#land acknowledgement

[aut1sm-mess]

Important

Good morning, evening, afternoon, or night. As most people know, today's Thanksgiving. A holiday with an absolutely DISGUSTING history that a good portion chooses to completely ignore. Because hey, why care about the millions of innocent people who died because of fucked up white people when we can just celebrate like this never happened.

This holiday is messed the hell up. When you eat your turkey and all the other weird food, think about this history take a moment to acknowledge the fact that both Canada and the U.S. are built completely off of land that was stolen from people who were here for thousands of years. Thanks, for taking the time to read this.

[sepdet]

Indigenous People's Day

I am an immigrant to the land of the Tongva, aka the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians.

Californians know this area as Los Angeles County, Orange County and the Channel Islands.

There's many photos and videos teaching and sharing their history and traditions on the website linked above. Here's one.

[fatchance]

“Cochise County and the contemporary borderlands were once home to diverse indigenous communities, including the Chiricahua Apache, Opata, O’odham, and more. Genocide, forced relocation, and assimilation into other cultures have severely limited the modern presence of these groups in Cochise County, one of two counties in Arizona lacking federally recognized tribal lands. We recognize that this land was historically stewarded by these diverse indigenous groups and encourage our participants to explore the past, present, and future impacts of these tribes.”

–The Land Acknowledgement statement of the Cochise County and  Borderlands Master Naturalist Program.

Photo: view of Rincon Mountain foothills from Empirita Road, Cochise County, Arizona. 

[empress-lotus]

Unceded ancestral lands of the Council of Three Fires: Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi, as well as over a dozen tribes, including the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac and Fox.

AKA : Chicago

[letterstothefutureme]

Regarding Land Acknowledgements

If you’re going to do a land acknowledgment, it should be followed up with donations to a Tribal Council or Native American advocacy organization.

Saying you’re on colonized land while doing nothing to meaningfully contribute to the welfare of the colonized is no different than how we derive the names of US states and counties from their Indigenous language origins.

Just saying words is a form of colonialism. You’re tokenizing Indigenous people for performative activism.

Less talk, more activism.

[kaywina]

Post for Orange Shirt Day 🧡

I have the day off today for the Truth & Reconciliation holiday, and wanted to do some learning about the history of my area as part of that. I live and work on the traditional and unceded territory of the Semiahmoo First Nation, part of the broader Coast Salish peoples, and closely related to the Lummi Nation, also called Lhaq’temish People of the Sea. Although I am not a member of that group, I’m surrounded by the indigenous history of the area. Many of my favorite places nearby have a long local history that predates colonialism. In Crescent Beach, where I take my son and swim in the ocean, there is a rock with a faded inscription detailing a great flood in the area, and I learned today that Semiahmoo oral history has a powerful song about that flood. I am grateful I have heard it, and now better understand the history of that area.

At least once a week, often several times, I find myself on the Semiahmoo trail. Online sources say that the origin of that trial was a wagon route built by European settlers in the late 1800s, and make reference to verbal legends of any earlier origin as myth and a "romantic notion". These sources show the importance of respecting the word-of-mouth stories of indigenous peoples as valid history. Especially, how they’re often ignored, erased, and invalidated in historical accounts with a colonial bias. It certainly isn’t hard to imagine, like much of modern colonial society, the Semiahmoo trail being built upon an unrecognized or unacknowledged foundation laid by indigenous people. Much of history, to me at least, is the beliefs we form from a collection of often-contradictory rather than complementary sources. That certainly seems to me to be the case with the Semiahmoo Trail. Regardless of who first used that route through the forest, I won’t ignore the fact that many of the trails I use and enjoy today were originally created by those who were here long before my ancestors came from Europe.

That’s what I choose to believe, and that’s what I will teach my son.

[tripleaxelrose]

There’s a land acknowledgment in the closing credits of Stars on Mars.

I cannot stop thinking about this.

