Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, And this is
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. That's right. This is about Land
Speaker 1: Acknowledgements and Libya, one of our awesome writers, helped us
Speaker 1: put this together. And I was just noticing the other
Speaker 1: day when we're uh, when we're thinking about topics and
Speaker 1: who should tackle them, it feels like everyone has I mean,
Speaker 1: everyone can do everything, but like some feel like this
Speaker 1: should be so and so because it just feels like
Speaker 1: a fit and a new Libya this would be a
Speaker 1: great fit for her, and she did a killer job
Speaker 1: because this is a tough one. Land Acknowledgements is a
Speaker 1: uh controversial thing, mainly because of the ukeyness in which
Speaker 1: it's carried out In most cases, Boy, you just said
Speaker 1: a mouthful friend. Yeah, so Land Acknowledgements. If you don't
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about, um, if you've possibly ever
Speaker 1: been to a Montreal Canadians game in character, I just
Speaker 1: I show up at a concert at a large venue
Speaker 1: in Canada. I'm going to see uh uh, the reunion
Speaker 1: of of of Poison and Everyboddy cc deville and I
Speaker 1: met the the Enormo Dome and someone that looks like
Speaker 1: you walks out with a microphone before the show and go, okay,
Speaker 1: we acknowledge that this poison show is about to take
Speaker 1: place on First Nation's Land. Who were excellent stewards of
Speaker 1: this land and on with the show, perfect bad example. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be bad. That wasn't just me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the last time we're gonna laugh in this episode. Disagree.
Speaker 1: We always say that, and then there's something funny that
Speaker 1: comes up. But it is a very it's a serious
Speaker 1: topic because it's something that hasn't been figured out. It's
Speaker 1: still very contemporary, it's still very raw. It rouses a
Speaker 1: lot of emotions. It's a um one of the one
Speaker 1: of those spear points of the spear of like the
Speaker 1: culture wars in America and from what I gathered Canada
Speaker 1: as well in Australia, New Zealand probably yeah um. But
Speaker 1: the whole point of the land acknowledgement is to basically say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: this land was probably stolen, It was probably taken from
Speaker 1: broken treaty. The people who originally lived here are probably
Speaker 1: forced off the land. Um, there's still in terrible shape
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways today compared to their white
Speaker 1: or black or Latin X or Asian um counterparts in
Speaker 1: this country. Um. And you know, we should probably do
Speaker 1: something about that. At the very least, we should acknowledge
Speaker 1: it and like keep them from getting erased from history.
Speaker 1: And it's in its ideal form, that's what a land
Speaker 1: acknowledgement is. But the problem is is like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people out there, especially who are probably right
Speaker 1: of center, who don't want to hear that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: They don't like that a's snowflakes stuff. There are people
Speaker 1: left of center who are like that is the most
Speaker 1: vapid thing I've ever heard. It makes no difference whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you're even saying it makes things
Speaker 1: worse than if you didn't say anything at all, Like
Speaker 1: go back and go just go away. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: the people who are actually doing these land acknowledgements who
Speaker 1: very frequently are like corporate hr reps you know who
Speaker 1: who are who are doing it to like, you know,
Speaker 1: whitewash their company's activities elsewhere. Um, it's just a mixed bag.
Speaker 1: But yet the reason why it's important is because there's
Speaker 1: some kernel there that's that that is important, that that
Speaker 1: makes sense, that makes it worthwhile and worth exploring and
Speaker 1: not just tearing down, not just going ahead and doing
Speaker 1: you know, wrote but actually like using it as a
Speaker 1: jumping off point for like, you know, kind of re
Speaker 1: exploring and revisiting history and then hopefully, um, creating redress
Speaker 1: to that history. Yeah. Boy, well said it was off
Speaker 1: the cuff. You mean you wrote it down in your cuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and read it. Yes, and I'm wearing my very nice
Speaker 1: little or fanany cufflinks. It's very nice. She was staring
Speaker 1: back at me admiringly the whole time. Alright, So we
Speaker 1: should dive into a little bit of the history here,
Speaker 1: because if you go to Australia, um, you know, thousands
Speaker 1: of years ago, you would find something called welcome to
Speaker 1: country ceremony from indigenous people, which was sort of a
Speaker 1: protocol diplomatic protocol where a nation or a tribe would
Speaker 1: visit another person's land and they would the people that
Speaker 1: hosted them would have a welcome to country ceremony. It
Speaker 1: might have been a poem or a saw long. There
Speaker 1: might have been a smoking ceremony. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And in the mid nineteen seventies, white Australians started getting
Speaker 1: into this idea in this practice. And it was that
Speaker 1: year in nineteen seventy six, there was a group of
Speaker 1: Maori and Cook Islander dancers who were coming. They were
Speaker 1: invited to come to a performance, a multicultural dance performance
Speaker 1: in Perth at the International Arts Festival there and they said,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're not gonna come unless we are
Speaker 1: welcomed by the traditional owners of this land. Uh. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six they said this, And it was a
Speaker 1: performer named Richard Wally UH and a member of And boy,
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna do my best with these pronunciations.
Speaker 1: I really really tried this time and looked everything up
Speaker 1: because part of you know, the problem with a bad
Speaker 1: land acknowledgment is some dumb white person mispronouncing the name
Speaker 1: of a tribe or indigenous person like this. UH. Do
Speaker 1: you want to give a go on this one? You?
