On July 4, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company declared that Mount Rushmore was on “stolen land,” urged the country to return it to the Indians, and denounced our Founding Fathers as “colonizers.” Of course, Ben & Jerry’s is notorious for communist virtue-signaling. But this statement, which cost owner Unilever $2 billion in market capital, isn’t just another loopy Leftist idea [Unilever stock loses $2B amid calls to boycott Ben & Jerry’s over tweet, by Ariel Zilber, New York Post, July 6, 2023]. It’s now affecting U.S. politics significantly. Land is actually being given back to Indians, several governing bodies offer “land acknowledgements,” and more could follow. Schools and universities are teaching it. This pernicious idea must be countered wherever it’s found. The person arguably most responsible for advancing it: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee.
Some Democrats were always glad about Gorsuch’s nomination. A supposed conservative, he wrote the 5-4 majority opinion in 2020’s McGirt v. Oklahoma, which declared that nearly half of Oklahoma belongs to Indian tribes. The opinion, joined by Leftist justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, declared that 19th century treaties demanded the ruling.
“On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise,” Gorsuch pompously wrote,
Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever.
As VDARE.com’s Allan Wall noted, the ruling is bad law. Those arrangements were nullified when Oklahoma became a state in 1907.
While Gorsuch might have been proud of his rhetoric, the ruling caused chaos in the Sooner state. Per Wall:
In the 43% of Oklahoma within these so-called ”reservations,” Oklahoma can't prosecute crimes in which Indians are either perpetrators or victims. But the tribes and federal government in those areas can't prosecute most of the cases because they don't have the assets to do so.
As Chief Justice John Roberts warned in his dissent, “[T]he court has profoundly destabilized the governance of eastern Oklahoma.”
But thanks to Gorsuch and his Leftist allies, local and state authorities are barred from upholding the basic foundations of American civil and criminal law on “Indian lands.”
And Gorsuch wasn’t finished. Last month, in Haaland v. Brackeen, he sided with the 7-2 majority to rule that Indians can exclude whites and other outsiders from adopting Indian children.
He was also the lone dissenter in Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Coughlin, whereby SCOTUS declared that Indian tribes are subject to standard bankruptcy laws. Once again, in grandiose rhetoric, he wrote that the Constitution guarantees Indians the right to ignore our laws and have our land.
Leftists and the anti-white Regime Media hailed Gorsuch’s stances on Indian issues. The New York Times’s Adam Liptak declared that the Trump appointee is “the fiercest proponent of Native American rights on the Supreme Court” [Justice Neil Gorsuch Is a Committed Defender of Tribal Rights, June 15, 2023].
Gorsuch, of course, did not invent the so-called “land back movement.” Professional Indians and Leftists have been pushing it for years. But the McGirt decision was one of their biggest victories to date, and so Indians have been pounding the war drums ever since, hoping to reverse the conquest and settlement of California and the West, the Great American Desert, and even the original Thirteen Colonies.
Unsurprisingly, given his zealous pursuit of the Great Replacement, Traitor Joe Biden has prioritized handing over federal land to Indian tribes. As of February, the administration had agreed to nearly two dozen co-stewardship pacts with tribes, with another 60 co-stewardship arrangements under review [After Centuries Of Stealing Land, The U.S. Govt Is Actually Inviting Tribes To Help Manage It, by Jennifer Bendery, HuffPost, February 20, 2023]. Wealthy individuals and nonprofits have been helping tribes buy back further land from private owners [Native American land return movement makes gains, faces obstacles, by Felicity Barringer, & The West, Stanford.edu, November 22, 2022].
Cities are also offering to return land. Eureka, California, was the first to do so in 2019. Oakland followed in 2022, giving hundreds of acres to a tribe that claimed city ground. Minneapolis might soon follow and surrender a downtown riverfront land to the Dakota tribes [Oakland plans to return 5 acres of city park to Indigenous groups, one of first cities to do so, by Orlando Mayorquin, USA Today, September 12, 2022].
Some universities might also. In May, Oakland University in Michigan became the first college to join the land back movement, handing over several acres for a “Native” heritage site [Oakland University becomes 1st US campus to return land use to Native American community, by Joseph Goral, WDIV4, May 25, 2023].
You might say the Indians are doing a land-office business.
The seeds that inspire American institutions to cede territory to those we conquered are “land acknowledgements,” a form of white “guilt-mongering,” as VDARE’s John Derbyshire called it. These insipid statements are ubiquitous, from pro sporting events to academic conferences. Dozens of cities and universities have said they sit on stolen land. Even the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks issued one [Blackhawks' Land Acknowledgement, by Nina Sanders, NHL.com, January 22, 2021].
A resolution from Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s non-voting delegate in Congress, read this way in part:
Whereas a land acknowledgment is a formal statement that recognizes and respects Indigenous peoples as the original and traditional stewards of a given geographic area and the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous peoples and their ancestral lands;
Whereas a formal statement of a land acknowledgment is a proper method to recognize the traditions of Indigenous peoples and ancestral land; …
Whereas a land acknowledgment serves as a reminder and a reflection on the impacts of colonialism, past and present; …
Resolved, That the House of Representatives—
(1) honors the legacy of Indigenous peoples who inhabited the land before the establishment of the United States of America and continue to live in relationship with their ancestral homelands today, and recognizes their significance and ongoing contributions to the United States; and
(2) calls on State and local governments to encourage formal land acknowledgments.
