Windows and Mirrors for all - Can Goodwill Lead to Good Work? - Florence Sprague - April 2025
You have doubtless read or listened to Indigenous Land Acknowledgments in a variety of venues, too diverse to adequately enumerate, from LWV events, to the theater, even in some churches. Like many well-intentioned actions, they have come to be recognized in need of clarification and updating. A powerful op-ed piece in the New York Times in January “Enough with the Land Acknowledgments” by Kathleen DuVal of the University of North Carolina, urges us all to think carefully about how we approach these statements.
Professor DuVal argues that in some contexts these statements have outlived their usefulness. Their purpose is to “make us more aware of the dispossession and violence that occurred in the establishment and expansion of the United States.” This is needed in part because, for many people in the United States, the contemporary Indigenous population is not visible. But these statements can easily become an endpoint, rather than a jumping off point for greater change. To help repair past wrongs, the promotion of remembrance and understanding of the past must then lead to action.
