A Spirit-led Land Acknowledgement
Scott Fulton
Presented to Northern Yearly Meeting Spring Interim Session, March 15, 2025
Allow me to start by introducing myself in the Ojibwe language, in the way I have been taught:
Aaniin indinawemaaganidog – Greetings my relatives!
Scott Fulton indizhinkaaz – I am called Scott Fulton.
Gaawiin nindoodoodemisii – I do not have a clan. This also signifies I have no ancestors who are indigenous to Turtle Island or what we call North America.
Wisconsin nindoonjibaa – I am from Wisconsin, which is named from the word Meskonsing, meaning “river running through a red place” in the language of the Miami Nation.
Gaa-niiyogamaag nindaa – I live in the place of four lakes, which the Ho-Chunk call Teejop (also meaning “four lakes”), and which we call the Madison area.
This form of introduction starts with an acknowledgement that we are all relatives. As Friends, of course, we have come to see that there is that of the Light in all human beings, and that we are all, in this way, relatives to each other. However, our Indigenous relatives ask us to acknowledge, as well, our deep kinship with all the living beings around us – the animals, the plants, the invisible microbes, and even the rocks and soil, the air and the waters.
This introduction also, importantly, includes where I am from, where I now live. Before our colonial settler ancestors arrived in this place, it had been for many millennia a beloved and sacred home for the Ho-Chunk people. The places where all of you now live were also ancestral homes for various indigenous peoples since time immemorial. It is important that we acknowledge this fact because of the tragic and violent history of forced displacement and assimilation of all the indigenous peoples here, which opened these places for our ancestors and for us to live in and to own. It is a sad history in which our Quaker forebears played an important and, I hope we can acknowledge, largely misguided role.
We acknowledge this history not so that we can feel guilty and ashamed of what our own ancestors did, but so that we may learn its important lessons. One of those lessons is that when we believe that our own ways and beliefs are fundamentally superior to those of others, and that others must adopt our ways and beliefs to be saved, we miss the opportunity to learn from the wisdom they possess.
We are now in a time of fearful crisis both in our human societies and in the community of all the living beings with whom we share the Earth. It is becoming more and more obvious that our own ways and beliefs are, at the very least deeply, deeply flawed. Those who lived on this land before us are still here, and they are speaking to us today, ever more strongly and clearly. We acknowledge that it is now time for us to listen to them and to take their message to heart – that we are all deeply related, human and other-than-human beings alike, that all our relatives are worthy of equal respect, and that we all share a sacred responsibility for reciprocal love and care for each other.
Miigwech bizindawiyeg! – Thank you all for listening to me!
Map of Ho-Chunk sites in Te’jope (Madison area)
From work of archeologist Charles Brown in the early 1900’s
From Mollenhoff, D. Madison – History of the Formative Years (1982)
Postscript
For a number of years now, I have felt what I now recognize as a strong leading to learn as much as possible about the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America) and to share those learnings with others. This leading arose partly from a recently increased awareness about the historic and ongoing systemic racism and exploitation of people, which certainly affects Native Americans. Perhaps more importantly, it arose from a long involvement with conservation, ecological restoration and stewardship, and nature education. I have begun to feel very deeply that our dominant culture worldview of nature and the land as resources to be owned and/or exploited by individuals is the most important threat to the health of our human and natural communities and to our continued survival as a species. The indigenous cultures are based on a very different worldview of respectful relationships with a vast community of other beings to whom we have a reciprocal responsibility for love and care. This millennia-old worldview is highly integrated into their values, languages, and cultures, which are still alive and speaking to us today. This realization has transformed what started as a strong personal interest into a deeply felt call for action.
When Shel Gross asked me to present a personal land acknowledgement statement to the Spring 2025 Interim Session of Northern Yearly Meeting, it was instantly clear that this was an opportunity to take stock of this leading and where it is heading. The writing of this was very much an experience of something happening through me by the action of the Spirit. I hope that others find this as useful as it has been for me.