Land Acknowledgment is a Dead Issue in Idaho, Oregon and Washington

Should we give the land back to the indigenous tribes that once roamed the West?  First, what land did they actually claim?  The Nez Perce could likely make a strong claim on the Wallowa Valley, but beyond evidence of burial sites there, the claim to land elsewhere is probably a tougher argument.

A guy at work loaned me a book over 10 years ago, and it detailed that indigenous tribes had little interest in much of the dry land in southern Idaho.  However, they didn’t like intruders disrupting the land where they hunted.  Ownership can have different cultural meanings.

Land Acknowledgment is a Waste of Time

The first time I ever heard the words land acknowledgment was in a story I read from Canada.  The University of Toronto apologized for occupying what was once the traditional territory of the Huron and Algonquin peoples.  Keep in mind, tribal regions had been shifting for millennia.  However, the university didn’t pack up and move, and I’m not aware that it cut a check for the previous owners, depending on the definition of ownership.

Liberals in this country admire their fellow travelers north of the border and quickly jumped aboard the virtue-signaling bandwagon.

The subject arose again last week when Democrats at a national meeting invited a guest from an indigenous tribe to speak words the audience didn’t understand.  Then the liberals applauded, but no land titles were exchanged.

So what’s the point?

I brought this up this week during a conversation with Ilana Rubel.  She’s Idaho’s House Minority Leader, a Democrat, and grew up in Toronto.  She’s sympathetic when it comes to the past, but pragmatic enough to know it doesn’t do much to address the problems of current Idaho residents, sovereign tribes, and all North Americans.

If you’re looking at efforts to restore old cultures, check out the history of Ireland.  In the 1930s, Eamon de Valera (only partly Irish, as you can surmise by his last name) attempted to restore the Irish language.  It didn’t succeed.  The country rummaged around in 19th-century conditions for much of the 20^th Century, then in the 1990s finally charted a new course.  The victims of the past remain long ago buried.