The Antisocial Mind of the “Land Acknowledger”

In recent decades, academia has created or implemented a truly jaw-dropping array of programs and ideas. And not in a good way. Whether “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) policies or Annual Sex Week, these new notions all seem aimed at chipping away at the foundations of a society based on common-sense, truth, fairness, and morality.

The University of North Carolina System—which is supposedly dismantling its “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” policies—is riddled with land acknowledgments. One such idea is the “land acknowledgment.” It is a statement that a particular event or organization is located on land that once belonged to specific indigenous tribes. Land acknowledgments first appeared in Australia in the late 1970s. They were adopted in Canada before coming to the United States. They appear to be spreading rapidly in academia and often appear on departmental websites or the personal sites of individual academics. They are also frequently announced at open public events, speeches, or meetings.

A cursory Internet search reveals that the University of North Carolina System—which is supposedly dismantling its DEI policies—is riddled with land acknowledgments, such as this one on a plaque outside of the UNC Charlotte student union:

With respect to the land and people who preceded us, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte acknowledges that we are on colonized land traditionally belonging to the Catawba, Cheraw, Sugeree, Wateree, and Waxhaw Peoples, all of whom have stewarded this land throughout the generations.

And at UNC Asheville:

The University of North Carolina Asheville acknowledges, with respect, that the land we are on today is ancestral land of the Anikituwagi, more commonly known as the Cherokee. We recognize the Cherokee as the native people and original stewards of this land.

When land acknowledgments are made by Native American organizations within academia, they can get quite accusatory. Here is language from UNC Pembroke’s American Indian Studies website:

This land acknowledgement does not erase the history of colonial and contemporary violence against the Indigenous peoples of these lands. We further acknowledge that the United States of America continues to benefit from that violence.

The Gillings School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill offers a slight twist with an acknowledgment of debt to former slaves:

Enslaved people were sold as escheated property to help fund the establishment of UNC, and the labor of enslaved people built UNC-Chapel Hill and undergirded its operations until Emancipation. We acknowledge and give thanks to the enslaved people who built UNC and their descendants.

When spoken, land acknowledgments come across as awkward or inappropriate. Most of the time, it’s easy to shrug them off or mock them as a silly ritual performed by harmless but deluded radicals or academic drones. Occasionally, in a context in which the history of a particular place is pertinent, they can be of some value. Yet, barring that rare occurrence, and all frivolity aside, land acknowledgments have a serious—and destructive—intention. For they, too, are intended to chip away at something of great importance: the belief in the legitimacy of the United States as a sovereign nation. They raise the question of who really owns the land and impute some degree of illegitimacy on the current occupants. They imply that “these people owned the land before you (or us), and it was taken from them unfairly.” This leads to further implications: first, that something is owed in perpetuity by the majority to the previous inhabitants. And, second, that the current inhabitants have no valid right to prevent others from coming here, since they also arrived without invitation from the natives.

All frivolity aside, land acknowledgments have a serious—and destructive—intention. The real story of land ownership and sovereignty is more complex; the implications above are based on half-truths and deceptions and posit a biased, superficial understanding of how nations come to be and continue. Almost every bit of land on earth was at one time populated or controlled by another people than the ones who control it today. England’s dominant people or rulers have been, successively, Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons, various modern hunter-gatherers, the Neolithic farmers who came from the eastern Mediterranean, the Bell Beaker people, the Celts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Normans. Many other countries have seen an even greater turnover of peoples. Once a land was settled—which has been the case for Europe and Asia for thousands of years—the transfer of power has almost always been through conquest. Quite simply, the land has always belonged to those who were strong enough and determined enough to take it and defend it from subsequent invaders.

If the United States is illegitimate, then almost all countries on earth are also illegitimate. Today, one may decry the violence that is included in that process, but until recently sovereignty through conquest was the common understanding of all people on the planet. It was only at the end of World War II that the idea that the world’s borders should be fixed and protected by law became universally accepted, with the 1945 United Nations Charter proclaiming that the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” violates international law.

