Land Back
ANNETTE ON THE ROAD Native peoples using capitalism to recover, and to recover America, for everyone
Dear Nonnie Friend,
Ok, after my last deliberately vague post, you may understandably feel clickbaited.
My faffing about was deliberate, and it really wasn't faffing about. I was trying to show you how I stumbled on something in a perfect storm of stumbling.
As you may have figured out, this is an unusual post for me, focusing on the present, and how the past informs it.
Oh, and a reminder: This is a Road post, based on museum visits and observations, plus limited prior knowledge. I bring you along to witness how my curiosity plays out. And in the end, it’s hard for me not to form a personal opinion, because what I have been seeing and reading has astonished me.
Hope I do this story justice.
100% Americanism
This is a story about communities of Americans who are 100% Americans. They care about this nation, about all of us. They are proud citizens of the United States, who care more than anyone else about this land, as a matter of policy, culture, and hard-earned conviction, not least because this is their one and only home.
They embrace the flag of the United States, and fly it proudly. Many, many have fought and died for the US, and many did so while cruelly denied US citizenship or any hope of it. They persisted, because this is their home.
They have an extraordinary and long track record of leadership, of caring for and about land and people. But they've gotten little thanks and recognition. Indeed they've put up with a staggering amount of abuse. But these communities, these people, love America anyway, because they are Americans, the most patriotic of all Americans.
I’m talking American Indian nations.
Last time, I wrote about my unplanned visit at Hoosen’s urging to check out American Indian history at the Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel in Iowa. This grand establishment is owned by the Meskwaki Nation. Because the Meskwaki Museum was closed that day, we visited the gas station and casino in search of history exhibits, to see what else we could see in the Meskwaki Nation that would help us understand the Meskwaki story, past and present.
The tribal museum was closed, but we did find small intriguing exhibits in the tribal-owned gas station, and, as Hoosen predicted, in the casino itself.
That included a large casino display about Meskwaki veterans of the US Armed Forces, including code talkers who helped the Allies win World War II by confusing the Nazis, relaying top secret info in languages that Nazis definitely didn’t understand.
I was also curious about any other businesses owned by the Meskwaki Nation, apart from the casino. We had both been inspired by our visit to the lovely and welcoming Jamestown S’Klallam village in faraway Washington State, learning about tribal enterprises, and running into non-Native locals, including white working-class people, who were eager to share their love for the Tribe, which one woman called “the pillar of the community.”
And so it was in the Meskwaki Nation. The businesses we saw operating in this corner of Iowa included the Meskwaki Travel Plaza (gas station/large convenience store/truck stop), and Meskwaki Fuels Co. (housed in a small prefab building). A large warehouse building is home to Big River Trading Company (wholesale distribution, mostly-for now—to the tribal gas station), and Meskwaki Organix (CBD/hemp products—i.e. cannabis stuff that comes within strict Iowa law), This company, again, currently mostly supplies the Meskwaki Travel Plaza. The building also holds Renards Manufacturing (cigars, cigarettes, and other tobacco products), and Fox Professional Services (administrative and account support consultancy). Oh, and nearby is Red Earth Gardens (organic food farming).
Meskwaki, Inc. is the holding company that serves as an umbrella over all these enterprises, and they are all wholly owned— not by individual people— but by the Meskwaki Nation, led by the elected Tribal Council. If you’re thinking this is all very small stuff, consider this: Tribal casinos in the 90s started out mostly in tents. And look at them now. They’re still modest compared with most commercial casinos in Vegas, but they are huge enterprises, major employers, in rural counties.
Why are the Meskwaki Nation (and other Indian nations) diversifying when casinos are their massive economic engines? Casinos have been wildly successful in lifting Indian nations out of poverty. Note that casinos weren’t a first choice. They were a last resort. Regardless, they have been phenomenally successful in providing development, income and jobs. But they can’t be relied upon to go on forever.
So, yes, the Meskwaki are pushing into other profitable ventures, many of which raise eyebrows among those who selectively and conveniently ignore the conduct of non-Native corporations. Tribes own gasoline companies. They sell hemp or marijuana, depending on state law. They also deal in seafood, hotels, restaurants, organic farming, and more.
I’m not revealing any secrets about the economic activities of the Meskwaki Nation, because there’s nothing secretive about it, as you (hopefully) can see in this 2017 article from an Iowa newspaper, just one example (If you do read this, don’t miss the pop-up interviews).
