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I am most enjoying the reactions to visitors to the United States for the World Cup games. But it’s also still fun to mock hateful anti-American leftists.
Many of us have mocked institutions (often “educational”) and individuals who begin meetings, events, and presentations with “land acknowledgments” that call attention to the fact that the event is being held on land stolen from such and such “indigenous” people.
But we mock the land acknowledgments because they never include an offer to return the land to the peoples from whom it was supposedly stolen. I suppose the defenders of land acknowledgments could note that since the occupying institution has held the land for an extended time, returning the land to the peoples from whom the land was “stolen” would be impractical.
OK. But former President Obama doesn’t have that excuse with respect to his recently constructed and just-opened Obama Presidential Center.
As has been widely reported, the formal opening ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center began with the predictable gesture.
Valerie Jarrett, the former senior advisor to Obama when he was president and the current CEO of the Obama Foundation, kicked things off.
"We’d also like to take a moment to recognize the original inhabitants of the land upon which we are gathered today," she said. "We honor the Anishinaabe, the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, the Odawa and the Potawatomi nations."
This took place at a newly constructed building and complex, on land that the Obama people spent many years and much money fighting to build the center upon.
Since the “Obama Presidential Center” is new construction, it didn’t have to be built on that particular plot. In fact, there was no shortage of controversy and litigation involving the use of that land. If the Obama Foundation considers it stolen, why spend so much time, energy, and money fighting and litigating to build there?
So, Mr. Obama, why did you spend nearly a billion dollars building a structure (monument to yourself) on land to which you do not legitimately claim?
Discussion (32)
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The Obama Presidential Center covers 19 acres. So did 5 different tribes possess little pieces of that tiny tract simultaneously? Or did one seize it from another? If they seized it from each other, what is wrong with white settlers seizing it from the land Indian tribe to have seized it?
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Another question that has been asked of people making "land acknowledgments."
I live in north Texas, which was occupied by a series of tribes (or "peoples") before the first "European" settlers arrived.
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I hope it’s haunted.
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That it’s stealing under our laws. We believe in the rule of law.
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No problemo! One land acknowledgment wipes away such sins (except for conservatives) . . .
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