Speaker 1: This is your section, all right? I And you know
Speaker 1: the troublesome part about the internet, as you can find
Speaker 1: different pronunciations. But what I landed on was was in
Speaker 1: Western Australia, these were the UH younger people, very nice.
Speaker 1: Chuck spelled n y o O n g a R.
Speaker 1: So they all agreed that this should happen. They got
Speaker 1: permission from the elders and he welcomed the visitors and
Speaker 1: this was Richard Wally uh in that language and sang
Speaker 1: a song from their people. Yeah. And Richard Wally was
Speaker 1: a member of that that those people, so he you know,
Speaker 1: there was a there was a legitimacy to him performing this,
Speaker 1: this welcome to country ceremony, welcoming these dancers who very
Speaker 1: rightfully and very traditionally said we're we can't really step
Speaker 1: foot in Perth unless we're welcomed, like that's just custom. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's very interesting to me that you can
Speaker 1: races phenomenon back to one arts festival in Perth in
Speaker 1: nine six and this one incident, this one happening, and
Speaker 1: it just kind of spread from there. Um. It didn't
Speaker 1: like spread like wildfire or anything like that. It was
Speaker 1: pretty sedate. Um, it was wrapped up in like midnight
Speaker 1: oil stuff. Throughout the eighties, you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: radical politics, I guess you could say, um to where
Speaker 1: probably people on the first left were the ones who
Speaker 1: were carrying out welcome to Country ceremonies are having those
Speaker 1: UM performed at their events. And then in the nineties,
Speaker 1: UM Australia really started to kind of like self reflected
Speaker 1: its history of its treatment of Aboriginal UM Australians and UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things that kind of came out of
Speaker 1: that that self reflection was this this idea that Welcome
Speaker 1: to Country ceremonies were like a really great way of
Speaker 1: honoring this heritage and UM kind of bringing Aboriginal culture
Speaker 1: back into Australian society where it had been so you know,
Speaker 1: zealously pushed out for so long. Yeah, and this sort
Speaker 1: of morphed over, I guess between the seventies and the
Speaker 1: nineties in Australia to where the Welcome UH to country
Speaker 1: was in some cases replaced by a land acknowledgement or
Speaker 1: an acknowledgement of country, which would and this was in
Speaker 1: the beginning days, would be a short speech, like we said,
Speaker 1: it would recognize the traditional landowners that were local UH.
Speaker 1: And in the eighties and nineties it was sometimes an
Speaker 1: Indigenous person doing this, sometimes a non Indigenous person doing this,
Speaker 1: and eventually the National Indigenous Australians Agency UH came up
Speaker 1: with UM basically some guidelines, right. Yeah, they basically said,
Speaker 1: like that whole welcome to country thing, like, do not
Speaker 1: do that unless you're an indigenous person. And if you're
Speaker 1: an indigenous person, you should only be doing it if
Speaker 1: it's you know, your people's land that this event is
Speaker 1: being held on. If you're non indigenous or you're indigenous
Speaker 1: but not a member of the land, what you'd be
Speaker 1: doing is an acknowledgement of country, which is just basically
Speaker 1: like what you would call the land acknowledgement today, where
Speaker 1: you don't have to be indigenous, you just basically acknowledging
Speaker 1: that the land, um, you know, was originally owned, inhabited,
Speaker 1: trod upon, used, cared for by UH, an indigenous group
Speaker 1: or if you want to really just kind of you know,
Speaker 1: miss the whole thing to say indigenous people in general.
Speaker 1: UH in Canada is where it took off in North
Speaker 1: America first. And this is not that long ago. This
Speaker 1: was about what seven years ago in Canada's Truth and
Speaker 1: Reconciliation Commission released a big report that year basically addressing
Speaker 1: the residential schools and the removal and we should do
Speaker 1: at episode about this for sure, the removal of indigenous
Speaker 1: children from their families and basically said this was a
Speaker 1: cultural genesis. And this is when Justin Trudeau was coming
Speaker 1: into office and he was really big on you know,
Speaker 1: and during the campaign for sure on reconciliation with Indigenous
Speaker 1: people is a big part of his platform and something
Speaker 1: he wanted to get accomplished in office. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: like just like in Australia, the idea of land acknowledgements
Speaker 1: seemed to be a really good low hanging fruit um
Speaker 1: as far as kind of reintroducing the presence of indigenous
Speaker 1: First Nation people into Canadian society um and and you know,
Speaker 1: not ignoring them, not erasing them history actually you know,
Speaker 1: acknowledging them and in the past that that this that
Speaker 1: took place here um or there in Canada. Um. But
Speaker 1: the thing is that it also kind of like underscores
Speaker 1: just how easy it is, which can be problematic as
Speaker 1: we'll see too. Yeah for sure. Uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: spread from Canada to the US. It trickled down south
Speaker 1: in the late uh two thousand teens is how you
Speaker 1: would say that, like two thousand seventeen, two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: Uh seen the US Department of Arts and Culture, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a government agency. But it's not. It's an
Speaker 1: independent group. They published a guide to land acknowledgements for
Speaker 1: the United States. Uh. The group's founder, Adam Horowitz, came
Speaker 1: out and said that it was downloaded more than seven
Speaker 1: thousand times. And uh, he said, one lonely beast ib
Speaker 1: all by myself. I got nobody very nice and very
Speaker 1: bad dad joke. I thought it was a great joke.
Speaker 1: I didn't even think it was dad. I don't think
Speaker 1: you can make a dad joke about the beast boys
Speaker 1: unless you had on your cuff. What was it? Can you?
