What’s the opposite of a land acknowledgment?
I attended an event last week in which the organizers began with a land acknowledgment. I’d guess most of you have witnessed one, though maybe not all.
According to Wikipedia:
A land acknowledgement or territorial acknowledgement is a formal statement that acknowledges the original Indigenous Peoples of the land, spoken at the beginning of public events. The custom of land acknowledgement is a traditional practice that dates back centuries in many Indigenous cultures.
As I understand, they are controversial. Again quoting Wikipedia:
Land acknowledgements have been criticized by both conservatives, who have described them as excesses of political correctness, and by those on the political left, who have expressed concerns that land acknowledgements amount to empty gestures that avoid addressing the issues of Indigenous communities in context. Ensuring the factual accuracy of acknowledgments can be difficult due to problems like conflicting land claims or unrecorded land exchanges between Indigenous nations.
I haven’t come to a conclusion on their value or meaning. I care more about what we do regarding about stolen land beyond talking, which prompts me to ask:
What is the opposite of a land acknowledgment?
Try not to look at my answer before coming up with your own. I’ll put my answer below this picture of a forest.
The opposite of a land acknowledgment
The opposite of a land acknowledgment is an airplane ticket.
A plane ticket says you want to be somewhere else, not there.
Buying it funded polluting that area, the area you’re going to, and every place between.
It means you do things you know hurt others.
It funds tearing communities and families apart.
It funds imperialism and colonialism.
It funds building more airports, paving more land, extracting more resources.
You get the idea. If people who acknowledge land buy airplane tickets, they are funding forcing more people from their land. They are saying one thing and doing another.
How about not funding extraction of minerals and fuel?
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