On a rainy, cold winter Friday in Los Angeles, visitors stood in front of artworks at The Broad, a contemporary art museum in DTLA.
Among the masterpieces by Basquiat, Koons, and Warhol, one exhibit stood out.
Called Social Forest: Oaks of Tovaangar, it drew upon the work of German artist Joseph Beuys to, in the words of the museum, "address ... the ongoing reconciliation with historical trauma" as it relates to the Tongva, the Indigenous people of the Greater Los Angeles Basin that are unrecognized by the U.S. Federal Government to this day.
Why does it take a visit to a museum to learn about the First People of the land?
Slavery is often called America's 'original sin,' but long before it, the settler-colonial project was already waging an unprecedented land grab and state-sponsored erasure of Native people.
It is a history that the United States has not widely acknowledged or grappled with to this day.
In the absence of a widespread, consistent, and far-reaching national debunking of America's 'peaceful creation' myth, it's easy to assume that this land – any land – was free for the taking. The silence leads to a kind of collective amnesia. Erasing history, identity, and culture is a blueprint used across the world, from Pittsburgh to Palestine.
Imagine if everyone living in these United States knew and was aware of the people that were here before the first settlers arrived.
...if every Oscars ceremony started with acknowledging the Tongva.
...if every session in Congress began with this sentence: "We are standing on the ancestral land of the Nacotchtank people."
...if every person in this country knew not only who the First Peoples of their state were, but also how they were treated and where they are now.
How would the world that acknowledged the genocide of the Indigenous people and worked to heal the crime look like?
We don’t know, but we can start imagining it today.
That is why, at Going Places, we acknowledge that we are located on the traditional unceded homelands of the Anishinaabe, or the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations, in the area now recognized as Chicago.
The Indigenous people of Turtle Island, a common Indigenous name for North America, are here today. Acknowledging the land we stand on is the first step toward justice, but ultimately, it's through building relationships and centering Indigenous voices that true reconciliation can take place.
"When the people of the world rise up and begin standing for the protection of life, a great healing will begin."
– Sherri Mitchell, an Indigenous rights activist in Healing Turtle Island
To go deeper, consider these resources
A guide to Indigenous land acknowledgment