By 2017, these little businesses on Meskwaki land, *not* including the casino, were generating $17 million a year, and employing more than 80 people. According to Meskwaki, Inc.’s CEO, a Yale-educated Native, Meskwaki, Inc.’s goals include offering young people more job opportunities right at home, rather than just in gaming and government.
And this economic diversity in tribal businesses isn’t new: Anthropology Professor Jessica Cattelino (UCLA) said in 2017 that business diversification in Native nations was at least twenty years old. Cattelino has written a book about the Seminole Tribe of Florida, who, in 2007, bought the commercial Hard Rock chain of hotels and casinos. Surprise! And there I assumed Hard Rock was owned by some elderly rock star. Nope! Rock on, Seminole Nation!
In the article, anthropologist Dr. Cattelino says:
"This is not the same as a Vegas casino or a Trump hotel in Atlantic City. These are more like state lotteries or state-run businesses . . . People who run these things get re-elected, unlike people who run private businesses.”
Spot on. Who says anthropology is a useless subject, huh? 😀 Well, not as good as history, but nothing's perfect.
So where do profits go from the Meskwaki casino and other tribal businesses? Here’s what Hoosen and I found on our fleeting Sunday visit on the way home to Madison, a mile or so from the Meskwaki casino:
The “S” Word
I don’t know about you, but all this community investment looks a whole lot like the mostly-vanished Christian socialism of my 1970s British childhood, only more so: Brits got the National Health Service, youth and community centers, good housing, better education for the masses (for one brief shining moment!) and so much more. We didn't appreciate it enough at the time, but, let me tell you, I do now.
And yet, there's a big difference. In Indian nations, gains in healthcare, housing, and quality of life are being funded, by necessity, from hard-headed capitalism. It's a capitalism that embraces all sorts of products, from gambling to weed. After all, the history of corporations in America began with a corporation producing massive quantities of tobacco: The Virginia Company of London, a British outfit, which established Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States.
But I've already learned elsewhere that tribal business is not done without ongoing discussion among the tribe of ethics. It’s overseen by people who don’t look like empty suits. I mean, check out the Tribal Council of the Meskwaki Nation. Do they look like slimy corporate types to you? To me, they look more like my tribe: Real people!
My only surprise is how male this council is. Because, as I saw in Palm Springs, women have long been at the forefront of economic development for the Agua Caliente tribe. But that’s the thing: Native Nations, cultures, and histories are not all the same. I have some links at the end of the post on the Cowlitz Tribe, which lead you to meeting the Tribal Chair and the Spiritual leader, both amazing older women.
Like other Indian Nations we have visited, the Meskwaki are laundering money from casino, gas, cigarettes, and weed, for the greater good. And the more money they make, the more good they can do, and the more they can go into less ethically tricky businesses: Posh hotels and upmarket restaurants, wholesale seafood (with an eye to restoring environments and conserving fish stocks), Native art sales.
In fact, the Meskwaki now own the two-branch Pinnacle Bank in Iowa. They’re making no secret of it, offering financial services for Native tribes across the nation, from a link on the bank’s home page, as well as individual and business accounts for everyone. Most employees are non-Native, and the Tribe is the boss.
But surely, you might think, is all this really for the common good? For everyone? Read American Indian history, meet Native people, learn about American Indian culture today, and, trust me, you’ll worry a whole lot less.
This is not just anecdotal. I now know it's not just me noticing what’s happening, or leaping to conclusions. True, the learning curve for me is turning out to be steep. I'm taking note of the comments of experts like anthropologist Dr. Jessica Cattelino, and (of course!) historians. As I learn, I actively keep an open mind, and don’t just read for confirmation bias. But even as I try to find dirt on tribal enterprises, skeletons in the closet, because that’s what we should all do as we seek truth, I haven't yet. Instead, the more I read, the more I discover something astonishing happening in Native communities across America. It's something that has given me much hope and joy, two words in short supply these days. Hey, I'm not naive. But I am deeply troubled when I meet people, especially elders, stirred to panic —not enthusiastic action- by profiteering prophets of doom. No matter what our future holds, that's no way to live. And history is stuffed full of unexpected turns of Fortune's wheel (a very 18th century perspective from this historian of the 18th century!)
First, though, a quick bit of history (of course!) In fact, it was one little bit of history that finally led to me joining the dots, that led me to the “eureka!” moment I want to share. It started with my asking:
Who are the Meskwaki?
