Land Acknowledgements

The trend of beginning events by acknowledging the people from whom the land they are on was stolen has bothered me almost since I first became aware of it. This piece, drawing on thoughts of native people and anthropologists, does a good job at explaining why.

Discussing what kind of land acknowledgements would *not* be harmful, the authors write "What many Indigenous persons want from a land acknowledgment is, first, a clear statement that the land needs to be restored to the Indigenous nation or nations that previously had sovereignty over the land."

I'll give you one guess at how likely that is to happen. And without it, land acknowledgements feel, both to me and to some native people whose opinions matter *far* more than mine do, like saying "We're not giving your land back, but we are sorry about all that genocide and land theft. We're cool now, right?"

https://theconversation.com/land-acknowledgments-meant-to-honor-indigenous-people-too-often-do-the-opposite-erasing-american-indians-and-sanitizing-history-instead-163787?fbclid=IwAR12-KNbMGOsn518ReQH2qmEcTEUsGwrLr_ZnTFeOClb-VglnIXqiKwarNA

Oblivious Conservatives Reviewing Books

Miriam and I are looking at reviews of books to use her expiring Audible credits on. One of the reviews of an Iron Druid book complained about the liberal politics, and said that "conservatives can be geeks too." As if the entire series hadn't been political.

It's a staggeringly oblivious comment. The entire setting and the main characters have been shaped at a fundamental level by politics and the proliferation of extractive industry and environmental destruction. If you don't like it, get the hell out of that fandom and oppress minorities somewhere else.