[manwalksintobar]

we acknowledge ourselves  // Allison Akootchook Warden

before we bring this meeting to order we want to acknowledge ourselves, the Kaktoviġmiut yes, Siliun, this is how they are doing things nowadays                   we are doing it right                      we acknowledge ourselves, the Kaktoviġmiut   we are the people of this island and of the mountains and lands around us                            and all our traditional hunting areas                                                                                                        since before the military came                                                                       and bulldozed our old sod houses our entire village                                                so they could make a runway and yes we are still angry about that                                                                   and we are still wanting reparations for what they did                                                                                they finally did take that hangar down and it looks better without that big old thing on there and I know we are still looking for                        what was lost in the nuna on that day                                                                                         what they did was wrong and we are still here                        and even though the military still today has that huge other hangar                                                                                                       on the other side with that                                                                                                                              military man                                                                                                    who lives in there that we have                                                                                                                                       never met                                                                and the other that relieves him every three weeks or so   we were here before they put those big humongous radar ears up       and then took them down   and yes they left many barrels and still never got all of them we all want all their residue                to be     off our island forever                                                      we were here before                               the government started drawing arbitrary lines                                         encasing us into this wildlife refuge                                       without our full knowledge or consent where strangers break into our cabins on our own land                                                      up in the mountains each and every year                        no matter how many signs we put or what kind of locks we use          and because of these borders not our own                                           we cannot hunt the way                                                       our relatives in other                                                                                      villages hunt we have more restrictions and regulations than the others                           yet we still are able to get the food we need                                                around the land we care for and know ii, we are still fighting these arbitrary borders and lines today, thank you Ekowan and also thank you aŋaaluk for those letters you put out                                                                                they needed to see that and all of us fighting for our ways of life and as we continue to fight even in this strange language we had to learn to fight them with                                                         arii, piliaqsuŋa taniktun uqaġama we acknowledge our Elders that are still on this land and our Ancestors                               buried just over there and over there too                                        and our own people who are still living here                                           especially the little ones like Uqumaiḷaq here                                                          and all our future relatives yet to be born we acknowledge and remember            that the military did experiments without our consent                       on our Elders when they were kids                                and the government has never owned up to these injustices but we remember what was done and yes some Elders did get compensated for that radioactive iodine they put in their veins                                                                   yet not for the other forced experiments and we remember how we were also made to send our young people away to go to school          and how they came back                    having to relearn their own language                               and many of them left right away again                                                                yet many stayed home                                                                       and the others always return                                                                                        and belong home here we the Kaktoviġmiut remember how we have always been whole                                               nakuurugut                                      we are good we have always been good                        living here in the ways taught to us by our Elders                                                                                  and our Elders’ Elders’ Elders and even though there were two waves of diseases that we didn’t know                          how to fight                                   naturally                            we lost many of our people                                  yet many of us survived                                            those waves and since we are talking about these things in a community hall meeting     ��                might as well mention the alcohol that came to kill us                         and the cancers that we can guess where those came from too                             and the fog of smoke and qaaq that has stayed and lingered and I know that we aren’t used to acknowledging ourselves             but when me and Fannie went to the big meeting in Anchorage                                                                            they did one of these                                                  land acknowledgments                                 so apparently everyone is starting to remember and we remember too          how to acknowledge one another                 and how we remember our relatives and how we are related                    we remember how to sing and dance and how to take care of                       the land because we need to acknowledge our young people too         even the ones who are pretending they don’t understand                                                                        or can’t talk yet                                                                             we know you are paying attention yet we also want to say the young ones have also been having a lack of    listening                              and they need to fix that right now oh and of course our relationship to the animals            the aġviq, the tuttu, the fish, the nanuk, the qavvik                            oh yes and the aiviq and the beluga whale                                  and I know I am forgetting some animals thank you Ukpik      and we were here before the tourists started to travel here to see our        polar bears                                                                     without giving back to our community                                         and yes we are starting to regulate those tourists too                             as a community                     working together yes the amaġuq and I know we have too many animals to mention right now        and we need to get started with these door prizes soon                    yet let me say one more time                             because I see that Michael just came in the door                           we the Kaktoviġmiut acknowledge ourselves                                      sovereign here on our own land                                         sovereign here forevermore                                                                        despite all of these other ways                                             in which they thought they could make us forget                                                                        or think we were broken               we are whole and good and we remember all of it                                                                        an unbroken line                                                                              going all the way                                                                                          all the way                                                                                              all the way                                                                                                            back from the time before the time before                                                             nakuurugut             we are the Kaktoviġmiut, the original people of this place             we have never ceded our lands             we always remember our long long long ago ways that we are living even today and even though we are thankful for many     modern tools that we put to use in the ways that our Elders agree with the outsiders’ ways are not our ways we belong here               and on our mountains and all the places near that we travel for food                                                                                                    and on the ocean             we remember who we are             today and forevermore             we acknowledge ourselves             in our power as Iñupiaq                           aulayaiqsimarugut Kaktoviġmiut                                                             tavra! now Alasuuraq will draw the first prize because I believe he is our oldest     Elder here    we will draw a couple few more door prizes                                                         now at the start                              and then the rest at the end of the meeting                                   I know we have a lot to talk about

