Indigenous Peoples of the Great Lakes

For centuries before the arrival of explorers and traders from Europe and the Far East around 1615, Indigenous peoples of many different tribes lived in the Great Lakes region. They were economically self-sustaining in their woodland and water environment. The earliest interactions with explorers and traders were dominated by fur-trading, and for over a century these interactions were mostly transactional. It was around the American Revolution that relations began to deteriorate as white settlers encroached on Indigenous lands. The power of disease and weaponry that white settlers brought killed and disempowered Indigenous peoples and eventually rendered most of the region under white authority.

It would be a disrespectful effort for me to try and acknowledge broadly the Indigenous peoples of the entire Great Lakes region; it would lump together an enormous swath of diverse peoples and histories. For more information on specifically acknowledging the Indigenous peoples of Northeast Ohio where I live, I turned to one of the most outstanding institutions in this region: the Cleveland Museum of Art.

I think that their Indigenous Peoples and Land Acknowledgement page along with the Q and A they include is thoughtful, respectful and directly states the obvious: land acknowledgements are often rightfully criticized for being too little, too late. However, for me, given a choice between saying “It is important to acknowledge those who lived on this land before me, many of whom lost their lives with European arrival and subsequent conquest of the land,” or saying “A land acknowledgement is an insincere, meaningless woke gesture”, I will choose the former.  I will choose it because it is the right thing to do.

The legacy of the people who lived on the land here for centuries prior to European arrival is omnipresent and yet often unrecognized. The name Ohio comes from an Onondowa’ga’ (Seneca) term meaning “beautiful river”. The Miami River and Miami University in Ohio are a direct reference to the Myaamia (Miami) peoples who lived in the region before forcibly signing away the right to their land.  

Here is my land acknowledgement, with credit to the Cleveland Museum of Art for the final two paragraphs: 

While today it is me standing on the shores of Lake Erie and looking out at the water and dark horizon line, for centuries prior there were others who stood and looked out at the same inland sea. Many of the Indigenous peoples who lived on this land were eventually dispossessed of it. Their existence has often been diminished to a short chapter in the arc of North American history, as it has been told by those with the power to craft the story. With my whole heart and mind, I acknowledge their own stories.   

These are the nations that signed Ohio treaties in the 1700s and 1800s: the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi of the Anishinaabeg; Delaware; Seneca and Cayuga of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois); Myaamia (Miami); Kaskasjia, Piankeshaw, and Wea, today of the Peoria; Shawnee; and Wyandotte – along with the Erie and ancient Whittlesey peoples.

These are the Indigenous peoples who continue to occupy land and urban spaces in Northeast Ohio today: the Choctaw, Dine (Navajo), Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), Lakota (Sioux), Odawa, and Ojibwe nations as well as others.