An Ethics of Accountability
BY ELISHA CHI
“ God of hosts, are you not Creator of all that is good? Do you not dwell here too, on Coast Salish territory, where we so often acknowledge the land with words alone yet meet Indigenous death with silence? Where families are born on the frontline, births bruised by colonial blow, where we say ‘unceded’ but not ‘occupied’ for that would make us the occupiers: How do we partake in our portion of rage?” 1
When I was growing up, my dad (a conservative Irish/ British descendent Catholic) gifted me a story about the nature of relationship and accountability. It went like this: Some kids were playing baseball one day, when one of them batted the ball in the wrong direction, careening it into a neighbor’s window. My dad explained that while it was important for the kids to ’fess up and apologize for the broken window, the window also needed to be fixed.
Was this a story from his own childhood the Haller Lake neighborhood on stolen Duwamish lands in Seattle? I don’t remember. I do know he was primarily explaining the need for penance in the Catholic sacrament of confession. But his story gifted me with a crucial understanding of accountability that transcends the individuality of Catholic confession. Apologies are good, but what is necessary when something is broken is to repair the harm.
In a similar, though different vein, many institutions recognize that there are problems with our connections to
Land2 in the United States. Many know that the United States is, at heart, a settler colonial nation-state. But understanding these problems and terminology varies zby institution and individual. Some conflate settler colonialism and genocide, seeing Indigenous-settler history as a series of brief and terrible moments of annihilation.3 Others may understand that for most Indigenous communities on our continent, the genocide attempt was unsuccessful, but the cultural destruction and land dispossession were not.4 However, scholars have illustrated that settler colonialism is not a past event, although it includes those genocidal moments, but an ongoing structure that continues to dispossess Indigenous peoples from their Lands today.5 In other words, most of our homes and institutions were “legally” stolen on tribal lands from peoples who are still here. An ongoing theft. An ongoing wounding.
And of course, the Catholic Church is integral to this history. As Catholic Yakama scholar Michelle Jacob writes, “The Church, as a settler colonial institution, is deeply implicated in the dispossession of Indigenous peoples.”6
However, regardless of how we understand our shared history, non-Indigenous communities are developing a sense that our national past is not pretty. Certainly, as Jacob explains, Indigenous communities and Catholic leaders, “despite their often radically different training and approaches to understanding the natural world, share similar conclusions about the current state of Mother Earth: Humans need to return to ways that treat Mother Earth respectfully.”7
Part of this respect involves approaching the relationship with Indigenous peoples through the frame of my dad’s story: To live your life on stolen land is to inescapably be in relationship with the people whose land is continuously
2 I capitalize the word “Land” when referring to Indigenous Lands because for Indigenous people, Land is not mere property, or land.
As Max Liboiron says: “when I capitalize Land I am referring to the unique entity that is the combined living spirit of plants, animals, air, water, humans, histories, and events recognized by many Indigenous communities. When land is not capitalized, I am referring to the concept from a colonial worldview whereby landscapes are common, universal, and everywhere, even with great variation.” Max Liboiron, Pollution Is Colonialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), page 6, footnote 19.
3 Such as the Sand Creek Massacre. See: “Believing Is Seeing,” in Embracing Hopelessness, by Miguel A. De la Torre (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 39–68.
4 This is true for the Unangax̂ people for example. See: Larry Merculieff, Wisdom Keeper: One Man’s Journey to Honor the Untold History of the Unangan People (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2016).
5 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (December 2006): 387–409, https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240.
61 Michelle M. Jacob, Indian Pilgrims: Indigenous Journeys of Activism and Healing with Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2016), 36.
7 Jacob, Indian Pilgrims, 43.
being stolen. 8 This relationship is fundamental and intrinsic. It is present at every moment.
One way I see individuals and institutions attempting to rectify this is through Indigenous land acknowledgments. As Native journalist Kevin Abourezk explains, “A land acknowledgment is a traditional custom dating back centuries for many tribes. Tribes practiced this custom as a way to honor their ancestors and pay their respects to neighboring tribes they were visiting.”9
This raises a question for me: As an Indigenous custom, what went into such acknowledgments? While each international Indigenous relationship is unique, thinking about how borders function for Indigenous peoples is helpful. For example, Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne B. Simpson writes that “borders for indigenous nations are not rigid lines on a map but areas of increased diplomacy, ceremony, and sharing.”10
Indigenous people have noted the disappointingly performative nature of many (perhaps most) land acknowledgments, writing that “after acknowledging that an institution sits on another’s land, plans are almost never made to give the land back.”11
This illustrates a key difference to the relationality present in Indigenous histories of land acknowledgment and their contemporary use by non-Indigenous communities: accountability. Accountability is needed to craft a meaningful relationship between settler people and institutions, the Indigenous nations we are still dispossessing, and the Indigenous Lands we occupy. As this relationship of settlement and occupation is a given, all that can be chosen is our ethics in the relationship. How will we hold ourselves accountable—in our families, communities, and institutions—to this relationship founded on broken, unrepaired windows?
