acknowledgement
I am running behind, but I am here. 11:05pm, I write to acknowledge this land and beyond that, I write now to acknowledge the people of the land on which I stand. I am running behind.
I have been asked to prepare and share a land acknowledgement for a rehearsal tomorrow and I want to honor this land beyond a token acknowledgement. I want to recognize the importance of this kind of statement, and what it means to sit with discomfort, with reckoning, with reverence.
My body, my partner’s body, and the bodies of my children walk, sit, stand, sleep on the ancestral land and the current home of the Munsee Lenape and the Canarsie people, the Lenapehoking. I know this because of a resource I use often. I know this because of the company I keep; thank you.
I think of the tough, unromantic work of farming, caring for, tending, stewarding this land and the waters surrounding it.
I consider the gifts given only because it was well-cared for.
I acknowledge the matrilineality of the Lenape people, the way of tracing from uterine ancestry, the way this makes sense.
I listen when it’s suggested that I use the words: The Lenape People, instead of the word them. I understand the othering of the words them or over there.
I say names.
I make mistakes and learn.
I recognize that the past is also the present.
I think of the pavement in layers and layers, masking what lies beneath, the Moonwagon treading over years of person-made pavement, fake stone.
I think of feet padding over the soft land, slowly and quietly, over time before it was measured.
The brutality of displacement, of colonial rule and dominion, the relocation of families to places unfamiliar.
The lasting, generations-long effects of this powerful grip.
The theft of it all.
Messy, imperfect, unfinished, life-long unlearning.
WHEREAS (excerpt)
WHEREAS a string-bean blue-eyed man leans back into a swig of beer work-weary lips at the dark bottle keeping cool in short sleeves and khakis he enters the discussion;
Whereas his wrist loose at the bottleneck to come across as candid “Well at least there was an Apology that’s all I can say” he offers to the circle each of them scholarly;
Whereas under starlight the fireflies wink across East Coast grass and me I sit there painful in my silence glued to a bench in the midst of the American casual;
Whereas a subtle electricity in that low purple light I felt their eyes on my face gauging a reaction and someone’s discomfort leaks out in a well-stated “Hmmm”;
Whereas like a bird darting from an oncoming semi my mind races to the Apology’s assertion “While the establishment of permanent European settlements in North America did stir conflict with nearby Indian tribes, peaceful and mutually beneficial interactions also took place”;
Whereas I cross my arms and raise a curled hand to my mouth as if thinking as if taking it in I allow a static quiet then choose to stand up excusing myself I leave them to unease;
Whereas I drive down the road replaying the get-together how the man and his beer bottle stated their piece and I reel at what I could have said or done better;
Whereas I could’ve but didn’t broach the subject of “genocide” the absence of this term from the Apology and its rephrasing as “conflict” for example;
Whereas since the moment had passed I accept what’s done and the knife of my conscience pierces with bone-clean self-honesty;
Whereas in a stirred conflict between settlers and an Indian that night in a circle;
Whereas I struggle to confess that I didn’t want to explain anything;
Whereas truthfully I wished most to kick the legs of that man’s chair out from under him;
Whereas to watch him fall backward legs flailing beer stench across his chest;
Whereas I pictured it happening in cinematic slow-motion delightful;
Whereas the curled hand I raised to my mouth was a sign of indecision;
Whereas I could’ve done it but I didn’t;
Whereas I can admit this also took place, yes, at least;