Meskwaki Rising
On the way home to Wisconsin, Hoosen and I were thwarted in visiting the Meskwaki Cultural Center and Museum (because it’s closed on weekends). I wanted a bit of history background to the pictures I snapped of the small history exhibits in gas station and casino before I wrote about them for you in the previous post. I didn't turn to a book (this is an Annette on the Road post, history on the hoof). I did what you might do: Looked at a website. I glanced over the Meskwaki Nation’s own potted history, just a few paragraphs, pretty basic and factual.
The Meskwaki Nation’s full formal name, under which they’re recognized by the federal government as a sovereign tribe, is The Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa. The “Sac” part I'll explain in a bit. Fox? The French called the Meskwaki Renards (Foxes), and it stuck (notice the Meskwaki business called Renards Manufacturing, above) But what they have always called themselves is Meskwaki, or Red Earth People.
The Meskwaki got a nickname from the French because the tribe originated in the St. Lawrence River Valley, on the Canadian border, New France. But then disruption came in the form of devastating pandemics following contact with the Old World, European invasion and trade on a corporate scale, and wars with their Iroquois enemies. The Meskwaki fought against France and its Indian allies in Canada and the borderlands in the Fox Wars, which lasted more than forty years, starting in 1701.
For protection, the Meskwaki (Fox) people allied with the Sauk (Sac) people, with whom they had much in common, but from whom they remained separate in culture and identity. That’s how they became lumped in with their allies, the Sauk (or Sac) in ways that I sense are hard to keep straight.
Seeking a bit of peace (and who can blame them?), both tribes gradually, starting as early as 1650, moved south, into Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and, yes, Iowa.
In 1832, for the purposes of a quick treaty, the US Government lumped together the Sauk and Meskwaki peoples in Iowa, and that’s why they officially became called The Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa. Which is way more than you wanted to know, but bear with me.
By 1845, the Meskwaki (and Sauk) peoples in Iowa had had all their land taken from them by the US Government, and were ordered to go to a reservation in Kansas. Most went. Some stayed in Iowa and kept a low profile. Others, unimpressed by Kansas, quietly returned home to Iowa, along with a few Sauk friends.
And then, in 1851, amazingly, the State of Iowa passed a law that said the Meskwaki were welcome to settle so long as they owned land. The Meskwaki were recognized by the State of Iowa, thanks to lobbying by the Meskwaki themselves, and by friendly non-Native people—yes, white people. These were neighbors in this thinly-populated new state who knew Meskwaki people personally, and didn't occupy an entirely separate existence, hating Natives from afar, based on prejudice.
But how could the Meskwaki get back their land in Iowa, which had been given to non-Natives?
They bought it back. Paid cash.
At this point, Hoosen was agog as I read all this to him in the car. “Imagine having to buy back your own land,” he said. But the Meskwaki did. And that’s why they’re the last remaining Indian Nation in Iowa.
The Meskwaki bought their first 80 acres in Tama County in 1857, from a white farmer. To put that amount of land in perspective, eighty acres is half of the amount of Indian land that the federal government, led by President Abraham Lincoln, would soon start giving away free to each individual person who applied for it. These applicants who hit the land jackpot were white and black, citizens and immigrants, single women as well as men. What these lucky winners were, in short, was pretty much any random person who was NOT Indian. Indians were disqualified from this massive turnover of Indian lands to random people.
I'm talking about the Homestead Act of 1862, a massive federal government bonanza lottery giveaway of Indian lands, and whether you know what that is, or it rings a vague bell, or you haven’t a bloody clue, I have a post lined up about it soon from the ground zero of that giveaway.
Meanwhile, as this was going on after the Civil War, by 1867, the Meskwaki were recognized as an Indian tribe by the US government, with the support of the Iowa legislature. The federal government now gave the Tribe a small annual payment that was extended to federally-recognized Indian nations, an inadequate payment for their lands and way of life. Things seemed to be looking up, but the Meskwaki couldn't depend on this and, wisely, had no intention of doing so.
The Meskwaki people settled on their little 80 acre plot, and began growing their population. Decade after decade, as a community, they kept putting their money, yes, their money, held in common, into more land, all jointly owned by the Meskwaki tribe. By the 1930s, they owned 3,300 acres. By 2022, they owned more than 8,000 acres. Oh, and they’re now the county’s largest employer, of non-Native as well as Native people.
I learned most of this last bit from a 2022 article in the Washington Post to which the Meskwaki online history linked. It’s written by Eric Zimmer who is (YES!) a historian. This story got buried in the newspaper: It only got one (demented and off-topic) comment at the time.