Speaker 1: Can you say your version the King ad Rock? That
Speaker 1: is my name, and I know the fly spot where
Speaker 1: they got the champagne. Uh. I taught my daughter a
Speaker 1: line that was not something that a kid should say
Speaker 1: when she was like four, and Emily was so mad
Speaker 1: at me. She was so afraid she was going to
Speaker 1: say it in kindergarten. And I think she's forgotten him
Speaker 1: by now. Uh. I'll tell you off the air. Okay,
Speaker 1: sorry everybody for that tease. But now in the United
Speaker 1: States you will find cities like Denver, Phoenix in Portlands
Speaker 1: that have adopted these guidelines. The National Park Service has
Speaker 1: NASA has you might have heard it at the Academy
Speaker 1: Awards or the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, or the Democratic
Speaker 1: National Convention, not the Republican National Convention. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: this is a thing that is kind of brand new.
Speaker 1: If you look at a timeline over the past three
Speaker 1: or four years, that America is treading into very gingerly, gingerly,
Speaker 1: awkwardly keeps running into the doorframe, all sorts of different stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think before we kind of go back into uh,
Speaker 1: you know, why you would even do this and how
Speaker 1: you would do it, I feel like we should take
Speaker 1: a commercial break, let's do it. So. Um, there are
Speaker 1: a number of recency to to use the land acknowledgement.
Speaker 1: And again this is usually what opens your meeting, your conference. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, like you could see it if you're in
Speaker 1: a beautiful like conference hall in like the woods, in
Speaker 1: a kind of a beautiful remote area. I can totally
Speaker 1: see that. But I've also heard of these things being
Speaker 1: used on like conference calls and just at regular meetings
Speaker 1: in the city. UM. Just it's so it can get
Speaker 1: kind of weird. But the overall point of it is
Speaker 1: that if you are um, if you're not an indigenous person,
Speaker 1: and you're reading a land acknowledgement, Supposedly you're thanking the
Speaker 1: the people of the who used to live there um
Speaker 1: in pre colonial days, um for being stewards of the land. Um.
Speaker 1: You probably also are, in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 1: whether subtly or overtly, also acknowledging that violence is why
Speaker 1: they don't live there anymore, um and violenced by the
Speaker 1: um white colonists and and and or the federal government.
Speaker 1: And then also, if you really want to make your
Speaker 1: land acknowledgement pop, you can say, and this is how
Speaker 1: how we can build connections to these people who have
Speaker 1: been harmed and are still harmed um. And it can
Speaker 1: get even more nuanced than deeper than that. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you know it's a mouthful to get up before your
Speaker 1: your work conference and talk about people being raped and
Speaker 1: murdered and displaced and treaties broken, and the fact that
Speaker 1: the oppression of Indigenous Americans is ongoing and the problem
Speaker 1: is far from solve, Like that's that's gonna put a
Speaker 1: damper on whatever awesome energy you're trying to start with.
Speaker 1: So it's a sales conference, Yeah, So it's people are
Speaker 1: trying to figure out the best way to do that,
Speaker 1: and sometimes, as we'll learn, it is a a shorter
Speaker 1: acknowledgement where they will then point people to, hey, our
Speaker 1: company has this website or a page on our site
Speaker 1: properly so, uh, where you can really dive in and
Speaker 1: learn about what we can do and this is what
Speaker 1: our own company is doing, including hiring programs or training
Speaker 1: programs with the people who once lived here. Uh. That
Speaker 1: is the ideal, is that it's a you know there
Speaker 1: there's actually something being done and it's not just words
Speaker 1: being spoken. So you know, they're still trying to figure
Speaker 1: this out. Who knows where it will end up, but
Speaker 1: it's been a little clumsy so far, like you said,
Speaker 1: bumping into doorways. And there are also other, like, um,
Speaker 1: other reasons why people do land acknowledgements rather than just
Speaker 1: kind of like make their their company look you know
Speaker 1: with it or sympathetic or I was not going to
Speaker 1: but yes you could use that word. One of them
Speaker 1: is to to just show solidarity and support for the
Speaker 1: idea of truth and reconciliation. To just say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you wanted to pump all the biffs and muffies up
Speaker 1: to go sell a bunch of mufflers. Well, t s
Speaker 1: because I'm going to suck the air out of this
Speaker 1: room with this clunky Land acknowledgement, and it's gonna make
Speaker 1: them think a lot more than this, you know, little
Speaker 1: page that you guys have on your website that five
Speaker 1: people are going to visit in the history of the internet,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, So I think there are some people
Speaker 1: who say, like, yeah, that's exactly what's supposed to be
Speaker 1: is to kind of suck suck people into it. UM.
Speaker 1: Also another big thing is to kind of um begin
Speaker 1: to repair relationships between UM, American society and the indigenous
Speaker 1: cultures that have kind of been pushed out of American
Speaker 1: society and continue to be kept there. UM acknowledgement of
Speaker 1: the fact that like the American government that a lot
Speaker 1: of really terrible stuff to Indigenous people in addition to
Speaker 1: enslave people in the past, and that just by talking
Speaker 1: about it in random, weird places makes people think about it.
Speaker 1: It keeps it from being a race. It actually does
Speaker 1: the opposite of keeping it from being a racist kind
Speaker 1: of scribbles it almost like graffiti into everyday life of people. UM.