Given this historical context, if the United States is illegitimate because there was some violence involved with its founding, then almost all countries on earth are also illegitimate. Furthermore, it is hard to fault people who were operating under the universally accepted rules of conduct that prevailed in their own time. How could they know that such rules would be replaced in the distant future? Clearly, their actions should be “grandfathered in” to the present day, without guilt or accusations.

And make no mistake, that same process of land acquisition through conquest was very much in existence in North America before the arrival of the Europeans. Various tribes conducted war on their neighbors and drove them off their lands, thereby becoming the new owners. In the Northeast, the Iroquois drove many tribes from the Ohio River Valley to take over the lucrative beaver trade, and they genocidally reduced the once-powerful Hurons to a small, ineffectual band. The Tuscarora tribe of the Iroquois Confederation conquered south to the Carolinas, displacing the original inhabitants there. Out in the Southwest, the Comanches drove the Apaches off their lands. Of course, the Apaches had already driven off the prior residents after migrating from the north.

Additionally, the European takeover of North America was not strictly through conquest; much of the land was acquired in other ways. North America before the arrival of the Europeans was a vast continent that was sparsely populated. Large tracts of land saw almost no human activity. The native people largely functioned at the Stone Age level; there were no organized governments, few permanent settlements, and no defended borders. When the first French and English settlers arrived shortly after 1600, while estimates vary, there may have been roughly five million Native Americans—fewer than one per square mile. Their population was further reduced by new diseases for which they had no immunity: smallpox, the measles, and influenza. This lack of population left large swaths of land that the Europeans could settle without significantly impacting the natives. It has long been an accepted principle—since the dawn of civilization—that, by improving the land and making it productive, one becomes the rightful owner. And much of the time the newcomers were welcomed by the natives for the advanced technology that they brought with them.

Europeans often made direct purchases of land from the natives. Every schoolkid knows—or at least once knew—about the purchase of Manhattan Island by the Dutch for a few trinkets. Granted, not all purchases were completely honest; the Pennsylvania Purchase was based on how far a man could walk in a day and a half through the forest. The Pennsylvanians cut trails ahead of time and used a relay team of fast runners to multiply the amount of land they could take—causing some lingering animosity among the Lenape tribe. But, in general, the Indians were eager for European goods, and they held far more territory than needed to support human life, resulting in the obvious exchanges.

What kind of person makes a land acknowledgment? And what drives him or her to do so? Additionally, Native American tribes would migrate to new areas as their prior territories became overhunted, leaving behind land that was excellent for fixed farming. Yes, the U.S. government occasionally practiced “eminent domain” on a grand scale, taking Indian lands in exchange for less desirable land on the frontier. Were there injustices? Yes, but on both sides. In the end, the stronger side won, and we were relatively magnanimous in victory. Indian tribes wound up with large tracts of land with tremendous autonomy, tax advantages, fishing rights, and social services.

If one acts only according to whatever promotes his or her own gain, then making land acknowledgments may be a smart career move. There is another important aspect of land acknowledgments that needs to be explored: What kind of person makes them? And what drives him or her to do so?

There are three basic types of land acknowledgers in the countries in which such pronouncements are commonly used. The first is the descendants of people who were displaced. Their claims are rational but also telling: They express a great deal of hatred. The land indeed once belonged to their ancestors, and their desire to remember them is understandable. Often, these land acknowledgments made by the descendants of indigenous inhabitants are wielded as a form of emotional blackmail, meant to prey on guilt unfairly imposed on the majority over the actions of long-dead ancestors. Furthermore, there is something self-defeating in clinging to a past that cannot be recovered; the world moves ahead whether one likes it or not, and one must embrace new realities or be left behind.

The second group is people who are neither descended from the local indigenous stock nor from Europeans. In this case, land acknowledgments come across as rational—but venal—statements of anti-American sentiment. They don’t “have a dog in the fight,” so to speak; the land never belonged to their people. And yet, they often show glee in the distress such acknowledgments cause the majority.

