Whose land are we on?

In 2002, my academic "job talk," when I came to interview at the university where I now work, was scheduled, on the fateful Ides of March, in the Calapooia Room.

Until then, I had never heard of Calapooia.

I didn't think much about "Calapooia" until I started interacting with the campus and its people in the fall of 2002.  

Through those previous 15 years of my life in the US, my understanding of Oregon was the caricature that was mainstream: A land of tree-hugging hippies. The story began with that, and ended right there.

After moving to Oregon, for the first time, I was exposed to place for what it was, and I had a lot to learn.  And I had to learn them fast, if I wanted to engage with students with ease and to be able to converse with them about what they knew and were curious about.

Calapooia?

Oregon, too, was Native American lands.  

The Calapooia were one of the many who had lived here for, well, ever.  It took a while for European settlers to come out west.  But, they did.  And when the settlers reached these lands, the story was no different.  Remember Jill Lepore writing this:

Between 1500 and 1800 roughly two and a half million Europeans moved to the Americas; they carried twelve million Africans by force; and as many as fifty million Native Americans died, chiefly of disease.

When Native Americans did not die of disease that Europeans brought with them, wars with the European settlers did them in, or they were simply forced out of their lands.

Once, when we were driving around on a gorgeous summer day, we came across a sign for Fort Umpqua, which was a trading fort and the southernmost outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company.  As one can imagine, the arrival of Europeans meant the end of life as they knew it for the indigenous people.  Often, the literal end of life.  

Beginning in February 1857, federal  troops forced native people to march from a temporary reservation at  Table Rock in southern Oregon 263 miles north across rough terrain to the newly created Grand Ronde Reservation.

Thus began Oregon’s “Trail of Tears.” The Rogue River and Chasta Tribes were the first to be removed from their aboriginal lands. They were joined by members of other Tribes and bands as the march passed other tribal homelands. The journey took 33 days and many died along the way.

I live on the lands where the Calapooia once lived and prospered.  Such an acknowledgment is "the start of action – a concrete step to bring forgotten histories into present consciousness."

Land acknowledgment is a recognition of a truth, a kind of verbal memorial that we erect in honor of indigenous peoples. Like a memorial, land acknowledgment pays respect to indigenous peoples by recognizing where they came from and affirming who they are today. And like a memorial, land acknowledgment is an education – enlisting speakers and audiences to learn about a region’s indigenous history. 

I hope that we will do a lot more acknowledgment, and a lot more direct action too, after the election in November.