stolen without actually doing anything to give the land back. But with that, they also create this false impression that only one Indigenous nation lived in any one area or state prior to colonization, isolated from the others.
Like I can't speak to other areas but here in what is now the "midwest" that is just laughably untrue. For one, trade links both between Indigenous people and with Europeans brought thousands of people together living in the same area. With that, the creation of the original 13 colonies sent dozens of Indigenous people fleeing their genocidal efforts westward. People like the Shawnee and the Lenape would settle alongside, intermarry, and trade with people who already lived here like the Miami and the Potawatomi. And far from some dystopic flood of peoples, the Indigenous nations here would build some of the most prosperous Indigenous communities that we have documentation of.
In Kekionga (what is now Fort Wayne, Indiana) Miami, Lenape, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Odawa, Chippewa, and many others grew miles upon miles of crops which fed all. Incomprehensible amounts of high value trade goods from silver to dyed cloth to luxuries like cookware all flowed in in exchange for the furs Europeans sold back across the Atlantic. And it was far from an outlier. From the northern tip of Michigan to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, these communities thrived even in the face of growing colonial threats.
And it was specifically because of this prosperity that Kentucky raiders to the south and large land speculators like George Washington back east so desperately wanted this land. Indeed when the US invaded this land in 1791 and 92, it was these communities which built a huge confederation which dealt the colonizers the largest defeat they would ever face at the hands of an Indigenous army (nearly 3x the number of American casualties as in Custer's famous defeat) led by the Miami Little Turtle, the Shawnee Blue Jacket, and the Lenape Buckongahelas.
And so, from what I have seen, when land acknowledgements are done here, this multicultural history is erased in favor of only mentioning the Miami. But of course they often make no mention of how the Miami Indians of Indiana are still fucking here and are fighting to regain their federal recognition that was illegally stripped from them in 1897. Or how they even have a gofundme you can donate to which helps to restore the facilities they currently have and pays for the attorney fees in their fight for recognition.
Instead, land acknowledgements made by institutions like Miami University in Ohio or by individuals at places like Indiana University only mention the Miami, or sometimes briefly also mention the Shawnee. Thus, even in an effort to acknowledge Indigenous history, they erase this multicultural history and sidestep the issue of actually supporting and returning land the the actual Indigenous people who still live here.
