In the comedy series “Reservation Dogs” about four Native American teens growing up on a reservation in eastern Oklahoma, one scene parodies land acknowledgments. A visiting doctoral student offers a land acknowledgment to pay respects to the traditional caretakers of the land, recognizing the local tribes.
Then she takes it further, acknowledging what came before them. “Our Neanderthal relatives,” she said, and “the dinosaur nation,” the “star people” and “our reptilian relatives,” too.
Yes, the scene is silly. But an actual Indigenous land acknowledgment for the city of Durango is quite serious. And delicate. City Council has to get just right an official statement to recognize original stewards that inhabited the Durango area where city business, meetings and gatherings are taking place.
It must be exacting with each word carrying its weight for a land acknowledgment to be meaningful. The work will be in the sincerity of the words.
Looking back at legacy, of course, is fundamental. The question is, how forward-thinking and ambitious should a Durango land acknowledgment be? How would it grow relationships and engagement? Or celebrate culture or educate about Native sovereignty? Is reconciliation too far a reach?
Kevin Gover, a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and undersecretary for museums and culture at the Smithsonian Institution, told NPR if a land acknowledgment “becomes routine, or worse yet, is strictly performative, then it has no meaning at all. It goes in one ear and out the other.”
Gover said one or two Smithsonian museums have land acknowledgments. The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., is one of them. Its acknowledgment is only one sentence long – “We gratefully acknowledge the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today.”
Durango’s cross-functional diversity, equity and inclusion team will consult with tribal members and organizations for guidance on how to be recognized. Much community input will be needed, too.
In recent years, land acknowledgments are increasingly common before public and private events. We’ll likely hear them more often – at sporting events, school programs, weddings. Any place where people come together on land originally stewarded by others.
A Durango land acknowledgment is appropriate. At its core, it would have to come from a place of genuine respect and support.
Grover’s point of the importance of it not being “routine” or “performative” is wise.
The right tone is essential, too, as well as the spirit in which it’s delivered.
Consider the drone of schoolchildren reciting by rote “The Pledge of Allegiance.” It rarely inspires.
Stack this next to the moving performance of Chris Stapleton singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the 2023 Super Bowl that brought fans to tears, including Eagles coach Nick Sirianni. Stapleton’s rendition was fresh for a song written in 1814 and adopted by Congress in 1931 as the U.S. national anthem. It got to people.
Former Mayor Barbara Noseworthy recited her own personal land acknowledgment at the beginning of meetings. She always made clear it was her own statement and it did not represent the Council or the city. Noseworthy’s land acknowledgment said that the greater Durango area was for thousands of years occupied by numerous Indigenous peoples, who were forcibly removed by the U.S. government.
Fort Lewis College uses a similar one to precede on-campus events. FLC calls attention to the U.S. government’s forcible removal of the Nuuchiu people from ancestral homelands, and recognizes the various tribes and nations that occupied the region well before the U.S.
Each word in a land acknowledgment has to matter. We just want it to mean something to those with ancestral ties to this place.
