In the past few years it has become increasingly common to hear land acknowledgements at universities across the United States, including here at Penn. At no other time are these land acknowledgements more popular than around Thanksgiving, with some arguing that the holiday itself should be reframed or even abandoned. Meanwhile, social media has become filled with self-righteous content creators instructing us on how to reckon with the fact that we live on “stolen” or “conquered” land. This premise, however, collapses under even minimal historical scrutiny.
Human beings have never lived in a world of fixed, permanent ownership. We have migrated, conquered, traded, intermarried, displaced each other, and resettled since the beginning of time. To pretend that the land beneath Penn’s campus existed in some pristine, uncontested state until Europeans arrived is simply incorrect.
Land acknowledgements rest on the flawed premise that land can ever be “unconquered.” In reality, all land, everywhere, has changed hands through settlement, migration, and conquest since the dawn of civilization.
Many of Penn’s institutional materials state: “We recognize and acknowledge that the University of Pennsylvania stands on the Indigenous territory known as Lenapehoking, the traditional homelands of the Lenape, also called Lenni-Lenape or Delaware Indians.” This statement on its face is correct. However, the implication that the Lenape were the first, uncontested, or permanent holders of this land is historically incomplete.
Archaeological research shows that the Delaware Valley has been inhabited for roughly 10,000 years, with different cultural groups inhabiting and engaging in frequent warfare in the region over millennia. The Lenape themselves entered the region gradually and were by no means the earliest inhabitants of what would eventually become West Philadelphia.
The land beneath Penn’s campus is part of a long, complex chain of settlement and resettlement, not an uncontested homeland belonging to one specific group. Land acknowledgements rest on the assumption that there is some identifiable “original owner” of a given territory and that political legitimacy depends on restoring land to that group.
However, the historical record, in Pennsylvania and everywhere else on Earth, shows that populations have shifted continuously for thousands of years. There is no coherent point in a long chain of conquests at which we can freeze history and declare that a certain group is the rightful and permanent owner of any land.
Even if we tried to return land, the practical questions become unanswerable. To whom would it go? The Lenape as they existed in 1600? The Iroquois as they did in 1700? Or perhaps to the countless earlier communities whose names are now lost to history? Which civilization in what moment of time deserves ownership? Attempting to unwind centuries of demographic and political change inevitably becomes an exercise in selective morality. Why should one moment in history, presumably the arrival of the Europeans, be more significant than all the moments that came before it?
None of this is to deny the suffering that Indigenous peoples endured. The arrival of the Europeans brought disease, war, broken treaties, and profound cultural disruption. These injustices were real and left lasting wounds. Any honest account of American history must confront that past.
But acknowledging historical wrongdoings does not require embracing the idea that the United States is fundamentally immoral. That view misunderstands both the nature of history and the nature of the American project.
If conquest alone renders a nation illegitimate, then no country or people on Earth can claim legitimacy, including the Lenape, Iroquois, or any civilization whose history includes migration, conflict, and expansion. Conquest is a universal human story; it tells us how societies emerged, not whether they are capable of moral purpose.
The United States’ legitimacy does not come from undoing its past, but from the principles it enshrines: liberty, equality, and the belief in self-determination. To say that the United States is irredeemable is to ignore the millions who have found opportunity, dignity, and freedom in this great land. The country’s defining story is not one of genocide, but of an imperfect nation striving to achieve its perfect ideals.
So next year in the spirit of Thanksgiving, let’s skip the land acknowledgement and take a moment to appreciate the opportunity to call the United States home.
BO GOERGEN is a College senior studying political history and international relations. His email is rgoergen@sas.upenn.edu.
