Indigenous land acknowledgments: a good step, but fundamental structural change is what's needed

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Air date: 
Wed, 12/08/2021 - 8:00am to 9:00am
Co-host Jacqueline Keeler examines the growing use of land acknowledgments by organizations and institutions

 

A starting point for the discussion, from 2nd Wednesday co-host Jacqueline Keeler, Portland-based Native American writer and activist, enrolled in the Navajo Nation and of Yankton Dakota descent:


The reality is that most non-Native Americans can live and die for generations in a place and not know the names of the tribes on whose homelands they live. This is why Native activists have pushed for land acknowledgments. However, is this not enough? Is it just performative? The power imbalances created by colonization and slavery, which continue through white supremacy and corporate domination, won't change without a fundamental realignment of the underlying  power structure. This is why the solution has to be structural. Band-aids are not an adequate fix. The society created through colonization and Manifest Destiny is fundamentally and structurally antagonistic to Indigenous people and their lands and cultures. It has to be to protect U.S. land claims and authority.

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