Friday, March 29, 2024 | 2 a.m.
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I found Rebecca Clarren’s March 24 guest column, “We now know that free land wasn’t free,” an interesting and historical perspective about parcels of land she claims her Jewish ancestors acquired in South Dakota over 100 years ago.
She notes that her ancestors, with the acquisition of this land, were able to sell it, create businesses and ultimately benefit from receiving the 160-acre parcels of Lakota tribal land.
While I applaud her efforts and subsequent founding of a nonprofit organization to create a $1.1 million fund (aka reparations) for the Lakota tribe, she never claims that the Jewish community or her family (which benefited from this land grab) are helping to donate to the fund. She is asking others to donate and cites that the Quaker community gave $93,000 in reparations to Alaskan tribes as support of her cause.
I would be more inclined to sympathy and interested in her cause had she stated she had ponied up and that the Jewish community was also stepping up to contribute to her ancestors’ land that was “free, but not free.”
