Care and the Funny Business of Unsettling Land Acknowledgements

ABSTRACT

This article points to the “funny business” that invariably accompanies the practice of land acknowledgments. By highlighting the idea of “funny business,” we illuminate its double entrendre – its humor as well as the smoke and mirrors of what The Care Collective ([2020]. The care manifesto: The politics of interdependence. Verso.) describes as “carewashing,” communication strategies designed to proffer a sense of concern, while all the while continuing exploitative practices that deny and obstruct these very concerns. We meld humor with seriousness to interrogate land acknowledgments, expose the perplexing dilemmas of Indigenous and colonial contexts, and push past to work towards responsible relationality between Indigenous communities and settler institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Land acknowledgments
• carewashing
• Indigenous media
• humor
• decoloniality

Introduction

Episode 6, Season 2 of FX’s hit comedy show, Reservation Dogs (2021–2023) features a scene involving a land acknowledgment. Boasting a majority Indigenous cast and creative crew, the land acknowledgment scene is a delightful example of the show’s irrepressible humor and political satire as it wryly takes up the realities of what it means to be Native in present-day America. It is nestled within an episode cheekily titled “Decolonativization” and features the series teen protagonists having to sit reluctantly through a youth training facilitated by Miss M8triarch, an Indigenous PhD student from Dartmouth and Augusto Firekeeper, her Indigenous co-facilitator of their “Native American Reclamation and Decolonization Symposium” (abbreviated awkwardly as NARDS). Neither Miss M8triarch or Augusto Firekeeper seem phased by their skeptical teen audience as they stand before them on a stage, proudly dressed in ribbon skirt and ribbon shirt respectively, and spout lines such as Firekeeper’s opening, “Before I want to say anything, I want to say some things.”

Miss M8triarch’s “acknowledgment of the traditional caretakers of this land” is ingenious for its tongue-in-cheek hyperbole. It’s met by affirmative nods as she names the Caddo, Osage and Muskogee. It’s when she earnestly continues, acknowledging the Neanderthal relatives that came before them, and then the dinosaur nation, “Dinosaur oyate,” that preceded the Neanderthals, and the star people and the “reptilian relatives below and above ground,” that the show shines as political satire. Miss M8triarch’s earnest yet long list – along with her onscreen audience’s polite yet quizzical (“huh, what?”) responses – parody the well-intentioned and yet often meaningless performances of so many land acknowledgment statements that have proliferated in the past decade or so in countries like the U.S., Canada, and Australia. In this scene Reservation Dogs successfully writes humor into yet another complicated and fraught aspect of Native life in contemporary settler colonial societies.

Land acknowledgments are, as Reservation Dogs points to so well, “funny business.” They are, as we will illuminate, both spaces of outright comedy because of the types of acts they seem to encourage and simultaneously the smoke and mirrors of trying, but often not trying hard enough, to really care about the communities being evoked in these acknowledgments. To demonstrate what we mean, we take up the fraught politics and performance of our own institution’s recent land acknowledgment, which we helped facilitate and implement, interrogating its on-going practices through a framework that we believe anyone considering or engaged in land acknowledgments should be asking. In particular, we believe that environmental communication scholars can benefit from thinking through such practices, which bring to the fore the environment (land) as well as social justice as it relates to the places many of us work. As Therese Stewart-Ambo (Luiseño/Tongva) and K. Wayne Yang write, many of us work at “settler institutions” which are “a result of the growth of property and public space facilitated by modern nation-states.” They note, “Acknowledging the land … through naming the people who are in Indigenous relationship to that land is a growing social justice practice” (2021). Yet, as they and many others note, land acknowledgments don’t always support Indigenous relationality, pedagogy, and accountability to place and people, becoming instead empty gestures of supposed care (Cardinal, 2021; Lambert et al., 2021; Wood, 2021).