This is just one reason why I don’t think the non-Native public (including me) is yet grasping what specialist historians already know, even though it’s no secret, and never has been. If you want to read Zimmer’s article, it is paywalled, but I’m giving you a gift link so you can read it even if you don't subscribe to the Washington Post (Please, though, do support a newspaper or other local news outlet or —best of all— proper investigative journalist of your choice— NOT an opinionator. Or more than one. We CANNOT have freedom without real journalism.)
Whether you read Zimmer’s piece or not, let me highlight some things I learned from him about what a tricky journey the Meskwaki have had. To show what came to mind, and, ok, bizarrely, I'm going to quote arch-imperialist poet Rudyard Kipling. Hey, Kipling had a point in his poem If, especially when he suggested that maturity means “you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same.” In other words, don’t count your chickens, and don’t despair. That’s a lesson the Meskwaki could teach us, too.
Annette’s Aside: Oh, and a bit off-topic (but actually not), have you seen Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office on PBS or streaming? If not, go immediately to your television, because this is turning into a huge story, and may yet prove far more, thanks to investigative journalists like Nick Wallis. It’s not just about Britain and a horrific scandal in its privatized Post Office, in which good people in their hundreds, thousands, were bullied and ruined. It’s not just sad (although it is) or celebratory (it is). It’s often moving, often funny and joyous, often tragic. And it’s pretty closely based on the real story of real people. Oh, yeah, and it’s a great illustration of complexity, of the triumph/disaster thing.
But more than that: This twenty year story is playing out right now in the UK, and now, thanks to this drama, the British public— regardless of political party— is starting to ask stunned questions about the society in which they live, which is more and more like the one in which we live in the States. And they are angry. Things are happening right now, because the TV drama finally flipped a switch. And Americans — regardless of political party—are relating too. In fact, I'd bank on that. I cannot recommend this drama too highly. Go. Then watch the documentary. Read the book by investigative journo Nick Wallis. But go watch Mr. Bates vs The Post Office first. You won't regret it.
History isn't moonlight and roses. Reclaiming Meskwaki land was never going to be easy. And, as historian Dr. Zimmer shows us, by the end of the 19th century, disaster had struck the Tribe.
The State of Iowa was no longer the same place by the 1890s. For nearly thirty years, the railroad had been bringing settlers in their thousands. Now, the State Government changed its previously tolerant policy toward the Meskwaki. In 1896, the State of Iowa claimed back the Meskwaki’s land titles, and handed those titles to the United States government, to be held in trust—in other words, out of the Meskwaki’s hands.
This put not only Meskwaki land under the federal government, but also Meskwaki people. Now, they were subject to control by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. At this time, the Bureau’s policy was forcing Indians to “assimilate” into non-Native society, a clueless and cruel policy that failed to recognize how being told “be like us, not you, only without the advantages” can break people.
Policies tried to force Indians to own land separately from each other, instead of communally, as tribes. Their children were taken from them at a young age, and placed in boarding schools to become “Americans”, punished for speaking their languages, for practicing their religions, their cultures. They were also trained in dead-end menial jobs, a poor vocational training that was no substitute for education, and which prepared them for dead-end jobs in an alien culture. Think how this would undermine your sense of self. Now add in bullying and beating by teachers from whom you can't escape, and, for some, sexual abuse. But these most shocking things, which happened in boarding schools of all kinds, should not overshadow the most significant damage of all:
Do not underestimate how devastating was the cultural aspect of the boarding school experience. Sometimes, by the time they finally got home, children could no longer communicate with their own parents. Indian communities began to lose religions, languages, and more, in a forced process. Contrary to the fond imaginings of the non-Natives who supported “ integration policies, this was not a recipe for happy ever after for American Indians. Quite the reverse.
Reprieve
It was Franklin D. Roosevelt (imagine that!) who helped slow down the federal government’s cultural genocide of Native peoples (I know that sounds dramatic, but what else can I call it? It was that bad ). Although, and I'm still learning about this, FDR certainly didn't end the problem, FDR’s administration did halt land being taken from the Meskwaki, and offered them —as they did other tribes—assistance in drafting a constitution, and becoming a sovereign nation. A lifebuoy for self-determination that Native peoples grabbed with both hands. A temporary breather from the onslaught.
