Land Acknowledgements Can Act as Bridges

 

by Nancy Corson Carter

 

“The recent trend in performing land acknowledgments indicates there is interest among the wider public to understand and learn how to honor Indigenous Peoples. Land acknowledgments can be one step towards standing up and standing with Indigenous Peoples. Love Richardson [Tribal leader and enrolled member of the Nipmuc Nation and of Narragansett descent] recalls a time she witnessed a land acknowledgment in Massachusetts so powerful that onlookers shed tears, having been previously unaware of the close relationship Indigenous Peoples have with the land, ignorant to the atrocities performed by colonial settlers. At that moment, allies were created and existing allies fortified their fight. Land acknowledgments have the power to center the interconnectedness of land and people, to pay tribute to the original stewards of the land.”1      

This statement by tribal people helps us begin to understand the power of Land Acknowledgments.  When our church, The Church of Reconciliation in Chapel Hill, NC, studied the Doctrine of Discovery in 2018, such an acknowledgment emerged. This process was led by PEC members who had participated in the national PEC conference, “Blessing the Waters of Life: Justice and Healing for Our Watersheds,” in September 2017 at Menucha Retreat and Conference Center near Portland, Oregon.  While there we had the honor of visiting with and learning from tribal peoples in the Colombia River watershed.

We now have, as a reminder of what we learned there, this statement, which is posted permanently in our narthex, signed by our minister and by the facilitator of Earth Care:

HONORING FIRST PEOPLE AND THE LAND

The Church of Reconciliation Earth Care Committee’s 2018 study of the Doctrine of Discovery prompts us to recognize the Indigenous People who came before us on the lands we now inhabit in North Carolina.

 

The Doctrine of Discovery is a philosophical and legal framework dating to 15th-century European papal decrees. This framework gave Christian governments a false moral rationale for invading and seizing indigenous land and people around the world. Its effects, including intergenerational trauma, still linger in our legal and social systems. 

 

We confess our complicity in this sinful doctrine, and we are grateful that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), by official apologies to Indigenous People harmed by colonization, has led the way to listening and to repentance. With the whole church, we intend further reconciliation through mutual relationships of loving care and respect.

 

We acknowledge that we live on land traditionally belonging to and cared for by  Indigenous People now formally recognized as:

 

                  Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation

                  Lumbee Tribe

                  Sappony

                  Eastern Band of Cherokee

                  Cohaire Intra-Tribal Council, Inc.

                  Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe

                  Meherrin Nation

                  Waccamaw-Siouan Tribe

 

They are our neighbors, those we are commanded to love as ourselves as we heed Christ’s call to the healing of people, of land, and all Creation.

                                         

                                         

We have found that such an acknowledgment must be validated over and over by listening and learning from our Indigenous brothers and sisters. The finest example I’ve learned of lately is being carried out by Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. In the Fall of 2024, in their quarterly, the Abbey Banner, Abbot Douglas Mullin, O.S.B. writes of Saint John’s participating in a Native Nations Task Force. Their intention is “to demonstrate a genuine commitment to rectifying past wrongs and supporting the flourishing of Indigenous communities and people.  We recognize that true reconciliation and healing require more than good intentions and nice words—they demand concrete actions, ongoing commitment, and a willingness to listen and learn from those who have been harmed.”2

We must hope that individually and collectively the Holy Spirit will help this truth to bloom for us all!

1 from CULTURAL SURVIVAL, “Land Acknowledgments Can Act as Bridges”

2”When Good Intentions Go Awry,” by Abbot Douglas Mullin, O.S.B., Saint John’s Abbey’s quarterly, Abbey Banner, Fall 2024 , p.5. 

 An extra Note : October 11, 2021 was the first time a U.S. president, Joe Biden, officially recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

 

Nancy Corson Carter, professor emerita of humanities at Eckerd College, has published THREE poetry books, Dragon Poems The Sourdough Dream Kit, and  A Green Bough:  Poems for Renewal (most recent) and three poetry chapbooks. Some of her poems, drawings, and photos appear in her nonfiction book, Martha, Mary, and Jesus: Weaving Action and Contemplation in Daily Life, and in her memoir, The Never-Quite-Ending War: a WWII GI Daughter's Stories. Website: nancycorsoncarter.com