In this essay, we ask: how might one practice land acknowledgments as more than what The Care Collective describes as “carewashing” – communication strategies designed to proffer a sense of concern and care – while all the while continuing exploitative practices that deny and obstruct these very concerns? How might we work to unsettle carewashing – and settler colonialism more broadly – to instead engage active practices that carefully attend to supporting Indigenous peoples’ today and into the future in ways that demonstrate, as The Care Collective reminds us, not just “caring about,” which involves an emotional investment, but “caring with,” which involves activating change to structures that undermine equity (The Care Manifesto, 2020, p. 21). One way, we argue, is recognizing how humor helps both build resilience and points toward the serious. As Dallas Goldtooth (Dakota) who is not only a key member of Reservation Dogs’ creative cast and crew, but also a central organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network notes: “‘It’s easy to fall into this cynicism and negativity, but humor and joy is a way [for me] to process all of that in a way that’s generative’” (Docter-Loeb, 2022).

We can’t make this stuff up: the funny business of land acknowledgements

Perhaps it won’t be surprising to anyone that the idea of a land acknowledgment officially started to circulate on our college campus in 2016. Like on many other college campuses across the United States, our students found themselves witnessing the crisis unfolding at the Oceti Sakowin camp organized by the Standing Rock Sioux Nation to resist the Dakota Access Pipeline’s construction on their sacred lands and waters. This extremely public and politically charged flashpoint awakened many to the on-going violence of settler colonialism where Native peoples are repeatedly dispossessed of their geographic base and with it so much of their socio-cultural well-being (what scholar Patrick Wolfe has called a “structure not an event,” 2006, 338).

In the ensuing conversations of how to reckon with such on-going violence and the histories that shape them and yet are conveniently erased by the settler colonial state, the idea of land acknowledgments bloomed. We care, our students said, and to show how, we need to re-inscribe Indigenous presence – past, present and future – into our country’s consciousness and back onto this land. The process of doing so was taken seriously as campus members – students, staff, faculty and alumni (some of whom identified as Native) – went back and forth on how to do this work. It is important to note at this point that there are no Indigenous faculty at our institution, nor does it have a formalized Indigenous studies program. As authors of this paper, none of us identify as Indigenous. Instead, two of us (Salma and David) have worked with Indigenous communities for years and all three of us use decolonial methodologies to inform our engagements.

In February 2021, the college officially adopted a land acknowledgment statement, kicking off a series of activities that involved attempting to keep the institution accountable to doing more than earnestly reciting the statement at various campus events. Our statement identifies Indigenous Nations who inhabited these lands. Despite settler colonialism’s forced removals, we point to how Indigenous presence is not just pre-colonial but continues today. Part of our statement reads “we strive to understand our place within the past, present, and future of this Indigenous land by reflecting on our relationships with the human and other-than-human relatives with whom it is shared” (Gettysburg College, 2022). The who, what and why of coming to this statement, as well as a host of related educational resources is easily accessible on a specially created college webpage we maintain to help contextualize a statement that is often used to open various campus events.

Unfortunately, as we quickly learned such contextualization does not necessarily help as we listen time and again to the various ways in which speakers mangle the pronunciations of Tribal Nations when reading the statement – sometimes stumbling and looking sheepish and other times soldiering right on with unapologetic confidence. Is it too much to care to practice how to say a name the way it should be said before spouting a perfunctory obligation of care? Apparently, it is. We aren’t alone in lamenting such blatant oversight, as critiques on the careless performativity of land acknowledgments is sadly extensive both in popular media and academic spheres (Cardinal, 2021; Lambert et al., 2021; Wood, 2021).

Apparently too, as we have learned, some people care so much about these rhetorical performances that they seek to stifle and ban the speaking of them. We’ve been privy to wealthy donors who proclaim: how dare we speak these claims? They threaten with one of the best tools available to contemporary settler culture: institutional donations. Any recognition of contested lands and violence against Indigenous peoples is imagined in this context as an insult to institutional pride.

Other settlers argue that these are in fact treaty lands, negotiated squarely by Indigenous communities that gave up their land rights to settlers, not as the statement articulates “unceded” lands. While our statement seeks to unsettle the very notion of what is meant by “unceded,” such settlers argue that we must extend greater historical care to acknowledge the “winners” of such conquests. Yes, we say, they are indeed treaty lands, with much historical evidence that points to the unfair power dynamics that resulted in the reluctant giving up of lands in the inequitable, brutal, often underhanded theater of colonial conquest.

In contrast, there are many others who are positively moved by the land acknowledgment, which give us even more pause. Consider, for example, the caring stranger who contacted us to donate a horse to “inspire Native kids to revitalize their tradition.” Given that we are located east of the Appalachians in the Mid-Atlantic – far from the plains horse cultures that he referenced and imagined of our students – this well-meaning gesture made us giggle at the idea of our students fitting his stereotypical image of an “Indian on horseback.” (Of course, its neoliberal magnanimity is sadly no joke, for it speaks to deeply problematic paternalism that fuels settler colonial illusions of what it means to be Native (Mihesuah, 2004)).

Even before we went public with a statement, the funny business of land acknowledgments became apparent. For example, there’s a profound ironic comedy to learning that a faculty member who demanded to be part of the land acknowledgment, then was alternately obstructionist and absent, appears to have been a pretendian. Though it seems ludicrous that someone who claims to care about Native American issues will falsify their identity for so long, sadly this bad behavior isn’t unusual (Kolopenuk, 2023; Palmer, 2023).

Intermission: chuckling as resistance

To counter the emotional labor required to these reactions, we turn to the lighter side of funny. Humor keeps us from throwing up our hands and instead helps us face the hard work of keeping all accountable. In particular, we find solace in that other FX comedy show that emerged from the collaborative geniuses of Maori filmmakers Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi, What We Do in the Shadows (2019–2023). We reference its hilarious conceit of the “energy vampire.” As Paul Simms, who plays Colin the energy vampire, notes in a Vulture article:

The reason it [“energy vampire”] resonates with so many people is because it’s a new way of explaining something we all experience, which is those people who leave you feeling drained emotionally, even if they’re not sucking your blood (Clark, 2021).

Like with Reservation Dogs, humor in What We Do in the Shadows refuses to let dealing with difficult people (or difficulty more generally) go unrecognized. Without preaching, these shows wryly nudge us to embrace the realities of what land acknowledgments entail – the messiness of contemporary lives, Indigenous and otherwise. From deniers, to sticklers, to pretendians and then the even more confounding complexities of confronting hierarchies of status versus non-status belonging internalized by Indigenous groups and created by the perverse politics of settler colonial recognitions, this messiness is real.

Making up for carelessness: the reparative responsibility of land acknowledgments

Let us return to Reservation Dogs’ “Decolonativization” episode as it provides insights not just through in its humor, but by using humor to then brace for conflicts that arise as part of the messiness of life. Moving from the shenanigans of Miss M8triarch and Firekeeper to its teen protagonists, the episode reveals its serious heft. The show turns us towards Willy Jack who is not only cynical about the symposium but derisive towards her peer, Jackie, who belongs to a rival “gang.” During a “trust fall” activity where they are partnered, Willy Jack doesn’t catch Jackie. When Jackie lands hard on the ground, the show does not indulge in humor, instead it exposes the horror of Willy Jack’s actions. While Willy Jack had used a taunt about Jackie’s older brother as she fell, she now learns that her comments were particularly hurtful as Jackie lost her brother at a young age. Contrite, she tries to make things up with Jackie, who is not so willing to forgive as there’s too much that needs mending.

Land acknowledgments, dare we say, are like Willy Jack’s contrition. They are extended as genuine apologies. But, much too often, they are embedded so deeply in settler colonialism’s on-going hijinks – its funny business – that they ring hollow. Given the innumerable challenges of land acknowledgments’ funny business, how do we push through to responsibly care with Indigenous communities in ways that make our land acknowledgment truly reparative? Like Reservation Dogs, we can turn to humor to help cope with absurdities, but we also mustn’t turn a blind eye to serious problems.

Even as we brace ourselves with laughter, we draw on less humorous resources to support our efforts. From the Native Governance Center’s Beyond Land Acknowledgment website (2019) to academic articles such as Theresa Stewart-Ambo and K. Wayne Yang’s “Beyond Land Acknowledgment in Settler Institutions,” (2021) we benefit from being in conversation with a network of critical care work emerging from Indigenous spaces that hold land acknowledgments accountable as statements of contrition. As these resources note, land acknowledgments require actions not just words that engage solidarity for Indigenous concerns.

