Exactly two years ago, Cherokee Nation citizen and Stony Brook University professor Joseph M. Pierce, now director of the school’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative, shared how institutional land acknowledgments “are almost never followed by meaningful action” in an opinion piece for Hyperallergic.
“What changes when an institution publishes a land acknowledgment?” he asked. “What material, tangible changes are enacted?”
The answers to these questions still appear to elude some of the most well-attended art institutions across the United States. So much so that some Indigenous scholars have come to regard the standard land acknowledgment as “hollow,” “empty,” “performative,” and, as Pierce put it, “not enough.”
Hyperallergic looked into the land acknowledgments — or lack thereof — at 15 popular art museums and institutions in the country, and while this is by no means a comprehensive list, there’s certainly a lot to glean from the varying approaches. Some institutions have opted to incorporate land acknowledgements on their grounds. In 2021, for example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan installed a plaque on its Fifth Avenue façade coupled with an article from the curators behind the effort contextualizing the plaque in addition to other initiatives within the museum. That same year, the Legion of Honor and de Young Museum in San Francisco installed a physical acknowledgment on an exterior wall, complemented by a detailed online text.
Many museums have relegated their land acknowledgements to their websites, sometimes adding links for additional resources and using digital space for further contextualization. In New York City, the Brooklyn Museum and the Queens Museum have dedicated land acknowledgements in their “About” pages online; the Brooklyn Museum also has an acknowledgement on the footer of its website. The Whitney Museum of American Art features a devoted land acknowledgment webpage with additional context on overlapping territories and diasporic relationships, as well as links to the Lenape Center, the American Indian Community House, and the digital nonprofit Native Land.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art also presents its land acknowledgment tab in the “About” section, whereas the Philadelphia Museum of Art included one in its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility section with links to relevant topics and past events at the museum. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has the acknowledgement in its “Inclusion” section, directing people to visit Massachusetttribe.org.
The Art Institute of Chicago‘s digital land acknowledgment was implemented in 2019 through a live ceremony with the city’s American Indian Center, a collaborator on the endeavor. The page includes a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section that also addresses criticisms of land acknowledgments among other points of interest, including an answer to the question, “Isn’t a statement a bit hollow?” The Cleveland Art Museum‘s land acknowledgment page also includes FAQ section tackling criticisms and providing more historical context about the Native populations of the region as well as the museum’s stated commitments to Native tribes today.
Alternatively, some high-profile institutions have not included land acknowledgements on their websites. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, confirmed that it does not have a land acknowledgment in an email to Hyperallergic. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan do not appear to have land acknowledgments online, nor did they immediately respond to Hyperallergic‘s inquiries. The Getty Museum and Foundation, meawhile, announced in 2021 that the development of a land acknowledgment in collaboration with relevant Indigenous leaders was in the works, and has issued a FAQs document about the timeline, process, and permissions for individual acknowledgments in the meantime.
To better understand how a land acknowledgment should be folded into more comprehensive institutional initiatives to engage with and support Native people living today, Hyperallergic checked in with Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation), executive director and chief curator of Forge Project. The Native-led nonprofit on Moh-He-Con-Nuck/Mohican (Stockbridge-Munsee) land in Taghkanic, New York, is devoted to cultivating and advancing Indigenous leadership in the arts and culture sector.
“The way that I understand and frame a land acknowledgment is that it should be a declaration of an institution’s relationships,” Hopkins explained in a phone call. “It’s not just a declaration of people who were there on a certain land area — people who are still there. I feel like that relationship part is really key and it’s often left out of land acknowledgments.”
Hopkins elaborated that it’s the institutions that must develop relations with existing Indigenous communities in a non-extractive manner.
“You don’t go to a community who is overwhelmed and under-resourced and say, ‘Hey, we want to plan a land acknowledgment,’ — you approach them with what you can offer them in order to begin the relationship,” she said. “So that perhaps some of your institutional resources may directly benefit them. Museums often think that they can develop a relationship through programming, but I actually think that what needs to happen first is building trust and asking the question, ‘What do you need from us?’ instead of ‘What do we need from you?’”
Hopkins used the Forge Project as an example, highlighting that the organization shares 50% of the proceeds from any paid visitor tours on its grounds with the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, in addition to collaborating in ongoing research on land history and labor exploitation in the area. The Forge Project has also engaged in land remediation with the Community through the removal of invasive plant species and growth of endemic plant specimens to support original biodiversity and rekindle Indigenous knowledge and stewardship of the land.
Another point Hopkins brought up is the basis of land acknowledgments pacifying history, or failing to address the violence and brutality against the Native populations whose land institutions were built on. Many acknowledgments will state that the institution or organization is located on the “unceded, ancestral homelands” of a particular Native tribe or community without elaborating on the processes of dispossession, dehumanization, and violent expulsion.
“Oftentimes, land acknowledgments intentionally or unintentionally underscore this really violent myth of the ‘vanishing Native,’ and hardly anyone ever answers the question of ‘Why are people not here?’” Hopkins continued, highlighting that colonial histories have always centered violence in the transformation of traditional territory into property.
“Museums have been inherently extractive and there still needs to be a lot of work done in order to shift those practices at their base level,” Hopkins noted. “They shouldn’t presume that there is an interest in collaboration or a desire for a relationship simply because they’re museums. Certain Native communities may have other priorities, perhaps rooted in healthcare and education, and it’s up to institutions to understand and reflect on who benefits from forging a relationship, and what can be done outside of just programming.”
