Re: [OT] The mass graves that never were?

The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 13:07:18 -0700, BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

About a month and a half a go, I went to a city council meeting for the
first time because I wanted to see what their plans were regarding some
adjustments to traffic flow in my neighborhood.

I started attended our local council meetings a little over 20 years
go and while I've not kept stats have probably attended 85+% of them
in that time.

The meeting started not with the Pledge of Allegiance to America, but
rather an "acknowledgment" that America is systemically racist and the
land our city is built on was stolen from the Gabrieleno Tongva tribe.

Does it actually say "stolen"? (I'd rather doubt it)

Why do you doubt it? Of the land acknowledgements I've heard, they
typically say "stolen". Land typically changed hands throughout human
history due to war and conquest, including among Indian tribes. How is
this in dispute?

Here's a sarcastic land (and labor) acknowledgement the president of our
School wrote. I wanted him to acknowledge capital as well, but as that
comes from labor anyway, he didn't want to acknowledge it separately.

It's a long-winded way of saying that even if the Indians who came
before the English, French, and Spanish in what's now America had
comparable systems of land tenure that European colonists would have
acknowledged, land had nearly no value while the place was sparsely
population.

Land Acknowledgment

We recognize that this land was occupied by other folks before
us. Some of them may have practiced more just systems of land
tenure. Because no human created land, all land titles are
necessarily the result of conquest, force, and fraud.

We assert that land belongs in usufruct to the living. And that
rent is justly shared among the community.

Determining exactly who is the "community" and how the rent
should be shared among them are legitimate topics for
discussion, that we'll probably never all completely agree on.

Labor Acknowledgment

Unlike the Federal capitol, none of our buildings was
constructed by slave labor, and our city is not named after an
enslaver. Labor improved the land we occupy by raising its level
to improve drainage, and by building, maintaining and continuing
to operate the infrastructure which makes it more useful.

. . .