We have always thought of our land acknowledgment as actions, as eloquently inspired by one of our community partners, Curtis Zunigha (Delaware Tribe of Indians), in the inaugural event we held on campus. Yet, for actions to work, as noted by the Native Governance Center, we require plans that involve on-going research and resource assessment. In terms of resources, our Land Acknowledgment Committee has no monetary budget, and we are told again and again, in the climate of higher education’s financial crises, putting money towards building presence through Indigenous hires (faculty or staff) is a non-starter. We joke about how the one thing the President’s Office did put money towards – a symbolic plaque supposed to grace the campus grounds – arrived a year late for its own dedication. Using sheer tenacity to cobble together finances to bring events focused on Indigenous issues to campus, we seek to not only disrupt settler innocence but build networks of relationality and responsibility both on-campus and off. Thus, while our community can learn about buried histories and erased presents, we can also actively bend the arc towards Indigenous futurities – volunteering time to our local and national Indigenous organizations, donating to Indigenous causes, and re-thinking the way we symbolically and materially mark the land.

Our acts are small, and most often depend on resources that seem more valuable than money – our time, creativity, as well as our on-going research and networks in Indigenous and decolonial studies. We use these resources to push against the privileging of economic logics that we find ourselves up against. Thus, we are humbled when our acts bloom into something potentially decolonial. Take, for example, the way the land acknowledgment weaves onto the ongoing work at our small ¾ acre college farm. Here students, staff, and members from beyond the college melded on-going practices involving our local migrant Latinx communities with a focus on three sisters’ agroecology to engage a form of land pedagogy that brings our region’s Indigenous pasts, presents and futures into this space of food sovereignty (Gilsoul, 2022). Weaving small acts such as these in with others – actively celebrating Indigenous peoples not just on the institutionally approved Indigenous Peoples’ Day but throughout the year (e.g. as part of Peace and Justice week, lecture series, library showcases, student club activities, protest participation, etc.) – become a way we thread Indigenous agency into the fabric of our institution (Timeline of Activities, 2023). While our acts are often frustrated by the very settler colonial logics they seek to disrupt, understanding our own part in them as not just contrite but also actively reflexive, even if it means facing up to culpability and discomfort – as we see in Reservation Dogs – has to be the path forward to build relationality and trust between settler institutions and Indigenous communities.

Conclusion

A reparative land acknowledgment acts as a means to build a depth of place – a storied sense of how we must be accountable to the land we occupy and recognize its meanings beyond those of settler colonial logics. It works to remap Indigenous pasts, presents, and futures as integral to where and who we are and want to be. As the Conference on Academic Library Management – wonderfully and surely tongue-in-cheek contracted as CALM – reminds us on its Land Acknowledgment page, networks of connections help build care practices and capacities. Conference organizers, in addition to providing a host of valuable Indigenous authored resources, invite participants to reject the all-too-often inauthentic or fake relationship to “land acknowledgements, to examine our own individual relationships with the land we occupy, and to engage in meaningful activities to support reparative action for Indigenous communities” (CALM, 2022)To overcome impulses to “carewash,” that is to comfortably spout words without grappling with what it means to do work that can support Indigenous peoples’ today and into the future, we know we cannot do this work alone. We build community across campus inviting students, faculty, and staff to contribute equally, with Indigenous and other alumni who were inspired to engage and sometimes disagree, with local Indigenous organizations and individuals including from our migrant worker community, and we look beyond our institution to others in our area to try to build a regional network of care capacity. In these ways we remake our institutions as spaces of Indigenous belonging even as we struggle against institutional and financial challenges.

If we care enough to create a land acknowledgment statement, as well as to invoke that statement at campus events, we must carefully keep ourselves accountable to what the statement seeks to activate. This accountability, as we have sketched, melds humor with seriousness to interrogate the funny business of land acknowledgments, expose the perplexing dilemmas of Indigenous and colonial contexts, and push past to work towards responsible relationality.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).