Thankfully, it went nowhere. But again, that hasn’t stopped other institutions from cooking up such tripe.
Indian chiefs allow as how the acknowledgements are a good start, but must be backed by concrete action: land cessions, direct donations to Indians, or just acknowledging White Privilege. Whatever the action, Indians want whites to believe that the land on which they built a nation from nothing isn’t theirs. And whites must atone for “stealing” it [So you began your event with an Indigenous land acknowledgment. Now what?, by Chloe Veltman, NPR, March 15, 2023].
Thu the fight over Mount Rushmore. Lakotas wants to destroy Gutzon Borglum’s sublime monument, just as Leftists destroyed Confederate statues. Ben & Jerry’s—sold by its Jewish owners to Unilever in 2000, with an agreement that the company’s “social justice” mission would remain the same—sides with the Sioux:
Long before South Dakota had become a state, long before the faces of four American presidents were blasted into the side of Mount Rushmore, that mountain was known as Tunkasila Sakpe, the Six Grandfathers, to the Lakota Sioux—a holy mountain that rises up from the Black Hills, land they consider sacred. …
Why are we talking about this? Because on the Fourth of July many people in the US celebrate liberty and independence—our country’s and our own.
But what is the meaning of Independence Day for those whose land this country stole, those who were murdered and forced with brutal violence onto reservations, those who were pushed from their holy places and denied their freedom? The faces on Mount Rushmore are the faces of men who actively worked to destroy Indigenous cultures and ways of life, to deny Indigenous people their basic rights.
[The US Was Founded on Stolen Indigenous Land—This July 4, Let’s Commit to Returning It, BenJerry.com, July 4, 2023]
That’s the kind of crazy Leftism, by the way, that also led to the company’s refusal to sell ice cream in “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” an interesting position given that American settlers, unlike the trigger-happy Israelis, purchased at least some land or received it through treaty [Ben & Jerry’s should stick to whipping up ice cream—not division, by Piers Morgan, New York Post, July 5, 2023].
As for Rushmore, some Indians think it should be turned into “something like the Holocaust museum.” Republicans vehemently oppose this desecration of a national treasure and the effort has so far been unsuccessful. Yet, there might come a day when guilt-tripping triumphs over patriotism and the federal government agrees to the Lakotas’ demands [The battle for Mount Rushmore: ‘It should be turned into something like the Holocaust Museum,’ by Annette McGivney, The Guardian, July 3, 2021].
Canada and Australia provide appalling examples of once-proud countries that abolished their heritage to grovel before the “indigenous.” Land acknowledgements are even more prevalent in Canada than in the U.S. Canada will fork over $20 billion for alleged misdeeds against the “First Nations,” Canspeak for Indians [Canada unveils revised C$23 bln compensation deal for Indigenous children, Reuters, April 5, 2023]. Parliament’s Standing Indigenous and Northern Affairs is studying land back and how much territory Canada might cede [‘It needs to be a day of reckoning‘: Parliamentary committee studying land back, by Kierstin Williams, APTN, May 19, 2023]. Several Canadian cities no longer celebrate the patriotic Canada Day [Canada Day not a celebration for some communities in northern Ontario, CBC, June 29, 2023]. Monuments to the nation’s founding father, John A. MacDonald, have been torn down because Indian grievances [Sir John A. Macdonald statue quickly removed after Charlottetown council decision, CBC, June 1, 2021]. Canada might even change its national anthem to appease Indians [Trudeau ‘open‘ to changing O Canada lyrics, says it’s up to Canadians, by Richard Raycraft, CBC, July 1, 2023].
Things are even worse in Australia. The government has surrendered thousands of square miles of land to Aborigines in recent years. Last year, the Aussies ceded nearly half of Kakadu National Park, the country’s largest and most well-known. Several landmarks and locations have been recently changed to Aborigine names [How Australia’s Historic Landback Efforts Are Reshaping Travel—On a Global Scale, by Nina Karnikowski, Conde Nast Traveler, December 14, 2022]. Australia is set to vote later this year on a referendum to create an “Indigenous Voice to Parliament,” which would represent Aborigine interests. That might give Aborigines—average IQ 64—substantial undemocratic control [Thousands rally across Australia in support of Indigenous reform, Reuters, July 3, 2023]. As in Canada, Australia’s national holiday is also under siege because Aussies are brainwashed to hate their own storied past [Australia Day: Why young Aussies are shunning their national holiday, BBC, January 25, 2023].
Amusingly, Indians want Ben & Jerry’s to return land that the company’s headquarters occupies [Indigenous Chief Wants To Take Back Ben & Jerry's HQ Built on 'Stolen' Land, by Aleks Phillips, Newsweek, July 7, 2023].
But this is not a joke. Whites have nothing to apologize for. They won this land fair and square. It is our land. The area now known as “America” was a social, economic and cultural, wilderness before the white man came. We didn’t conquer a 3.8 million square miles of untamed land to give it up out of a pathetic sense of guilt.
Land acknowledgments must be denounced and banned by Republican state governments. Giving land to tribes must cease, and every monument and American hero must be defended from Indian attacks.
Indians have their reservations. The rest of the country belongs to the Historic American Nation.
Washington Watcher II [Email him] is an anonymous DC insider.
