The Office of Science & Technology Policy has released its second installment of records about federal reliance on indigenous knowledge. As the Daily Caller earlier reported, the Biden administration hosted “indigenous knowledge” seminars that warned scientists about “disrespecting spirits.”
Two records I found interesting were a strange Native land acknowledgment (found at this link) and meeting participants formally spending time at the beginning of meetings sharing their “pronouns” (found at this link, where a ten minute segment is devoted in large part to discussion of “names and pronouns”).
This land acknowledgment is found at the end of all emails sent by one of the participants in a meeting about federal research support for indigenous knowledge. It says, “As I live in Arlington, VA, I acknowledge I am on the traditional and rightful lands of of the Nacotchtank (Anacostans), Piscataway, and Pamunkey peoples. I honor and respect them, their relational care of the land, and their cultures, lifeways, families, and Elders.” If this participant feels she is on someone else’s “traditional and rightful lands,” perhaps she should return her property to them, and move out of Arlington.
Tribes cited in the land acknowledgment had such a fleeting or tenuous connection to Arlington that the current owners of land in Arlington may have more of a “traditional and rightful” claim to the land. Wikipedia notes that the “Nacotchtank were an indigenous Algonquian people who lived in the area of what is now Washington, D.C., during the 17th century.” By the 1770s, over 800 white and black people already lived in Arlington, and essentially no Native Americans. The Piscataway lived primarily on the north bank of the Potomac in southern Maryland — not in Virginia, much less Arlington. The Pamunkey were a significant tribe in Virginia, but their homeland when whites arrived in Virginia were the coastal tidewater of Virginia on the north side of the James River near Chesapeake Bay, far away from Arlington.
Native land acknowledgments are a common ritual on college campuses, in which college officials and staff acknowledge — often inaccurately — that the land on which a college is situated was once owned by a particular Indian tribe. They often assert that that a tribe has been in the college’s location “since time immemorial,” an assertion rooted in myth rather than history. In fact, Native Americans came to North America at different times, and routinely displaced or exterminated other tribes in the process. Conquest and migration have shaped the whole world, yet no one apologizes for the Norman conquest of England in 1066. These “land acknowledgments” often contain pseudo-pagan tributes to the tribes’ role as “caretakers” or “stewards” of the natural order.
Many other records were released, too. They are too voluminous to post on the internet, but I can email them to you if you wish (I can be reached at hfb138@yahoo.com).
Last year, the Biden administration released guidance designed to promote the use of indigenous knowledge and beliefs in federal agencies’ decisions, and to give tribes more control over the dissemination of their indigenous knowledge.
Indigenous knowledge and beliefs can be useful, or they can be harmful quackery or superstition. Examples of harmful indigenous and traditional beliefs include using cautery as a “remedy” for illnesses. Cautery “involves placing a heated metal object, usually a nail or a small rod much like a branding iron, on the patient’s skin. The procedure is painful, burning the skin and leaving a permanent scar.” And it doesn’t cure the illness it is used to treat.
Despite the uneven quality of indigenous knowledge, the Guidance for Federal Departments and Agencies on Indigenous Knowledge issued by the Biden administration in December says that “Agencies should also include Indigenous Knowledge as an aspect of best available science,” and that “Indigenous Knowledge … may be used in HISA [Highly Influential Scientific Assessment] documents.”
Some tribes have asked the Biden administration to provide federal subsidies for tribal review of federal projects and for access to indigenous knowledge. They have also asked the administration to curb access to information under the Freedom of Information Act.