Now, to be clear, when I use the term accountability, I am not talking about individual culpability in a strict sense. The reality is that those of us who individually find a place to live, work at a job, have a church to worship in, or a space where we acquire food, are benefitting because an Indigenous family, community, tribe, or nation is not. This matters. And yet, all of us also participate in institutions that have extensive ability to impact
8 I am highlighting theft here as continuous, because Indigenous peoples do not view Land as mere property but with a variety of attributes that can include property but all center on relationality. See: Dana Lloyd, Land Is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2024).
9 Kevin Abourezk, “Is It Time to Move beyond Land Acknowledgements? Native Nonprofit Leaders Call for Making Reparations to Tribes and Returning Tribal Homelands,” Indian Country Today, November 20, 2023, https://ictnews.org/news/is-ittime-to-move-beyond-land-acknowledgements.
10 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, “The Place Where We All Live and Work Together: A Gendered Analysis of ‘Sovereignty,’” in Native Studies Keywords, ed. Stephanie N Teves, Andrea Smith, and Michelle H Raheja, Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies (University of Arizona Press, 2015), 18–24, 19.
11 Michael C. Lambert, Elisa J. Sobo, and Valarie L. Lambert, “Rethinking Land Acknowledgments,” Anthropology News, December 20, 2021, Truth and Responsibility edition, https:// www.anthropology-news.org/articles/rethinking-landacknowledgments/#citation
the lives of marginalized peoples—institutions that thrive at the expense of Indigenous life.
In the frame of my Dad’s story: Even if we have not individually broken a window via attempted genocide, child separation, violent assimilation, or outright land theft, we settlers and members of settler institutions such as the Catholic Church continuously glean life from the window’s lack of repair, and we do so at the expense of the homeowner. What other options are there? As the Native Governance Center writes, “Instead of spending time on a land acknowledgment statement, we recommend creating an action plan highlighting the concrete steps you plan to take to support Indigenous communities into the future.”12 At the institutional level this support must honestly engage with the possibility of land return. At all levels, we must choose accountability and an ethic that seeks to repair the broken windows of genocide and Indigenous land dispossession.
An ethic of repair may mean institutional or individual land return, wealth redistribution, and/or participation in land protection and land back movements. As Potawatomi writer Katilin Curtice explains, “The wake-up call to use our voices, whether we are Native or not, is one we cannot ignore.”13 Listening to this call with an ethic of repair does not mean, in the words of Pope Francis, a type of “doing good without expecting anything in return.”14 There is no need for this kind of mercy: Indigenous peoples not only know what is best for our Land, but also have plenty to offer the world, including the church. As Curtice says, “Perhaps the church should consider that Indigenous people have more to teach the church than the church has to teach Indigenous people.” 15
What Indigenous nations want from settler members of this ongoing relationship of land occupation is accountability. We want partners to struggle with us to protect our Land. We want partners in the ongoing quest for decolonization: a quest that ultimately aims to return Indigenous Lands back to Indigenous nations. This is what land acknowledgments, or action plans, should be all about.
Dr. Elisha Chi is a registered descendant of the Bering Straits Native Corporation and a descendant of Irish/British Catholics, raised on Duwamish lands in the antifeminist radical traditionalist Catholic community of Seattle. Her interdisciplinary work seeks to articulate anticolonial academic methods and pedagogical practices that pursue Indigenous land return.
12 Native Governance Center, “Beyond Land Acknowledgement: A Guide,” September 21, 2021, https://nativegov.org/news/beyondland-acknowledgment-guide/.
13 Kaitlin B. Curtice, Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020), 115.
14 Pope Francis, “General Audience” (Saint Peter’s Square, Vatican City, September 10, 2014), https://www.vatican.va/ content/francesco/en/audiences/2014/documents/papafrancesco_20140910_udienza-generale.html
15 Curtice, Native, 123.