DePaul University Adopts ‘Indigenous Land Acknowledgment’
“We acknowledge that these sacred homelands were ruptured by the European invasion of the Americas.”
This is a hip new virtue signal. Lots of woke organizations are doing it.
The College Fix reports:
DePaul University officially adopts Indigenous ‘land acknowledgment’
DePaul University officially has adopted a Native American land acknowledgment after almost a year’s worth of “researching, meeting with stakeholders, vetting with shared governance.”
According to The DePaulia, the area around DePaul’s home, Chicago, Illinois, was once “occupied by the indigenous tribes […] who maintained deep connections with this land where they lived, worked and worshiped.”
The acknowledgment, courtesy of DePaul’s Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, was created by a group composed of Native faculty and students.
Religious Studies Professor Lisa Poirier said the land acknowledgment is an “important first step” for (white) settlers to come to terms with the people and land they’ve occupied for over 200 years.
“Native people are usually located in the past,” Poirier said. “They’re treated as historical artifacts rather than as present-day communities.”
Indeed, the document doesn’t hold back from blasting the Catholic Church, Europeans and capitalism, pointing to the disastrous effects of the “Doctrine of Discovery”:
We acknowledge that these sacred homelands were ruptured by the European invasion of the Americas. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI promulgated the Doctrine of Discovery, which seized Native lands and resources with impunity. This doctrine has been used by countries throughout the Americas, including the U.S., to legitimize colonial policies of displacement and genocide toward Native peoples and to justify colonial legacies of white superiority and global capitalism.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
I was on a webinar yesterday where a woman from Canada did this BS. The thing that struck me was how the people that do this only talk about the people who were defeated by the Europeans. They never talk about tribes that were there when the last tribe came through and took over the land. They never say anything about how this last tribe standing got the land, what happened to the previous tribe, and where the previous tribe went after they lost the battle to the last tribe standing.
For the survey after the webinar, when they asked what was my least favorite topic, I answered that the virtue signalling, which had nothing to do with the topic of the webinar and that they should get rid of the BS virtue signalling. Some how I do not think the organization will agree and support my suggestion
If they do not immediately relinquish the land to Native Americans, they are hypocrites (I believe the appropriate term is “whited sepulchres”).
Lawyers ask about the First Amendment doctrine against compelled speech.
We at least DePaul used a defined process involving “shared governance” and consultation with “stakeholders.” It is odd however, that the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity rather than the President and Board of Trustees enacted the policy.
DePaul was founded in 1898, which was long after the Blackhawk Wars in 1832. A number of people owned the site of the current campuses during those 66 years, and DePaul paid full value for the land when it purchased it. So, there is no serious dispute or claim on the campus land. Even if you change the subject to weather the global wealth of the Roman Catholic Church was the result of exploiting indigenous peoples (as opposed to Devine intervention), there is still no direct causal connection between DePaul and the indigenous peoples.
If the DePaul Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity wants to take meaningful action on this subject, instead of imposing a requirement that the land acknowledgment be recited, it should send an email to all DePaul parent’s demanding that they sign over the title to their family home to the local tribes.
Only after DePaul’s administration does it first.