Speaker 1: A good Land acknowledgement could do that. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of different reasons to do it beyond what I
Speaker 1: think most people who are opposed to land acknowledgements accused
Speaker 1: people doing that of which is morally performing. It's more
Speaker 1: like exhibitionism is what a lot of people chat owing
Speaker 1: you with, and it's it's not it's not supposed to
Speaker 1: be at least that's right. Uh So, I guess we
Speaker 1: could talk a little bit about how you go about
Speaker 1: doing this to begin with the first thing that there's
Speaker 1: something called the Native Governance Center, which is a nonprofit
Speaker 1: Native led nonprofit that has resources for Native nations. And
Speaker 1: you know it's a good place to start because they
Speaker 1: will say, hey, if you go to do this, the
Speaker 1: first thing you should do is take a good hard
Speaker 1: look in the mirror as a company, and why are
Speaker 1: you doing this to begin with? And if your reason
Speaker 1: is just too rattle off something so you appear to
Speaker 1: be uh, forward thinking and acknowledging something and it's sort
Speaker 1: of a blithe way, then that's not a good reason
Speaker 1: to do it. After that, after you have made made
Speaker 1: that right within yourself as a company and you want
Speaker 1: to press forward, then you have to do some research
Speaker 1: because you can't just open Wikipedia and say, oh this, uh,
Speaker 1: the apple headquarters is built on the land of these people,
Speaker 1: because it says so right here in the sentence. So
Speaker 1: let me just type up a quick little thing that
Speaker 1: that that that the and we're done. Um. It is
Speaker 1: very it can be very challenging to find who the
Speaker 1: indigenous peoples of the land are because they moved around
Speaker 1: a lot and because they were forcibly removed a lot. Uh,
Speaker 1: they sometimes traveled with the waters and the river ways,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not as easy as you might think.
Speaker 1: So you have to really put in the work to
Speaker 1: to really find this out. And as we'll see, one
Speaker 1: of the controversies is putting that onus, on the indigenous
Speaker 1: peoples and saying, well, hey, let's just go find some
Speaker 1: of them and let them do this research for us.
Speaker 1: And now we're not gonna pay him or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but like, we want to get it right, and they
Speaker 1: want to get it right right, so let's do it
Speaker 1: for us, right, Yeah, I saw that. Compared to so
Speaker 1: like a land acknowledgement is basically like a receipt that
Speaker 1: a thief gives you after stealing your stuff, but then
Speaker 1: having an indigenous group actually create the land acknowledgement for
Speaker 1: you is having somebody that you've just stolen from write
Speaker 1: the receipt to themselves on your behalf. That's ultimately what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Yeah. So um uh, there are actually like
Speaker 1: um websites, there's apps that have been set up to
Speaker 1: to help make land acknowledgement research a little easier. UM.
Speaker 1: I found one. You can text your ZIP code to
Speaker 1: nine oh seven three one two five eight five. That's
Speaker 1: not a rick roll or spam. I tried it myself
Speaker 1: and it texts you back, um a name of like
Speaker 1: the group that you are, um that lived in your area.
Speaker 1: That seems like the Simpsons, doesn't it kind of a
Speaker 1: little bit if yes, But if you just um, if you,
Speaker 1: like you said, you just take that copy and paste
Speaker 1: it into your land acknowledgement and that's that. Then you've
Speaker 1: just done something that's worse than not doing a land
Speaker 1: acknowledgement at all, which is an incompetent inept um thought
Speaker 1: lists land acknowledgement. There's there's that's literally worse than not
Speaker 1: doing a land acknowledgement. Yeah. So, after you've done your
Speaker 1: research and you have really found out the true origins
Speaker 1: of the people of that space that you're in, uh,
Speaker 1: you should reach out to them. Uh, And like I said,
Speaker 1: not just dash off your own a few lines on
Speaker 1: on your computer, but actually get in touch with them
Speaker 1: and say, hey, um, I don't want you to do
Speaker 1: the work for me, but can we work together on this?
Speaker 1: And how how would how would you like this to
Speaker 1: go down? How much detail would you like? And it
Speaker 1: can be as if and you know, maybe follow their lead,
Speaker 1: uh for a change and see what they want. And
Speaker 1: they said that that's a really good second step. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you've also you might not be able to fit
Speaker 1: as much detail as you want to or certainly everything
Speaker 1: you turn up in your research if you do decent research.
Speaker 1: Because again Land acknowledgements in following kind of that tradition
Speaker 1: of welcome to country um ceremonies. They go at the
Speaker 1: beginning of an event. And because these are such random events,
Speaker 1: from a corporate retreat to a Canadians hockey game, like
Speaker 1: it's it's bolted onto the front. There's no easy way
Speaker 1: to put it in there except to just do it.
Speaker 1: And so to take up a lot of space at
Speaker 1: the beginning of a Canadians game or a corporate retreat
Speaker 1: or whatever, explaining like the detailed history and like inner
Speaker 1: tribal relations between you know, the people who lived on
Speaker 1: this land before and then their their dealings with the
Speaker 1: United States government and like their removal, and what are
Speaker 1: they doing today? What can we do to help them?
Speaker 1: Like that's that's not what land acknowledgements are meant to be.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, for a satisfying, like decent good land acknowledgement,
Speaker 1: you have to figure out how to distill that down
Speaker 1: into just a few sentences. It's almost like writing poetry,
Speaker 1: you know, dude, retirement job for us? I guess we
Speaker 1: should start up the land acknowledgers dot com and at
Speaker 1: the beginning of every single thing, Josh and Chuck show
Speaker 1: up and do a short stuff right, just say give
Speaker 1: us fifteen minutes and we will speak of all the
Speaker 1: atrocities and bring this room down to its lowest point
Speaker 1: and then say thanks everybody. Uh and Microsoft right us
Speaker 1: a big fat check. That's right, We'll say, short stuff out.
