When recently asked to give a talk, I recalled how many liberals begin their talks by making land acknowledgment statements.
A sample statement might read:
We wish to acknowledge that we gather together to study at [woke university] on lands that have been stewarded through many centuries by the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations who have been here since time immemorial. We honor the communities native to this continent, and recognize that our country was built on Indigenous homelands. We pay our respects to the millions of Indigenous people throughout history who have protected our lands, waters, and animals. We also recognize and honor the traditional homelands of the… We acknowledge that many other tribes who consider this area their traditional homeland, including the…
Such statements recognize the indigenous tribes that once occupied the lands. We are called to regret the brutal cultural absorption of the native peoples who were living in harmony with nature and other tribes. It insinuates that, as continuators of the colonization, we somehow participate in that process.
Such exercises are part of the woke narrative that hates any manifestation of Western civilization. Thus, small acts like land acknowledgments serve to reinforce these leftist obsessions and spread guilt for being Western.
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Trying to Understand
Despite my objections to the practice, I wondered how my statement might read. Giving a talk in Pennsylvania, for example, would require me to lament my complicity in destroying the peaceful life and culture of a local tribe or two. Perhaps I could go through the motions as an exercise to help me understand the practice.
I was completely unaware of what unfortunate tribes might have occupied the place of such a talk. The custom is to mention several tribes to cover all the bases. A resident of Houston, for example, might choose between fifty nations and tribes that all lived in the area, hopefully not all at the same time.
Pennsylvania Candidates
When looking up the proper formulas for land acknowledgment statements in Pennsylvania, I found many choices. This is the land of the Erielhonan, Haudenosaunee, Lenni-Lenape, Shawnee, Susquehannock and Tuscarora nations and the Honniasont, Saluda, Saponi, Tutelo and Wenrohronon tribes.
Not knowing which one to choose for my acknowledgment, I decided upon the Wenrohronon tribe as a candidate for special mention. I had never heard of the tribe, and it would probably be a good candidate for a people living peacefully on the land before being wiped out by “colonial deceit, disease and warfare.”
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The Wenrohronon Tribe and its Fate
The Wenrohronon were an indigenous tribe of Iroquoian stock that possibly inhabited fringe parts of northern and northwestern Pennsylvania. Not much is known of its origins and habits, save that they did not always live in Pennsylvania.
The accounts we have are from Catholic missionaries who evangelized the area starting in the seventeenth century. Otherwise, the tribe would be unknown and lost in the mists of history. Even before contact with Europeans, they were constantly involved in internecine wars with neighboring tribes, especially the warlike Iroquois.
The Wenrohronon soon became involved in the Beaver Wars of the 1640s and 50s, which were exclusively between tribes for control of the beaver trade. The brutal conflicts soon turned genocidal as the Iroquois decimated tribe after tribe. The Iroquois conquered and annihilated the Wenrohronon, along with several of the others on my lists of acknowledgment. This liquidation took place well before the European colonization of these specific areas.
Assimilators and People Destroyers
Wikipedia notes that, as an almost virtuous concession, “Iroquoian cultures allowed for survivors to be adopted (assimilated) into the victorious nations.” One French observer pointed out that the majority of the Iroquois were adopted captives.
It was here that I started to have problems with my land acknowledgment statements. Most of the tribes on my lists did not occupy the area for long. The Iroquois did exactly what the liberals accuse the Europeans of doing—taking lands and brutally assimilating the neighboring tribes into the culture without permission.
Indeed, the Iroquois seem to have no concern for the Wenrohronon culture. They destroyed the Wenrohronon way of life with no remorse. The Iroquois made no land acknowledgments to the Wenrohronon or any other tribes during their brutal occupation of the tribal lands. What is more, they forced the assimilation of the Wenrohronon tribe into their own, to the point that the Iroquois themselves became a vast assimilating melting pot and destroyer of other peoples.
Who to Acknowledge?
It appears my guilt for the Wenrohronon disappearance was nonexistent since it was strictly an inter-Indian affair. However, should I acknowledge the Iroquois who did what liberals accuse the Europeans of doing? Should I acknowledge a now nonexistent tribe that lived a short time in Pennsylvania? It seems hypocritical.
As my research dug deeper, I saw that many other tribes suffered similar fates, and my list to acknowledge thinned. My curated list of acknowledgment tribes curiously omitted the Iroquois, who were quite active and genocidal in Pennsylvania at the time.
I soon discovered this tendency to enslave and absorb others was not limited to fierce Iroquois but was generalized among the indigenous people throughout America. Most of these “peaceful” tribes lived in constant combat with others with little regard for neighboring cultures.
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Finally, I had to ask the question about the poor Wenrohronon. How could I be sure that this victim tribe, at some point in its distant history, did not victimize and fail to acknowledge lesser tribes? How could I be sure that had the Wenrohronon been victorious over the Iroquois during the Beaver Wars, its warriors would not have carried off captives or whole tribes to be assimilated into its culture?
Thus, I failed to find someone to acknowledge.
What I did find was a false narrative without any foundation in history. I think the evidence suggests once again that Rousseau’s “noble savage” living in harmony with nature and other tribes never existed. I hope that liberal readers will admit the truth about the above appraisal. I am not asking them to like it. All I am asking for is an acknowledgment.
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