It seems quite simple: land belongs to whomever has a deed to it. That
seems clear-cut here in the U.S. But things are usually not as simple as they
seem on the surface: there haven’t always been deeds--and were the first deeds legitimate?
This matter impinges on the issue of the treatment/mistreatment of indigenous
peoples in the U.S. and elsewhere.
The Claim of
the American Indians
As is widely known, for thousands of years the Jews have claimed that
the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was given to them
by the Creator God and it rightfully belongs to them in perpetuity.
While it is not codified in a holy book such as the Jews have in the
Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), Native Americans have also claimed that the lands of
North America were given to them by the Great Spirit.
Here are
words attributed to Tasunke Witko (a.k.a. Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota, d. 1877):
We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game. But you have come here; you are taking my land from me; you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live.
Land Acknowledgement
In recent years there has been a movement to begin public meetings of
people in the dominant U.S. culture with a statement acknowledging that they
are gathered on lands that once belonged to others—and not necessarily acquired
justly.
Last week Ruth Harder, my pastor, made a land acknowledgement at the
opening of the Mennonite Church USA convention in Kansas City. Following her
example, I made a similar but much shorter acknowledgement as worship leader at
Rainbow Mennonite Church (RMC) this past Sunday.
Here is
what I said:
We acknowledge as we gather at this place that this is land that once was home to the Kaw/Kansa and Osage Native Americans and that it was not necessarily acquired from them in a just manner. We regret the unjust deeds done in the past and commit ourselves now to work for peace and reconciliation with all people and with the natural world in the future.
But as I wrote above, things are not usually as simple as they seem on
the surface. For example, while the land on which RMC’s building stands was
ceded to the U.S. by an 1825 treaty agreed to by the Kaw Nation, it seems now
that it was clearly a treaty that was most disadvantageous for the Native
Americans.
On the other hand, the Kaw/Kansa tribe had not been on that land stretching
back for centuries. They had migrated there from east of the Mississippi River.
Did they ever acknowledge that they were occupying land once claimed as
homeland by others? Probably not.
George C. Sibley, an
“Indian agent” assigned to Fort Osage (in west-central Missouri) in 1808, noted
that the Kaw/Kansa nation was “seldom at peace with any of their neighbors,
except the Osage.” The Pawnee Indians, who had been in the region earlier, were
their “traditional enemies.”
Much of that tension
among the Native American tribes was most likely over the question of who had
claim to the land they were on.
What Can We Do?
We can’t change the past, but we can use recognition of past injustices
as a spur to work for justice now. Land acknowledgement is not for the purpose
of making us feel guilty for the past; rather, it is to encourage us to work
for justice in the future.
.jpg)