Speaker 1: Short stuff is out, and so are we. Man. That
Speaker 1: could be a pretty good gig for us. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you're right, Chuck. We actually I'm I was wondering
Speaker 1: what we were going to do in retirement, but now
Speaker 1: I not do that. I have a real sense of
Speaker 1: security now, thank you. So one of the things you're
Speaker 1: probably going to run into though, to Chuck is you
Speaker 1: were saying like it's it's not as straightforward, is oh,
Speaker 1: this is the people who used to live here. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna copy and paste. You have to do some research.
Speaker 1: And when you're doing research, you're going to find out
Speaker 1: that there might be like more than one group that
Speaker 1: claims land to this, So that kind of opens up
Speaker 1: a whole cuddle of worms too while you're making this,
Speaker 1: because the whole point of this is to acknowledge the
Speaker 1: people who whose land this was. And if you suddenly
Speaker 1: have two groups who are saying this is my land, no,
Speaker 1: this is my land, you're about your non indigenous person
Speaker 1: about to step into to kick your event off right,
Speaker 1: to step into hundreds of years old hornets nest um.
Speaker 1: You know, you really have to be careful. If you're
Speaker 1: gonna do this right, you need to understand a lot
Speaker 1: more than what it takes to just write a few sentences.
Speaker 1: Is again, I just really wanted to hit that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know it can go beyond just land acknowledgement. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's also something called land and labor acknowledgement where if
Speaker 1: you do your research, you might find, all, right, there
Speaker 1: were the indigenous peoples that lived here, but then this
Speaker 1: very town, this very city was sort of built on
Speaker 1: the backs of enslaved Africans, and that's the only reason
Speaker 1: why this place is a place now. So let's include
Speaker 1: that the University of Chicago's land and labor acknowledgement UH
Speaker 1: mentions the four native nations that were forcibly removed of
Speaker 1: in what is Chicago what is now Chicago, and that
Speaker 1: the university was built on land donated by a man
Speaker 1: named Stephen A. Douglas whose fortune was the product of
Speaker 1: enslaved Africans. So you know, once you open this can
Speaker 1: of worms, it's it's pretty clear that there is a
Speaker 1: lot of acknowledgement to go around. Yeah, and usually it's institutional.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you could trace the history of any
Speaker 1: plot of land, find all sorts of horrific things that
Speaker 1: individuals have done to other individuals, but it's usually you're
Speaker 1: way Ultimately you're tracing, like institutional violence against groups. Is
Speaker 1: the point of land acknowledgement or labor acknowledgement. What's that is?
Speaker 1: If you start scratching beneath the surface of the history
Speaker 1: of any city, Chuck, you find that virtually none of
Speaker 1: them were built on rock and roll. It was way
Speaker 1: darker than that in every case. I don't know what
Speaker 1: Jefferson Starship was talking about. They were just lying, flat outlying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It makes me really second guess the whole White Rabbit
Speaker 1: thing too, although that was Jefferson Airplane. But you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, I know what you mean. Sure, I
Speaker 1: know what you mean. I'm hip, I'm I'm fly is
Speaker 1: because you just made it. We built the city on
Speaker 1: rock and roll reference the worst song in the history
Speaker 1: of music. Oh, I don't know about that. Oh come
Speaker 1: on you, Oh sure I do. I'm not like guilty Pleasure,
Speaker 1: not like my favorite song. I don't have it on
Speaker 1: on my phone or anything. But if it's on I
Speaker 1: will there's a seventy percent chance I won't turn it.
Speaker 1: You know what guilty Pleasure song I've been rocking this week,
Speaker 1: which is a great song, and I shouldn't even call
Speaker 1: it a guilty pleasure, but uh, the Sign by Asa Bass,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all of their work was really good. It's
Speaker 1: such a great song and my daughter loves it now.
Speaker 1: And when you have a kid who loves something, They're like,
Speaker 1: I want to listen to it four times on the
Speaker 1: way to school. So I've been singing the sign for
Speaker 1: two weeks straight in my head. It's pretty great. That
Speaker 1: is good. Are you wearing like a little black ribbon choker? Now?
Speaker 1: H No? But I'm ashamed about my love of asa
Speaker 1: basis or something as you should be guilty, schmilty. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you something as far as guilty pleasures go,
Speaker 1: that I'm pretty happy with. Uh. I watched the Betty
Speaker 1: Broadrick Story starring Meredith Baxter Bernie Um from Remember That.
Speaker 1: She was a woman who um was divorced by her husband,
Speaker 1: uh and did not take that very well and kind
Speaker 1: of went off the rails, culminating in her going and
Speaker 1: sneaking into her ex husband and his his new wife's
Speaker 1: bedroom at night and murdering them both with a gun.
Speaker 1: And Meredith Baxter Bernie, the mom from Family Ties, is
Speaker 1: the one who plays Betty Betty Broadrick, and she does
Speaker 1: it so well and it's like a two part, three
Speaker 1: hour made for TV movie. It's on Amazon Prime if
Speaker 1: you have that, and it is every minute of it
Speaker 1: is just wonderful and great to watch. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: some of this stuff, Like, let's red ject Prestige TV
Speaker 1: that's going on now and let's just go back to
Speaker 1: those days. I say, we just include all the good stuffing. Also,
Speaker 1: one more thing while we're while we're not talking about
Speaker 1: anything about land acknowledgements for a minute, have you seen
Speaker 1: um Promising Young Woman? Oh yeah, sure, it was a
Speaker 1: really good movie. I had no idea, but it was.
