What it Means to Be a White Person Living on Stolen Land

 
 

Lancaster County, PA

By Erin Sweeney

What does it mean to be a white person living on stolen land? A descendant of people who accepted land grants. A descendant of people who farmed and tended to this land. A descendant of people who were grateful to find safety on this land but chose not to see the brutality and violence that allowed them to receive it. A person whose ancestors are buried here. A person who can go visit the headstones of their great great great grandparents. A person whose ancestors were valued enough by society to be remembered. 

A person who grew up knowing the name of the Susquehanna River but not the Susquehannock people. A person who grew up knowing Carlisle as a local town but not the place of an infamously brutal Indian boarding school. A person who learned the white-washed version of history every Thanksgiving. A person who grew up visiting “Pilgrim’s Rock” in the summers. A person who was taught that Indigenous people are of the past, not the present. 

What does it mean to be a white person living on stolen land? What does it mean to be an antiracist white person committed to collective liberation living on stolen land? We acknowledge the original stewards of the land at our group gatherings. We include their names in our IG bios, on our email signatures. This is important. This has value. Speaking to what has been actively suppressed for centuries matters. Reminding ourselves that we are living on stolen land matters. 

And we must catch ourselves when we’re virtue signaling, we must catch ourselves when we’re checking the box of being a “good” white person. We must catch ourselves when we’re moving from a place of guilt and shame rather than love and connection. We must ask ourselves what it means to go beyond a land acknowledgement. To listen to and be in solidarity with the Indigenous peoples of the land we're on, to those leading the movements for sovereignty, landback, and liberation. To support with our money and our time. To pay our land taxes (see resources below). To learn the history of the land that we occupy, the land that raised and shaped us. To learn the stories of our ancestors. Why did they come to this land? What did they do when they arrived here? To learn how to be in a reciprocal relationship with the land and challenge our deeply held and inherited impulses to extract, to dominate, to control. To learn and be curious about what it means to be a good guest. As we commit to this path, we must find community along the way. We must hold ourselves and each other accountable with love and grace.      

Opportunities to Pay our Land Taxes: 

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