Have you come to feel that land acknowledgements are

impotent with not enough measurable action?

I feel it, too, and now believe that the feeling is not the whole story.

We started our mornings with the Pledge of Allegiance as children, not understanding that the state was programming us. To repeat a Land Acknowledgement is deprogramming, and I believe it is changing us now.

Indigenous Peoples Day is not an official holiday in most states in the U.S. but is observed in all states and official in several Latin American countries and Canada. We acknowledge the countless injustices inflicted, past and present, on the Native Peoples of North America and throughout this hemisphere for over five centuries. 

Here, where the colonial name is Santa Barbara on the California Central Coast, the Chumash are essential members of our community. They are the First Peoples of this land and have thrived as a maritime culture along this coastline enjoying its magnificent beauty. They are a vibrant community that continues to practice their heritage and culture today. Yet, as with all Native people of North America, they continue to struggle for their own cultural, economic, and political self-determination as this land’s first people. 

When our family, the Moores, have an event with guests, we are the hosts, and when the event ends, everyone returns to their own homes. The Chumash are our hosts, but their guests remain on unceded land. In my home, we will sometimes say, “Diane and I have legal title to this property, but that does not mean we have moral title.”

The Chumash live on occupied land, taken from them by force, through a well-documented and shameful government-sanctioned, mass genocide. Native peoples in the U.S. continue to experience the worst poverty, unemployment, and some of the highest rates of COVID-19 deaths. 

The American flag is an emblem of national pride for many people. Still, today we remember that it can be an enduring symbol of aggression to many Indigenous peoples and their allies.