DNC Opens Summer Meeting With Empty Woke Ritual — A Land Acknowledgement

The Democratic National Committee, still reeling from its decisive defeat in the 2024 election, has shown no signs of abandoning its obsession with performative wokeness. On Monday, the DNC kicked off its summer meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with one of the Left’s favorite hollow spectacles — a land acknowledgement.

A representative from the Saginaw Ojibwe Nation declared:

“The DNC acknowledges and honors the Dakota … people, who are the original stewards of the lands and waters of Minneapolis.”

The speaker continued, “The Dakota cared for the lands, lakes, and … the great river, the Mississippi River, for thousands of years before colonization. This land was not claimed or traded; it’s a part of a history of broken treaties and promises. And, in many ways, we still live in a system built to suppress indigenous peoples’ cultural and spiritual history.”

The clip was circulated on social media, drawing attention for its predictability and lack of substance.

The Absurdity of Liberal Virtue-Signaling

Conservatives recognize that the federal government’s treatment of Native Americans was, at many times, shameful. But if anyone believes Democrats open their gatherings with land acknowledgements to sincerely grapple with that history, they are mistaken. The ritual exists not to honor the past but to signal progressive virtue in the present.

Woke ideology abhors nuance. Take, for example, President Thomas Jefferson’s 1803 reflection that some Native communities sought to “blend” and “intermix” with settlers while others resisted. Or Tecumseh’s 1810 statement to William Henry Harrison that tribes should treat land as “the common property of the whole.” Both perspectives undermine the simplistic narrative the Left clings to — one that divides history neatly into “oppressors” and “victims.”

If land was considered common property, how does it make sense to insist it “belonged” to any single group in the first place? The contradiction is glaring, yet ignored.

The Deeper Roots of Wokeness

This kind of behavior from liberals predates the rise of “woke” politics as we now know it. Historians like Alan Taylor, in works such as American Colonies: The Settling of North America, framed colonists as oppressors and Indians as victims, even going so far as to claim that “Indian women also took pleasure in their practice of working the fields cooperatively in festive groups.” Such declarations were made with striking confidence, absent any serious evidence.

This casual certainty is the hallmark of woke ideology. Assertions are accepted not because they are provable, but because they fit the narrative. The point is not truth — it is conformity to a worldview that sorts people by race, gender, or identity and labels them accordingly.

Even some on the Left are starting to admit how tone-deaf this sounds. A left-wing think tank recently urged Democrats to abandon terms like “privilege” and “microaggression,” arguing that such language alienates voters. Land acknowledgements fall into the same category: they appeal only to progressive elites desperate for affirmation from their peers.

Out of Touch and Out of Ideas

In the end, these empty rituals do nothing for everyday Americans. They don’t help families struggling under inflation, they don’t strengthen our borders, and they don’t make our communities safer. What they do accomplish is reinforcing an echo chamber where liberals praise each other for hollow gestures while alienating the very voters they need.

President Donald Trump’s America First movement continues to resonate precisely because it focuses on real issues that impact people’s daily lives, not symbolic theatrics designed to impress a narrow activist class.