I'm treading lightly here because—as is often the case with Road posts— I'm not on my historical home ground. As far as I see, FDR was offering both autonomy and assimilation. That's because Indian constitutions had to be on an American model, not one that reflected traditional Native cultural values. But then I think about the Cherokee, who had adopted such a model long, long before, not that it helped them much when the State of Georgia okayed confiscating their land and deporting them to Oklahoma on what became known as the Trail of Tears, so . . .
Anyway. The Meskwaki in the 1930s, with advice from FDR’s government, drafted a constitution (just like the Catawba in South Carolina, among many others). An election was held. A Meskwaki Tribal Council was duly elected.
But the Meskwaki were not born yesterday. They saw how this new status could help them develop economically as well as gaining more say in their own future.
Like every local government in America during the Great Depression (including conservative white-governed communities like Carbon Hill, Alabama), the Meskwaki started applying for federal grants from the New Deal. You might remember a photo I posted last time from the historical display in the Meskwaki casino, of a 1934 poster the Tribe printed to invite white as well as Native neighbors to a Pow Wow. It advertised that they wanted everyone to see the economic progress they were making with New Deal assistance.
Let me shout this: FDR was stunningly popular among ordinary Americans. Nobody was turning down federal assistance during the Great Depression. Honestly? I’m a bit tired of feeling I must counter opinionated and ill-informed randos implying that Natives are on the take from the federal government, when Indian peoples have put up with so much, have given up the entire land for treaties that were never honored by the US, leaving them with diddly squat.
Downturn Again
Federal policy again shifted against Indian self-determination in the 1950s, when part of the response to the perceived Communist threat was to paper over differences among Americans, whether they wanted those differences papered over or not. Native peoples were restrained from planning their own futures as sovereign nations, and toward disastrous “assimilation”, which made most Native people poor, by driving them apart, depriving them of the shared resources and support of community.
Take the example of the small Nevada City Rancheria (reservation) Nisenan of Northern California, whom I have written about often. They lost their federal recognition as tribes, and with that, lost their tiny “rancheria”, their reservation, the very last of their land. They stayed in the area (it was their home!) but they were not safe: As the child welfare system expanded after WWII, social workers removed small children from their parents, and handed the kids to white foster families. This was happening throughout North America: In Canada, it’s since been called the Sixties Scoop, the wholesale abduction of Indigenous kids by social workers.
Learn about the Nevada City Nisenan here from this post that (I’m proud to say) I wrote back in 2021:
It was reading about the tiny Nevada City Nisenan tribe in California, and their quietly charismatic spokeswoman Shelly Covert, that first got me interested in what's happening among Indian nations today.
The Nisenan people were at Ground Zero of the Gold Rush in 1849: Gold was found at Sutter’s Mill, being built on what’s now called the American River with Nisenan permission, next to their village of Cullamah (where Coloma is now). I was struck by learning about Nevada City Nisenan’s ongoing struggle to regain federal recognition, and to reclaim some of their land and turn it into a natural conservation area as a lasting legacy
Annette’s Aside: So I began sharing the Nisenan story with kids in schools in 2019, as part of my Westward Migration program. I now began the presentation with the story of the Nisenan people of the river village of Cullamah, how their way of life vanished overnight when gold was discovered, how they pivoted to this change with amazing speed, realizing that gold had value to the incomers, and thus they could benefit, too. Nisenan became gold miners, collecting gold in woven baskets, only soon to be driven away, attacked, even murdered by white miners.
After taking students on a simulated version of the journey that overland migrants to California took (and their reasons for going, which included struggling farms and buying their families out of slavery, not just “greed”) I end the program by telling kids about the Nisenan today. I explain how some remaining Nisenan people had even their tiny reservation taken from them in the 1960s, and how they now want help getting it back. And then, when I started writing NBH in 2021, I started to tell this story to you, as well as the story of the migrants and the story of Plains Indians on the way, in the West With the Wagons series I’m gradually trotting out (more soon!)
For now, I'm happy to highlight the (succeeding!) Nisenan campaign to buy back their land. I know some of you have given generously, on my say so, which I regard as quite a responsibility, a leap of faith. What can I say? I'm a Brit who loves an underdog, and the more history I read, the more confident I am that this is a great cause. I’ve even popped up to Nevada City to check out Uba Seo, the Nisenans’ museum.
But hey. what happened to the Meskwaki, in Iowa? Oh, they’re still here, waiting patiently for me to get on with it. So I will.
Eureka!
I was thinking about the Iowa Meskwaki, and the California Nisenan in the car, as Hoosen and I drove through Iowa toward the Wisconsin border. Then it hit me, like lightning.
