Transcript of ASU Native American Land Acknowledgement
Can Elon help us?
Did you hear that? It is getting closer. It is the sound of the Doge.
Below is the ASU Native American Land Acknowledgement, read at ASU’s New College faculty meeting this week (the fourth largest college in a university with 180,000 students). It is also read in the other colleges at ASU and posted on the ASU library’s web page. I don’t know that the transcriber spelled the names of the tribes correctly, but I also am simply posting what was there rather than editing it.
“Good afternoon, everyone.
Arizona State University's 4 campuses are located in the Salt River Valley on ancestral territories.
Of indigenous peoples including the Ahmed, Otham, the Okepaya, Yavapai, and Peaposh, Indian communities, whose care and keeping of these lands allows us to be here today.
We acknowledge the sovereignty of these nations and seek to foster an environment of success and possibility for native American students and patrons.
We are advocates for the incorporation of indigenous knowledge systems and research methodologies within contemporary practice.
We welcome all members.”
Notice the strategy. 1. ASU welcomes all Native American students. Yes, absolutely, 100%. We do not discriminate at ASU (well, we do against whiteness and heteronormativity).
ASU is on ancestral terrirotires. That is accurate. But what does that mean for us now? Two other countries also owned it between then and now.
Next is where it goes off the rails:
We acknowledge the sovereignty of these nations. Over their Reservation or over all of their ancestral territories? Unclear.
We advocate (they love that word; it is the #1 job they are training their students to get as listed on their degree home pages).
For the incorporation of indigenous knowledge systems (Paulo Freire, why is his philosophy being made the hegemonic doctrine for ASU?). Knowledge “systems” rather than knowledge. Knowledge is universal. It is not different from group to group. But they are so lost in perspectivalism that they end up in solipsism. Each individual perspective is that person’s “knowledge.”
Research methodologies. Name these. There were no Native American research universities. Again, notice the plural (methodologies); there are only so many methodologies—but no Truth.
Their care of this land. Many others also cared for the land, and that also allows us to be here today. Why are we only listing one group and not going down the list? If we’re going to do this, let’s not discriminate—Let’s read them all.
Parents recently shared with me that they went on a tour of one of the ASU campuses with their college-age child. As the tour began, the tour guide stopped and solemnly read the Native American Land Acknowledgement. A wise young student in the group asked, “If that’s true, why doesn’t ASU give the land back?” And that’s really the heart of the matter. Students see this for what it is. Hopefully, they vote with their feet until ASU gets back to its job of educating.
This is a virtue signal to make these professors feel as if they are righteous and helping when they are actually doing nothing. Each of them lives in a home on this same ancestral land. They can sell their home at any time or donate it to the tribe of their choice. None of them will do this. And the only reason they can buy or sell a home with a protected mortgage and a land deed is because of the rule of law and order.
They are whitewashed tombs, trying to look good on the outside, while inside, they are full of death. A Native American member of our faculty said to our director, “this is for you, not for us, we know that the words of white people are empty.”
Elon, can you help us? Can you cut the wasted money these universities spend on DEI and Native American Land Acknowledgements? Look into how many offices and administrators are dedicated to these and how that affects the university's expenditures and raises tuition. They use federal and state money to promote these nonsense philosophies that students laugh at.
Help us Elon, you are our only (human) hope (a humorous Xer reference, calm down).