[jotrolldance]

some July readings

The theme for this set of readings is things that have pushed me – challenging me to think about how to make my work more honest, do better for people who are harmed by different axes of oppression than me, and stretch my creativity to be more accessible. Disabled people’s exclusion from indoor spaces is a civil rights violation, not an annoyance “The woman in the story may get her wish and…

[verolynne]

It is lovely to be here with you all. Thank you to the symposium organizers who have asked me to be here and for your hard work putting this gathering on. And thank you to ALL the folks who have made it possible for us to be here, including the people who built this building and who clean it and care for it everyday; including the people who are being violently exploited in this country and around the globe for their resources and labor so that we can exist in this air conditioned hotel with access to clean water and food, able to sit in relative safety from military attacks or the police barging in. And including and honoring native and first nations communities upon whose land we are currently on and whose colonization and genocide have also allowed us to be here.

[sk3let0rz]

If you’re including a land acknowledgment statement and it DOESN’T end by saying ‘the indigenous people should have their land returned to them or they should be compensated for their loss’ you are part of the problem.

Colonialism is bad. Living in a post colonial country that doesn’t consider how we can do better in our present is wrong. Studying colonialism and imperialism is useless if you don’t use that knowledge to create a better system.

The indigenous people of your land are still alive and if you oppose colonialism you would center them in your work. It’s wrong to use performative justice to assuage your guilt. This is NOT all we can do. We can do so much more. We are past the talking about it and raising awareness stage and onto the doing something by fundamentally changing the system.

The United States should not exist. It was founded on settler colonialism and if you are a moral person you would find it unethical to support the metropole. Peter Wolfe said settler colonialism is an ongoing situation and not an event. Americans are still in this ongoing situation of settler colonialism with the indigenous tribes and that extends to the ‘post colonial US’ that we know now. Land acknowledgements without calls for meaningful action support the metropole.

[marinaishealing]

South Dakota's Bazille is Wakinyan Cante Waokiya Wicasaon

Whether its the Bronx or the Black Hills, All Rap is Local Attributions All photos and graphic elements featured in collages copyright of Bazille, used with permission. All collages and writing by Sylvia Marina Martinez Map in featured collage created by thefirstscout.blogspot.com and used with permission I’ve always thought of rap as a form of folk music or street journalism such that it is…

[thetovplace]

Joint 4th place goes to Wisconsin, Georgia, and Massachusetts with a special award going to New Mexico because they sent it, but didn't secure the contents enough and it all fell out.

Our mail carrier knocked on the door to tell us that the contents were missing before it got to the post office. Thanks for spending $3.03 though!

Fun thing: Wisconsin has a land acknowledgement!

[quotesfromall]

Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent

Nathan Dane, Northwest Ordinance

[brown-spider]

imo the pointing meme was 1,000x’s funnier in ITSV than in ATSV

[revindicatedbyhistory]

do anglos know wrt the malvinas situation that argentina was a neocolony of the uk for a good chunk of post independence history