JACKSON, Wyo. — While the Jackson Town Council voted unanimously to incorporate a land acknowledgment into town meetings going forward, Wyoming Public Radio’s “The Modern West” (TMW) podcast recently highlighted how these land acknowledgments fall short of what’s needed by Indigenous Tribes.
According to a conversation between TMW host Melodie Edwards and a number of Tribal members, the power of land acknowledgment readings comes from the actions that could be taken as a result of the acknowledgment, namely incorporating Tribes back into their ancestral land.
“Because we already acknowledged the land, we already know where we come from,” Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) advocate and artist Danielle SeeWalker said.
According to the State of Wyoming, Wyoming was the pre-contact homelands of hundreds of Tribal Nations including the Hinono’eino (Arapaho), Nimi’ (Bannock), Niitsitapi (Blackfeet), Apsáalooke (Crow), Aaniiih (Gros Ventre), Newe (Shoshone), Nimiipuu (Nez Perce), Oceti Sakowin (Sioux), Ka’igwu (Kiowa), Tsis tsis’tas (Cheyenne), Tukudeka (Sheep Eaters), Arikara (Sahnish) and Nuche (Ute).
In the contemporary landscape, the Wind River Reservation is the only reservation in Wyoming, with headquarters at Fort Washakie and a population of about 26,742. This is a little over four and a half percent of the total current Wyoming population.
“Almost universally, most of the treaties that were signed were broken by the United States,” said Jeff Means, associate professor of History at the University of Wyoming, on the TMW podcast. “And so to sit there and say, ‘Oh, thanks for letting us steal all your land,’ sometimes it can be disingenuous for one thing, but then it’s just condescending…[having] the freedom to say, ‘Gosh, thanks for what you’ve given us, we’re not giving it back.’”
While Teton County is committing to continued actions that strengthen relationships to Native Tribes in addition to the land acknowledgement, the TMW conversations all landed, pun intended, on how land is the key to reparation over political, environmental and artistic outreach or acknowledgment.