Speaker 1: I would highly recommend that as well. Yeah, it was awesome.
Speaker 1: So before we talk about criticisms, which we'll get to last,
Speaker 1: we should talk a little bit about the ideal, which
Speaker 1: is um that it that it doesn't just stop there
Speaker 1: on stage with an acknowledgement before you kick off the
Speaker 1: muffler sales conference. Uh. There are ways that you can
Speaker 1: actually take action to make things better for Indigenous people
Speaker 1: because they're still suffering today. In in a lot of cases. Uh,
Speaker 1: it might be political Uh causes that are championed by
Speaker 1: Native Americans. It might be uh, universities offering free tuition
Speaker 1: for Indigenous I was about say kids, but people of
Speaker 1: all ages. I guess I mentioned hiring programs by those
Speaker 1: very corporations that now sit on that land. Uh. Those
Speaker 1: are all some great things that you companies can do
Speaker 1: to take action. Yeah, and you as a person, as
Speaker 1: an individual, if there's things that you want to do, UM,
Speaker 1: you can show up to Native American rallies just to
Speaker 1: show support. UM. You can. There's a movement in UM
Speaker 1: Seattle called Real Rent do Amish UM, which says, hey,
Speaker 1: if you live in the Seattle area, you should pay
Speaker 1: rent to the do Amish tribe because this is the
Speaker 1: original land. UM. And the reason why there's so much
Speaker 1: to do is because Native Americans in the United States
Speaker 1: have lived in this limbo um world just again, just
Speaker 1: kept out of American society for so long, and unlike Canada,
Speaker 1: unlike Australia, the United States has not engaged in anything
Speaker 1: even approaching a truth and reconciliation and or any kind
Speaker 1: of deep reflection about the history and the historical treatment
Speaker 1: of Native Americans in America UM. And so this still continues.
Speaker 1: And so like Native American is UM likelier to live
Speaker 1: in in poverty more than any other group in America. UM.
Speaker 1: The there's a huge problem of the UM missing and
Speaker 1: murdered Indigenous women and girls, which is such a problem
Speaker 1: it has its own acronym m M I W G.
Speaker 1: And that of course deserves its own episode two. We've
Speaker 1: gotten requests for that before. Um. Apparently there's also an issue.
Speaker 1: Olivia writes that Native American kids are frequently taken away
Speaker 1: from their families and put with white foster families, even
Speaker 1: when there's no evidence of abuse in the house. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's still there's so much stuff we could
Speaker 1: be doing for Native American people in the United States
Speaker 1: that it completely undermines in a lot of ways the
Speaker 1: very presence of land acknowledgement because people say, like, there's
Speaker 1: so much to do that is that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it, like, actually go do the actual stuff.
Speaker 1: And I saw this, um, this article by a guy
Speaker 1: named Graham Would. It was in the Atlantic. It's called
Speaker 1: land acknowledgements are just moral exhibitionism. He was the one
Speaker 1: who basically said that, you know, getting a Native American
Speaker 1: or an indigenous person to write your land acknowledgement was
Speaker 1: like getting them to write the receipt for the land
Speaker 1: you sold from them, you know. Um, he said, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote Some people argue that land acknowledgements are gestures
Speaker 1: of respect. I'm not sure one can show respect while
Speaker 1: also being indifferent to a people's existence. The statements are
Speaker 1: counterfeit versions of respect. Teen Vogue put it well, if
Speaker 1: unintentionally quote land acknowledgement is an easy way to show
Speaker 1: honor and respect to the indigenous people. And he goes
Speaker 1: on and then he says, real respect occurs only when
Speaker 1: accompanied by time, work, or something else of value. Learning
Speaker 1: basic facts about a particular tribe might be a start.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the whole idea, is that this
Speaker 1: is a starting point and the bare minimum for what
Speaker 1: should be a series of steps, especially if you're a corporation. Yes,
Speaker 1: now that's a huge thing. Like you know, it's one thing.
Speaker 1: If you're a person and you're having like a like
Speaker 1: a poetry slam and you do this, that's cool. You're
Speaker 1: you're probably more likely to actually be doing something of
Speaker 1: action to help Indigenous and Native American people than the
Speaker 1: corporation is who's having land acknowledgements researched and written and
Speaker 1: performed at their retreats and their conferences and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And so it's really well within fair game to call
Speaker 1: corporate America out about using land acknowledgements because they're doing
Speaker 1: virtually nothing in the real world to help Indigenous and
Speaker 1: Native American groups, and in fact, in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways are actually oppressing them further and continuing their oppression
Speaker 1: and keeping them in a cycle of poverty. You got
Speaker 1: big cust today, my friend, little orphan, these crying chrome
Speaker 1: plated tears right now. All right, let's take our last
Speaker 1: break and when we come back, we'll talk about some
Speaker 1: of the criticisms. Uh, and sort of poke around a
Speaker 1: little bit at the land back movement as well. All right, Uh,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna talk criticisms of land acknowledgements, we already
Speaker 1: talked about sort of um a lot about the criticisms
Speaker 1: of you know, how they're done poorly for people that
Speaker 1: support them, but there are people that don't support doing
Speaker 1: them at all. Um. The United Conservative Party of Canada,
Speaker 1: when they took control in Alberta, stopped land acknowledgements period.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, right wing Canadian politicians have called
Speaker 1: it just political correctness. I'm sure here in America the
Speaker 1: word woke and woke is m has been used to
Speaker 1: refer to stuff like this. But there's also criticisms that
Speaker 1: like history isn't even being portrayed accurately to begin with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know there's there was a huge kind of
Speaker 1: I guess a political fight in um Montreal when the
Speaker 1: Canadians started um started doing land acknowledgements for their games.
Speaker 1: They were thanking the ganyin Geha tribe or the Mohawk
Speaker 1: nation is how most of us know of them. Um.
Speaker 1: And then it came up after they started doing these
Speaker 1: people were like, I don't think this was actually their land, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they lived here, but I don't think it was their land.
Speaker 1: So the Canadians had to um revise it a little
Speaker 1: bit and they still um included the ganying gei ha
Speaker 1: um uh like reference um, but they also um observed
Speaker 1: or acknowledged other ribes too. But then a lot of
Speaker 1: people are like, see, can't even get it right historically,
Speaker 1: Why is anybody doing this at all? And other people
Speaker 1: are like, look, yes, we we got it slightly wrong historically,
Speaker 1: but that's certainly no reason to throw this out um entirely.
Speaker 1: And the point is to like actually acknowledge these people
Speaker 1: and that their land was stolen, you know, even if
Speaker 1: you don't get it exactly right. And that's a that's
Speaker 1: a big debate too. Yeah, and just the the the
Speaker 1: way that you talk about this land is can be
Speaker 1: a little problematic to begin with, because it wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: it's not appropriate to say that they owned this land
Speaker 1: because the idea of ownership to Indigenous people of land
Speaker 1: wasn't even a thing. Uh. You know, I guess a
Speaker 1: lot of times I think they're called for being stewards
Speaker 1: of the land. Uh that's I guess an acceptable work
Speaker 1: around in a lot of cases. But I know that
Speaker 1: it's it's all just sort of a lightning rod for criticism,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, the idea that there's stewards of the land. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean the like there's some Native American culture saw
Speaker 1: that themselves as that, but others are like, no, you know,
Speaker 1: we belong to the land. So this doesn't make any
Speaker 1: sense at all. And then what's more, we really care
Speaker 1: more about these bodies of water than we do the land.
Speaker 1: Are you guys mentioning that kind of thing? Um? So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's almost all criticisms come back to land acknowledgement doing
Speaker 1: it wrong. And then if if somebody's really hopping on
Speaker 1: a very small thing, they probably don't like the idea
Speaker 1: of land acknowledgements in the first place, or acknowledging the
Speaker 1: plight of indigenous peoples in their country. UM. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: if you do agree with it and you have a
Speaker 1: problem with it, it's it's that it's being done wrong
Speaker 1: is usually what your problem is. Yeah. And again, if
Speaker 1: you uh were to reach out to these people to
Speaker 1: begin with, you have a way better chance of getting
Speaker 1: it right, I think. Right. Um. The other thing is
Speaker 1: that if you're not actually saying, if you're just saying,
Speaker 1: we acknowledge that this land used to be uh inhabited
Speaker 1: and cared for by indigenous peoples who lived here, and
Speaker 1: and you know, that's it. There's almost like an unspoken
Speaker 1: like and thanks to them for that. Um, You're you're
Speaker 1: keeping the the existence of how that land changed hands
Speaker 1: from those people to your conference center, you know, and
Speaker 1: all the history in between. And all you're doing is
Speaker 1: perpetuating keeping the history of Indigenous people out of society
Speaker 1: outside in a mythic past that can be easily romanticized too,
Speaker 1: because Native American tribes did a lot of unsavory stuff
Speaker 1: or that we would today find unsavory and a mythic past.
Speaker 1: Two that puts you at risk of, like, you know,
Speaker 1: turning the Native American people into the noble savage um,
Speaker 1: which is a huge issue in and of itself to UM.
Speaker 1: But again it comes back to just doing it right,
Speaker 1: doing your research, doing it right, and then fitting it
Speaker 1: into a comprehensive but concise land acknowledgement. Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: and all of this. You know, I mentioned the land
Speaker 1: back movement. Uh. This is this is a different topic.
Speaker 1: But I think we can sort of cover the broad
Speaker 1: strokes here at the end. Uh. The idea of giving
Speaker 1: land back to these people. It sounds crazy, like, how
Speaker 1: would we even do that? But it has happened a
Speaker 1: little bit here and there, which may surprise some of you. UM.
Speaker 1: The land back movement in the Black Hills, which here
Speaker 1: in the United States where the Mount Rushmore Monument is located,
Speaker 1: was sacred Lakota site. And in night, the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: of the United States said, you know what, this land
Speaker 1: was stolen, uh, and it violated the Fort Laramie Treaty
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty eight. So why don't we settle this
Speaker 1: with with money? Uh? And I'll offer some financial compensation
Speaker 1: as a settlement. And the Lakota tribe said, no, we
Speaker 1: don't want that. Uh. And they are still to this
Speaker 1: day pushing for the return of the Black Hills land. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's an Ojibwey writer named David Truer that said, you know,
Speaker 1: how about we take the million acres of National park
Speaker 1: land and we all own it with a with a
Speaker 1: big federally organized and recognized group of tribes that are
Speaker 1: still around. Um, give that back to us and you
Speaker 1: can still come here, but we can hunt on it
Speaker 1: and we can farm on it. And a little bit
Speaker 1: of that is happening some parts of the National Park
Speaker 1: or National forests. They have allowed some hunting for Indigenous
Speaker 1: peoples and some farming which is going on. But he's like,
Speaker 1: why don't you just give it all to us and
Speaker 1: you can still come visit. But that would be a
Speaker 1: nice start. You can still come visit for sure. Um.
