Week 1 Challenge: Indigenous Land Acknowledgement

Photo credit: Wild & Wondering article listed below. (Shayla Klein, 2019) 

So, first: I live in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, which is a very beautiful and wild place. Our history is somewhat atypical for much of the United States, which has created a rather unique relationship between our land and the Indigenous communities who once inhabited it. Although I will not touch on this too much because it's a separate though very related issue that requires more than a quick blog entry to examine, our complicated history here in coal country with out-of-state landowners and coal operators should be acknowledged as a consideration in addressing land acknowledgments and rights. It's something that's very challenging for the current inhabitants of this land, and always has been to some extent.

To my understanding (speaking as someone who minored in Native American Studies during my undergraduate at West Virginia University), one of the things that is a bit different here as opposed to other places within the United States is that this territory was largely forested hunting territory under proctorship primarily of the Haudenosaunee during the time of first settler colonization. (Although the Shawnee, Lenni Lanape, and Tsalagi all moved regularly through the region, and indeed had small villages approved for encampment by the Haudenosaunee scattered throughout the mountains.) West Virginia itself didn't become a state until 1863 (during the Civil War by proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln), after it split with Virginia (a traditionally agricultural-based economy supported by enslaved labor that was anti-abolition and wanted to join the Confederacy.)

What I have been taught is that this was kind of an outskirts/edge territory that was used by several different tribal nations for migration and hunting, but was not the site of any permanent settlements. The main habitation centers for all of these nations were all significantly further to the north, east, and south, while here the terrain itself was very mountainous and rocky almost without break. It was not well suited for farming or village building as a whole, but made excellent resource acquisition territory. This usage designation could also be due to the gradual disappearance of the original habitats of the area, who are thought to have perhaps merged into other tribes or moved into other areas very gradually over the centuries. The research covering this is a bit sketchy, and several of my professors and historians have been hard at work for a number of years on writing more comprehensive coverages of the Indigenous history of this region, but this is to my understanding where current research stands. I personally feel like there is a lot of history being left out of the official narrative prior to settler contact, as do many historians and archaeologists, but those stories have yet to be told. 

I do know that the Haudenosaunee acknowledge the basis of an ancestral claim, but are headquartered many miles away in New York...and have heard that Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation also acknowledges the same towards the southernmost parts of the state, but are also headquartered many miles away in southern North Carolina...and I don't believe there are any pending cases or acknowledgments outstanding in the area, possibly do to the fact that West Virginia does not have the most excellent economy and also suffers from some environmental considerations resulting from fracking and coal mining. (There are many beautiful and well-preserved spaces, but we do bear the legacy of providing the natural resources that powered the growth of many big American cities, industries, and migrations.) 

There are no federally recognized tribes in West Virginia, and less than 2% of the population surveyed during recent censuses identified as Indigenous (although many West Virginians claim indigenous heritage many generations back), and there are no current descendants of any of the peoples housed in the mounds to claim historical artifacts and rehoming. Or at least, that's my current understanding of the situation.

West Virginia itself played a very prominent role in the Early Eastern Woodlands period...especially during the Adena and Hopewell cultural periods...and is the side of many earthworks, mounds, and ancestral villages belonging to various peoples who are no longer with us. In fact, it's nearly impossible to turn up new earth anywhere in West Virginia without encountering some very old artifacts like arrowheads. However, there were no widespread settlements or established towns (despite many communities and counties taking their names from Indigenous languages), and there were no communities forcibly removed or displaced as population remained very sparse through the beginning of the 20th century. Really, there were not a lot of communities anywhere even centuries after the arrival of colonizing settlers. It should be noted that even today West Virginia is comprised of roughly 78% forested land, including a new national park and several very large swaths of state and national forests. We are very much still wild and free, as our state motto says. 😉

Returning to the question of land acknowledgments, I personally acknowledge that many people moved through this land over many centuries, and that control of this territory continues to remain in the hands of out-of-state owners, operators, and business interests who exploit the natural resources without giving anything back.

For further reading:

WV Public Broadcasting: "Wild, Wondering West Virginia"

eWV: Indigenous History Archive 

WV Gazette, Opinion Article: "Time To Recognize Indigenous West Virginia"