JANUARY 14, 2025 – Last Sunday my wife and I took our nine-year-old granddaughter to a play at the renowned Children’s Theater Company (CTC) adjacent to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. While we wandered around the lobby waiting for the theater doors to open, I noticed the “Land Acknowledgment” posted off to the side. It was similar to other “Land Acknowledgments” that have become de rigueur among DEI policies of arts venues here in the Twin Cities and elsewhere.
The CTC version starts off with the statement, “Children’s Theatre Company acknowledges that the theatre was established on land that the Wahpekute Tribe of the Dakota nation still calls home.” It continues with four robust paragraphs describing the genocidal history of the Dakota, culminating in “the Dakota War in 1863” [sic; it was actually 1862], and the largest mass execution in American history, when on the day after Christmas 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged after summary trials.
I’ve read extensively about the Dakota War. Based on commonly held principles of ethics and morality, I am quite naturally horrified by the brutal violence that was committed by both sides of the conflict and the appalling cruel injustice perpetrated by government agents and military and political authorities. Nevertheless, in reading the CTC “Land Acknowledgment”—and not for the first time—I found myself yanked by the sleeves and pulled involuntarily into a kind of historical threshing machine. When I came out the other side of the “Land Acknowledgment” text, my thoughts and emotions were in tatters, just as they had been on every prior exposure to “Land Acknowledgments” at local theaters, museums, and concert halls. But as also occurs every time I’m thrashed by the thresher, I quickly reassembled myself and went on to enjoy the show that had drawn me to the venue in the first place.
At this juncture I must confess to being somewhat of a cynic about “Land Acknowledgments.” I must also concede, however, that this cynicism is at odds with my standard rant that to improve our course into the murky future, we need to devote more time, thought and effort to understanding the past; and a central part of that exercise is coming to grips with a lot of bad acts committed by our mainstream cultural forebears.
Exhibit A in this regard is the Original Sin of American history, followed by the manipulated failure of Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, and the institutionalized marginalization of Blacks ever since. That marginalization and its adverse ramifications continue to exact a chronic and burdensome tax on the whole of society. The first step in repealing that tax is acknowledgment of all that history—a step that the nationally dominant personality cult posing as a political party wants to avoid, prevent, preclude, denigrate, and at worst, explicitly outlaw.
Nevertheless, the “Land Acknowledgment” is fraught with inconvenient contradiction, inconsistency and misguided intentions.
In the first place, it focuses expressly on a tribe of the Dakota Nation. The earliest date in the Acknowledgment is 1600. Omitted is the story before that year—and before the Dakota. Also unmentioned are the Ojibwe, whose origins were far to the east and who by 1750 were expanding into what later became Wisconsin and Minnesota. By force of arms they pushed the Dakota farther west and south. Moreover, though archaeological relics provide evidence that the Dakota had occupied this area reaching back to 1000 CE, this region had been inhabited for 4,000 years before that, as established by petroglyphs and spearheads dating back that far. In any event, numerous Native tribes outside the “Dakota Nation” trace their origins to Minnesota. The “Land Acknowledgment” makes no mention of any of this.
Why not? After, say, two millennia, is history irrelevant? Can that be said of the ancient lands of Israel, Judea, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, China, Japan and Korea, not to mention the vast areas of sub-Sahara Africa. Has time has rendered them all irrelevant to our understanding of today’s world.
Perhaps time and shifts in power and influence eventually dilute all injustice and savagery to a library bin of innocuous books. How long, then, before the injustice and brutality committed by us likewise fade from public consciousness?
Yet, I wonder . . . Are the descendants of people responsible for past wrongs burdened with a duty to atone? At what individual and aggregate cost and for whose benefit? Is the moral debt of a white person with Mayflower connections higher than a white American who arrived here only a year ago? Are permanent resident non-citizens exempt from indictment? Likewise, is a person who can prove (through DNA analysis) they are 100% Native entitled to greater moral and financial reparation than someone who is under 50%? Are reparations to proportioned based on a recipient’s percentage of Native DNA? What if the Native DNA is a higher percentage Ojibwe than Dakota? Should a white person living in New England contribute to the moral and monetary compensation?
The same troubling—and in large measure impossibly ludicrous—combinations and permutations apply with equal force to all other Native people in America, not to mention Black Americans, and, to be entirely consistent, the progeny of Japanese Americans interned during WW II and Chinese laborers abused by the railroads in the latter half of the 19th century.
And so on and so forth.
I’m just not sure how far we are expected to take this or what we are supposed to do—we who attend plays, concerts, and exhibitions at venues with “Land Acknowledgments” hanging on the walls, printed in the programs, and published on web pages. Are we to seek out people who identify as Native and acknowledge our ancestors’ complicity and therefore, our own? But where are we to look for them? . . . among the people attending the performance/exhibition? How would we know unless—assuming they’re present—they choose to broadcast their identity? Or are we to make pilgrimages to three of the four Dakota reservations in Minnesota, buttonhole a random member or two and shout out that we acknowledge we’re heirs to a criminal past?
I say three of the four, since the fourth—the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux (Dakota)—are the wealthiest tribe in America, with a total net worth of $2.7 billion among 480 members; each receiving casino income of around $84,000 per month. By luck and smarts, they have achieved fair recompense for the wrongs committed against their great-great-great-great-great grandparents 162 years ago.
Note, I avoided mention of the other seven reservations in Minnesota, which are Anishinaabe (Chippewa, Ojibwe), since they were enemies of the Dakota.
Gosh, but this is getting complicated—and before we grapple with the question begged by the “Land Acknowledgments” emphasized by local arts groups: Why don’t we see “Land Acknowledgments” among any other sectors of society, public or private? Why not at our local bank, school, gym, city hall or shopping mall? Or—are we ready for this—when we buy or sell a home? Why isn’t the whole concept of “Land Acknowledgment” pushed through the state legislature, such that the acknowledgment be required in every instrument of conveyance of an interest in Minnesota real estate (i.e. deed, mortgage, easement, etc.)?
But here’s the crux of the matter: as much as we white liberals seek to be recognized for our words of penance, our actions amount to an inaudible whisper into the mighty winds of history. Largely out of sight and out of mind are the actual Native people living today on remote reservations—or clustered often in marginalized sections of the inner city. What actions are we taking politically and governmentally to raise awareness, address social ills that plague many Native communities and improve education and vocational opportunities for Native youth? Most directly, how many of us volunteer our time and effort to organizations that serve the Native population?
The hard, sad truth is that our non-Native forebears—and the diseases they brought to this hemisphere—advanced with inexorable, genocidal effect, decimating the indigenous inhabitants. The numbers and influence of their progeny today are too insignificant to stir a march on St. Paul, let alone Washington.
Perhaps the best that can be done is to amend the “Land Acknowledgments” at CTC and the Art Institute to include online information on how we can step up our game from mere “acknowledgment” to concrete, meaningful action. In the meantime, let’s be honest: drafting a “Land Acknowledgment” and slapping it on the wall is a helluva lot easier for all concerned—except the Native people themselves.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
