the lives of marginalized peoples—institutions that thrive at the expense of Indigenous life. In the frame of my Dad’s story: Even if we have not individually broken a window via attempted genocide, child separation, violent assimilation, or outright land theft, we settlers and members of settler institutions such as the Catholic Church continuously glean life from the window’s lack of repair, and we do so at the expense of the homeowner. What other options are there? As the Native Governance Center writes, “Instead of spending time on a land acknowledgment statement, we recommend creating an action plan highlighting the concrete steps you plan to take to 12 support Indigenous communities into the future.” At the institutional level this support must honestly engage with the possibility of land return. At all levels, we must choose accountability and an ethic that seeks to repair the broken windows of genocide and Indigenous land dispossession. An ethic of repair may mean institutional or individual land return, wealth redistribution, and/or participation in land protection and land back movements. As Potawatomi writer Katilin Curtice explains, “The wake-up call to use our voices, whether we are Native or not, is one we cannot ig13 nore.” Listening to this call with an ethic of repair does not mean, in the words of Pope Francis, a type of “doing good 14 without expecting anything in return.” There is no need for this kind of mercy: Indigenous peoples not only know what is best for our Land, but also have plenty to offer the world, including the church. As Curtice says, “Perhaps the church should consider that Indigenous people have more to teach 15 the church than the church has to teach Indigenous people.” What Indigenous nations want from settler members of this ongoing relationship of land occupation is accountability. We want partners to struggle with us to protect our Land. We want partners in the ongoing quest for decolonization: a quest that ultimately aims to return Indigenous Lands back to Indigenous nations. This is what land acknowledgments, or action plans, should be all about. Dr. Elisha Chi is a registered descendant of the Bering Straits Native Corporation and a descendant of Irish/British Catholics, raised on Duwamish lands in the antifeminist radical traditionalist Catholic community of Seattle. Her interdisciplinary work seeks to articulate anticolonial academic methods and pedagogical practices that pursue Indigenous land return. 12
Native Governance Center, “Beyond Land Acknowledgement: A Guide,” September 21, 2021, https://nativegov.org/news/beyondland-acknowledgment-guide/. 13 Kaitlin B. Curtice, Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020), 115. 14 Pope Francis, “General Audience” (Saint Peter’s Square, Vatican City, September 10, 2014), https://www.vatican.va/ content/francesco/en/audiences/2014/documents/papafrancesco_20140910_udienza-generale.html. 15 Curtice, Native, 123. 12
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Choose Solidarity, Not Guilt BY TESS GALLAGHER CLANCY
I
grew up in a middle class, Irish American family in Montana; this place is the home of my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. I love this land, and I feel my ancestors’ presence here. And yet, my love for this land is complicated. At some point I became aware of its history, which I had only really understood in a vague way before: the many dishonestly forged, broken treaties between the emerging U.S. government and the tribes; the encroachment of often violent and belligerent settlers into Native lands; the impoverishment and forced removal of tribes from their lands; the greedy capitalists lobbying the government to annex more and more land so they could pillage and sell the bounties; the ongoing oppression of Native communities at the hands of our government, extractive businesses, and our capitalist economy. If you grew up white, or of European descent in the United States, perhaps you came to a similar knowledge about the land where you and your forebears grew up. Maybe you experienced the same feeling of having the rug pulled out from underneath your reality as I did. It’s difficult to realize that a brutal and devastating campaign of destruction is ultimately responsible for our presence on this land. These are the realities we live with. To individualize this reality of great, ongoing injustice, casting blame on each of us as individuals, does little to move toward justice. However, if we believe in right-relationship with the land, one another, and the people who have come before us, this reality is now our own, and it is our responsibility to decide what to do with it. I want to talk about land, guilt, and responsibility, and how we can navigate these topics to have richer lives—lives that aren’t mired in guilt but that are in relationship and reciprocity to the people, creatures, and places around us. When it comes to white Americans’ duty to support movements for Indigenous sovereignty responsibility isn’t a punishing accusation, but something we can choose because we care about our neighbors and we believe in solidarity with those around us.