This Land is Our Land?

By Patrick F. Cannon

It has become commonplace for museums and other institutions to publish a “Land Acknowledgement” statement. Tours at many institutions begin with a version of the statement. Although we’re not in any hurry to give the land back, it’s true that the Chicago area, for example, was once occupied by native American tribes like the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa. The Treaty of 1833 effectively moved all of them west of the Mississippi.

            If all these acknowledgements  make people feel better, so be it. But I sometimes get the feeling that some of my fellow countrymen think that the United States is unique in displacing former populations. In fact, almost no people are where they started. The “native” Americans that we displaced all started somewhere in Asia. The Celts that populate much of Ireland, Scotland, Wales – and significant parts of /France and Spain – moved west from eastern Europe.

            And let’s not forget the Huns, Goths, and Visigoths of our history books. Today’s Italians have their blood, as well as Roman. Greek, and no doubt other strains  as well. Both sides of my family came from Ireland. There is evidence that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were there at about 8,000 B.C. The Celts arrived at about 600 B.C. Then came the Vikings, Normans, Scots, and finally the English. None of them came (or gave up) peacefully.

            The successful conqueror was the one who managed to organize the new land. William the Conqueror wasted little time after defeating the Saxons at Hastings in 1066 in sending his minions around England to do what was essentially a census of his new subjects and the land they occupied. The resulting “Doomsday Book” still exists, held by the British National Archives at Kew. As was the case in much of Europe, the king assumed that he owned all the land, to be doled out to his favored followers, who in turn divided it among tenants who worked the land but didn’t own it. Some of these vast estates still exist in the UK, although land ownership is much more broadly held.

            These restrictions on who could own land were a major factor in the emigration of people from the Great Britain and other Northen European countries to North America. What they found was a sparsely populated paradise, with plenty of land to go around. You cleared some of it, and it was yours. Eventually, and inevitably, increasing numbers of immigrants began to move into lands traditionally occupied by native tribes.

            Thus began a pattern of resistance, wars, forced relocation, treaties, broken treaties, failed education initiatives – well, you get the idea. It was, as I said, inevitable, but also intentional. To give you some  idea of how early the concept of “manifest destiny” took hold, in 1787, the new government of the United States passed the Northwest Ordinance. Even though Native Americans then mostly occupied it, it was assumed that the areas that became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota was already part of the United States and laid down for future Americans just how they could become states. If you own a piece of land in these states, how it is described (range, sections, divisions, subdivisions, etc.) is a result of the ordinance.

            We can’t change the past. We study history so we might learn from our mistakes and try to do better. We need only apologize when we ourselves fail. Which, alas, we continue to do.

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon