Land Back (or Getting Out of Bed)

Ray Wiedmeyer, Beloved Community Communications Team

I’ve been thinking a lot about land ownership the past couple years. Just a bit into the pandemic, I attended the Sacred Sites Tour in the Twin Cities led by Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs, a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation. Jim Bear spoke clearly about the broken promises, the broken treaties that would remove the vast majority of Indigenous Peoples from the land that is now the Twin Cities, and efforts in the 19th century to banish them completely from Minnesota. All that after having been told, in fact promised, that the white colonizers would share the land.

Indigenous Peoples understood that land could not be owned, that no one could claim ownership. If anything, they were of the mindset that the land owned them; that humans were no more important than the land on which they lived and that gave them sustenance. 

After Rev. Jim Bear’s presentation, I realized that I was now part of the story. I own land in St Paul. And I own land in Wisconsin a mile or two from the scattered bits of the St Croix Chippewa reservation where 3.8 square miles is all the tribe has left of original homelands that once covered thousands of square miles. I am not someone disconnected from the past; I am part of the historical timeline. 

To be perfectly honest, it totally changed how I see the land we own. Given the choice to see the land as a commodity or to see myself as the caretaker of that land was a choice I could make. I choose now to think of myself as caretaker. But I am caretaker of land that was taken from folks who lived here long before my white ancestors arrived. 

With that in mind, how do I live with the principles of Unitarian Universalism, the Unity Ends Statements that I was so excited about in 2018, and the ritualized land acknowledgment we espouse every Sunday? What was my next right action? What kind of discomfort, what kind of pain did I need to be willing to work through to see the change I wanted to see in the world?

I have been living with that discomfort for some time now. It was scary but I asked my partner if we could give the Wisconsin land we own back to the local St Croix Chippewa Tribe. It was scary because I feared she would say, “No.” You see, it is our happy place. The place we go to disconnect, and we love it dearly. She said, “Of course we should give it back.”

The next hurdle for me was fearing what our neighbors might think. Was there really a fear in me that the tribe would not be good neighbors? Surprisingly, I needed to move past those racist attitudes that bubbled up in me. I needed to give up on the idea that only I could be the perfect caretaker of that land.

Time passed. The inertia of white privilege can and will make one forget one’s best intentions. But eventually we contacted Jessica Intermill of Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light. Jessica centers much of her legal work representing Native tribes and I am acquainted with her workshops on reparations. She let us talk through our questions and concerns about giving the land back. She introduced us to the concept of “rematriation,” or restoring the matriarchal relationship between Indigenous Peoples and ancestral land. 

Upon her recommendation, we contacted the St. Croix Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Chippewa Tribe of Wisconsin, who then consulted their lawyer, who then approached their tribal council, who considered our request, and told us they would love to have the land back.

We then needed to find a Wisconsin real estate lawyer, preferably native, who would do the necessary legal work. Months passed. It is so easy to just move along in one’s privilege and not to keep on task.

Needing to finish this story, literally, for this August newsletter was the additional push I needed. We met with Richard Lau, one of my recent associates on the Ministerial Search Team at Unity Church who practices real estate law in Wisconsin. We talked through various ways of giving the land back, and he has begun the work to transfer the land.

Recently I heard the phrase, “It is one thing to begin to be woke but eventually one needs to get out of bed.” We moved from a place of awareness to the place of discomfort, and finally found the price we are willing to pay to be in right relationship with the world we wish to see. It has been a long journey but worth every step taken. 

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