Speaker 1: They've also found that there's it's a really good way
Speaker 1: of preserving forests as well. Like we we kind of
Speaker 1: talked about it in the National Parks episode where the
Speaker 1: National or the Forest services like, oh, we don't have
Speaker 1: any idea what we're doing wrong here, Maybe we should
Speaker 1: ask the Native American tribes he used to live here
Speaker 1: who managed this land, to kind of give us some pointers.
Speaker 1: And they found that that land back actually helps like
Speaker 1: restore forests and ecosystems that that are proving to be
Speaker 1: problematic because uh, we don't really quite know how to
Speaker 1: how to make them work correctly or allow them to
Speaker 1: work correctly. Yeah, they did it in Minnesota just a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. Um, they transferred almost twelve thousand
Speaker 1: acres of Forest Service land to a federal trust for
Speaker 1: the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwey. So it's happened here
Speaker 1: and there. It's uh. Livy also points out that it's
Speaker 1: happened with individuals. There are a few cases of just
Speaker 1: landowners in the United States. It said here, you know,
Speaker 1: have this two or three acres. I mean, it hasn't
Speaker 1: been like thousands of acres yet at this point. But
Speaker 1: the fact that individual uh citizens of the United States
Speaker 1: are giving land back to indigenous peoples is a. I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty cool. And so it's a it's a
Speaker 1: good start. That's certainly putting your money where your mouth
Speaker 1: is and not just reading a land acknowledgement, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: or like you said, paying actual rent. That's putting your
Speaker 1: money where your mouth. That's you got anything else about
Speaker 1: land acknowledgements. I got nothing else. I hope we did
Speaker 1: a good job. You know, we mentioned doing this one
Speaker 1: and we got a bunch of emails from people that
Speaker 1: said really helpful emails that said, hey, just wait into
Speaker 1: this carefully. I think they thought, um, and they don't
Speaker 1: know us. Of course we're gonna do a good job,
Speaker 1: but they thought that we might just be like, hey,
Speaker 1: reading a thing is great and that kind of solves
Speaker 1: all the problems. I'm not sure we would dust our
Speaker 1: hands off as we walked away from the mis. No,
Speaker 1: not at all. If you want to know more about
Speaker 1: land acknowledgements, go to a Montreal Canadians game, a Microsoft retreat,
Speaker 1: or just go onto the internet and start doing some
Speaker 1: research yourself. It's pretty interesting stuff. And it's a like
Speaker 1: Chuck said, a good place to start. And since I
Speaker 1: said a good place to start, that means it's time
Speaker 1: for a listener mail. That's right. And before I read
Speaker 1: a listener mail and we were recommending TV shows and movies. Uh,
Speaker 1: since this is appropriate, we gotta recommend the great TV
Speaker 1: show from last year, Reservation Dogs. I think I mentioned
Speaker 1: at once on the show, but it is fantastic and
Speaker 1: it and it explores the lives of these teenagers in
Speaker 1: rural Oklahoma. Indigenous teenagers and it is I think Takawa
Speaker 1: tit as executive producer. But the show is written and
Speaker 1: directed and crewed up mainly by indigenous people's and it
Speaker 1: is a great show. It is very funny, very moving,
Speaker 1: very heartwarming. I love it. I love it. Can't wait
Speaker 1: for season two? Very nice? All right, listener mail, what
Speaker 1: should I do here? How about the slow Pee Pub? Uh?
Speaker 1: And what we have here is a listener that very
Speaker 1: much accurately named the slow Pee Pub that I went
Speaker 1: to a Manchester And while I'm doing that, I believe
Speaker 1: someone found the one in Ireland for you. Correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Brazen Head by the Guinness Factory. It's amazing, that's right.
Speaker 1: And do you know who sent that to you? Can
Speaker 1: you find that while I read this? Yeah? All right,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna read this. Hey, guys, just finished listening
Speaker 1: to the episode on pubs. It was great. I think
Speaker 1: you mentioned the Sloping pub on a previous episode, and
Speaker 1: being from Manchester, immediately knew what you were referring to.
Speaker 1: I think the pub in question is the Marble Arch,
Speaker 1: which is just on the outskirts of the city center.
Speaker 1: It's a great place that's run by a small brewery
Speaker 1: and wow, is that floor confusing? If you've had a few,
Speaker 1: keep up the great work and been listening for five years.
Speaker 1: Can't get enough, especially with subjects like these have local relevance. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I looked it up. He sent a couple of pictures.
Speaker 1: It was for sure the Marble Arch and it is
Speaker 1: not in the city center where all the other kind
Speaker 1: of hang out pubs and bars are. I was on
Speaker 1: a walk and I stumbled upon it, and uh, if
Speaker 1: you're ever in Manchester, go check it out because it's great.
Speaker 1: And that is from Hugh Nice. And also we want
Speaker 1: to say thank you very much to Susie from Dublin
Speaker 1: or at the very least used to work in Dublin,
Speaker 1: who correctly named the Brazen Head for me. So thanks
Speaker 1: Susie and Hugh awesome. I knew they would come through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll come through, thanks to Susie and Hugh. If you
Speaker 1: want to be like Susie and or Hugh, you can
Speaker 1: get in touch with us via email to Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows