Science on Stolen Land

The White House’s latest executive order “on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government” opened with a healthy dose of self-congratulation: “My administration,” the order beamed, “has embedded a focus on equity into the fabric of Federal policymaking.” For once, the Biden administration has good reason to boast. While it may have come at the expense of skyrocketing costs of living, an open border, rising crime, and an across-the-board acceleration of national decline, the president’s maniacal obsession with boutique campus ideological causes — often at the expense of quality and competence — has yielded its own results.

Take one little-noticed reform at the National Science Foundation (NSF): Pursuant to Biden’s first-ever executive order, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” the NSF dutifully published an “Equity Action Plan Summary,” detailing its eagerness “to encourage the full participation of all Americans and to remove barriers to their success.” What that meant, among other things, was mandating “Indigenous community acknowledgments” — also known as “land acknowledgments” — “as part of its programmatic agreements (PA) for some of its astronomical facilities,” requiring scientists who use specific sites to include said acknowledgments in their published research. In addition, NSF has apparently begun “developing a land acknowledgment statement that could be used at the outset of NSF meetings and conferences” in general. The plan assures readers that “NSF’s Tribal Consultation and Engagement Working Group (TCE) will track progress” by ensuring that “the land acknowledgment statement is increasingly used in NSF meetings and conferences.”

If you’re not familiar with Indigenous land acknowledgments, they’re one of the latest and most absurd iterations of the kinds of self-flagellation rituals that Americans are now expected to subject themselves to on a routine basis. The most innocuous description is simply that events, conferences, meetings and so on are expected to begin their proceedings with an acknowledgment of the history and cultural heritage of the Native American people who are indigenous to the region. But in practice, it’s much more of an accusation than a celebration. The Native Governance Center’s “Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgment” picks an apt quote from Northwestern University to describe the ritual’s premise: “It is important to understand the longstanding history that has brought you to reside on the land, and to seek to understand your place within that history. Land acknowledgements do not exist in a past tense, or historical context: colonialism is a current ongoing process, and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation.” (“Use appropriate language,” the Native Governance Center guide urges readers. “Don’t sugarcoat the past. Use terms like genocide, ethnic cleansing, stolen land, and forced removal to reflect actions taken by colonizers”).

Unsurprisingly, given the painfully obvious purpose of the whole affair, land acknowledgments often include radical challenges to the basic legitimacy of the American nation itself — it’s typical to hear compliant proceedings begin with reference to the fact that “we are standing on stolen land,” with appropriately conciliatory noises about “genocide,” “white supremacy,” “settler-colonialism,” and so on. One of NSF’s graduate research fellows even compiled a handy list of “telescopes on stolen land,” informing readers that “it is abundantly clear that modern astronomy is the product of settler colonialism.”

NSF itself, in keeping with its new equity agenda, now mandates land acknowledgments for researchers publishing work “on data collected in whole or in part” from a set of telescopes located on Native Hawaiian land. (Although it’s not clear if the specific “stolen land” clause has made its way into the official program agreement yet.) One of those, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope — the largest solar telescope in the world — apparently kicked off its inauguration with “an opening pule (prayer) in accordance with Hawaiian cultural protocol.” Another, NSF’s NOIRLab, trumpets its “critical and proactive work in serving as stewards of the aina (land) and lani (sky),” and “deeply recognizes [the] reverence” of the land’s “native Hawaiian community.” In addition, the NSF outpost adds, “a strong emphasis on the attentiveness of the aina and preserving the dark lani is of paramount importance to NOIRLab.”