“Oh, my God!” I gasped. “They’re all doing it! They’re buying the place back! They’re here to save us all! That’s where the money is going!”
And then I sobbed and laughed, all at once. Because after our visit to Washington State, to Fort Vancouver, to the Ilani Hotel Casino operated by the Cowlitz Nation (haven't even had a chance to write about that yet!) delightedly discovering the Jamestown S’Klallam village, meeting Hazel in Fort Langley in Canada, and now checking out the Meskwaki Nation, I finally saw what had been hiding in plain sight, and got. what great news it is! Even then, in the car, I didn’t yet know for sure what I have rapidly learned since, all the way to today, when I clicked the link from the Meskwaki Nation website, and read historian Eric Zimmer’s article in the 2022 Washington Post.
I wasn't wrong, what I realized in the car. And I firmly believe it really is good news for us all. Indigenous people are on our side. They are, after all, proud Americans. They’re here to help us try to save the day. Or maybe I should say, they're coming to save the day, if we but stand back and let them.
#Landback For Everyone
When you read me talking of Indian casinos, tobacco, weed, you might wonder who benefits from the smoky casinos poisoning their patrons’ and workers’ lungs (yes, including Native employees). I’m a pragmatist. I understand compromises always end up happening. But I’m also not a fan of so-called collateral damage, of sacrificing people to principle. That's why I grasp the need, the delicate balance, the compromises, the concerned conversations in tribal councils. Here’s the thing: Good things are coming from Indian corporate businesses, unlike most regular corporations. They are governed by tribal councils with moral voices. And yet. Is the profit solely for the benefit of each individual tribe?
To start with, yes, I think so, because survival is essential, and what decent person would object to Indigenous people reaching for opportunity? Unemployment, poverty, drug addiction, alcoholism, and despair were off the scale among peoples who had lost everything, even the ability to make a living from the truly crappy and remote lands onto which they were shunted. When everything is taken from people, any people, are vulnerable to freefall.
Indian nations have been meeting, putting their heads together, and working together for a very long time. And now, I've learned, they are embracing a national movement: Not one organization, but a decentralized movement, one with enormous potential to heal a land that's poisoning is (think I'm being dramatic? Seen the cancer rates?)
This grassroots movement is called Land Back, or #landback. It's not new and it didn't start here in the US, but among Indigenous people in Australia. It's taking off around the world. In the US, Land Back got a huge boost in the last few years. Here's just one reason why.
Maybe you already know about Land Back, but I didn’t. I know most people don’t. If we just hear about it, we say, “Oh”, we nod. Or become angry or fearful. But that's not the same as us understanding what it’s about which is lots of things, starting with what it says on the tin: Indigenous people buying back their lands. Historian Eric Zimmer was writing about Land Back in the Washington Post in 2022, and —get this—how the Meskwaki are a role model for the Land Back movement. He concludes this:
Recovering its land did not solve all the Meskwaki Nation’s problems. But for more than 160 years, the settlement was a vital anchor whenever the Meskwaki Nation faced uncertainty. Meskwaki history underscores the utility of #Landback as a tool for cultural restoration, community rebuilding, economic development and political leverage. It suggests that when Native peoples reclaim land, it helps their nations recover.
Yes, historian Eric Zimmer, two years ago, zoomed in on a small Indian nation in rural Iowa as a role model for Native peoples. And, thanks to Hoosen's instincts, that nation, the Meskwaki, is the place we stumbled into on our way home. Coincidence isn't the word. That's manifest destiny! 😃
I’m going to stick my neck out with a cautious prediction (and you know how rarely I do even that), and then I'm going to try to show you why I think it. #Landback has the potential to do even more for so many people, non-Native too. Indian nations are becoming major employers in otherwise struggling rural communities, including employers of non-Native people. They are job creators indeed, often offering excellent benefits. They are sharing services that improve the environment and our quality of life, like parks, cleaned-up beauty spots, and so much more. As peoples with multiple different perspectives, Indians nonetheless share much in common: A culture that genuinely values the land and the United States, because they’re US citizens, and Indigenous peoples, all at once. Non-Native neighbors who reach out to Native nations and peoples are increasingly getting it: Native people care deeply for the land they share, and the people they share it with, even though those people often don’t return the love, because that is their culture.
American education does not teach thinking in complex ways, like Native people having two identities at once, Indigenous and US. That’s one reason I’m here! Ta da!