Plowing Under a Land Acknowledgment

Ethical Educator

Scenario: A teacher of Native American descent begins her U.S. history class by stating, “As an Indigenous woman, I give land acknowledgments to thank the land and its resources; to remember the ancestors who lived there for generations before settlement, the ancestors forcibly removed or killed, the children kidnapped or placed into boarding schools and those enslaved from other continents; and to remember what remains to us to keep us driven.” Some parents file a formal, public complaint, claiming it’s a divisive statement to make white students feel guilty and indoctrinate them in a left-wing “woke” political perspective. They want the teacher fired and land acknowledgments forbidden in students’ presence. How should the superintendent respond?