For both these groups, who claim no kinship with the current society and see themselves as outside of it, the acknowledgment mindset makes considerable sense. They are following the natural impulse to promote one’s own. If European Americans are perceived as the outsiders instead of themselves, as well as ones who committed undue acts of aggression, why should they not see the nation as illegitimate? Given such a perspective, tearing down the legitimacy of the nation’s sovereignty is indeed a rational act.

The third group is people who are of European stock, the ones whose ancestors took the land from the indigenous tribes. For some of them, making a land acknowledgment is merely transactional. If one has no regard for principles such as truth but acts only according to whatever promotes his or her own gain, then, in some cases, making land acknowledgments may be a smart career move. Some of these men and women may be scheming opportunists, but others are dully prone to follow the path of least resistance. They sense that land acknowledgments are becoming popular and act accordingly to fit in. Following is a part of being human; we all begin as followers, but most of us start thinking for ourselves with the development of the healthy self. Some, however, remain overly attached to authority or conformity. These inclinations are encouraged by our institutions—educational, religious, and popular-cultural—pushing people in the direction of egalitarian and anti-majoritarian beliefs and “canceling” those who do not comply.

Yet, for many in academia, land acknowledgments seem to be made to fulfill psychological needs. Many acknowledgers operate under the assumption that their own people are undeserving of the land they obtained, that they were wrong to settle new lands and grow as a people. They are, in essence, committing an act of self-denial, cheering or promoting their own negation through the erasure of their own people. They violate what is perhaps the most fundamental truth of life: that all organisms seek survival and reproduction. All life seeks to increase its genetic inheritance, often at the expense of others. To knowingly reject such a basic life force is clearly irrational; it is the denial of one’s biological imperative, a denial of self.

In much of the academic world, individuals are esteemed according to their adherence to anti-majoritarian political beliefs. Operating under such a powerful inversion of the self can be expressed in different ways. One is pathological altruism, in which individuals are motivated to support others even to their own detriment. This can arise from a wide variety of psychological motives. One is an insufficient sense of self-worth, in which the needs of others are placed before one’s own. This can arise from resentiment and alienation, in which one favors others to get back at his or her own group for their perceived mistreatment of him or her. Or it can arise from a mistaken sense of collective guilt, especially when conducted on behalf of those one believes to be the victims of the group’s actions.

By making land acknowledgments, academics very much come across as proclaiming their ethical superiority. A similar trait is narcissism, in which a troubled self craves the attention and admiration of others to an excessive degree. Narcissists also have a false sense of their own superiority, which allows them to not see their own shortcomings. In much of the academic world, individuals are esteemed according to their adherence to anti-majoritarian political beliefs. Loudly and openly proclaiming that the majority’s possession of the land is illegitimate can elevate one’s status in much of academia and other such bastions of leftist ideology, thereby validating the land acknowledger’s emotional needs. By making land acknowledgments, academics very much come across as proclaiming their ethical superiority—they are indeed “virtue signaling.” In a world in which denial of the self is virtuous, they become more virtuous because they make land acknowledgments.

In a world of common sense and proper methodology, however, such men and women are not signaling virtue but perversion. Since time immemorial, all people have honored those who take care of their own society, who defend their families, their villages, and their nations. Those who have denied their own to favor others have always been eyed with contempt and suspicion—sometimes called “traitors” or even banished or executed—until the last few decades, when such inverted concepts as pathological altruism have been promoted.

In some extreme cases, there is an element of deliberate cruelty in land acknowledgments. Many on the left have great hatred of their opponents, and making an acknowledgment may be a way to make those who disagree suffer in silent humiliation. The delight some land acknowledgers take in doing this is often palpable.

Whichever path educators take toward developing the mindset of the land acknowledger, no healthy society hands over young minds to those who wish to promote that society’s lack of legitimacy and even erase it. It doesn’t matter whether such people are motivated by hate, by a lack of principles, or by a troubled psyche. Any free society that allows such ideas to proliferate in its educational system will not last for many generations.

Jay Schalin is a senior fellow at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.