After officials kicked off the opening weekend of the Barack Obama Presidential Center with a widely mocked “land acknowledgment” — a nod to the political far left that believes the United States was built on “stolen land” — a traditional Native American dance show was featured during Saturday’s scheduled events.
The Black Hawk Performance Company is a Native American dance troupe based in the Chicago area, composed of dancers from several Indigenous tribes.
Saturday marked the third day of the Obama Presidential Center’s grand opening, which featured musical and cultural performances ranging from international superstars like John Legend to local drum lines.
The lively Native American display, held in John Lewis Plaza on the center’s campus, featured a drum circle, several traditional dances and songs, including one honoring a Native American flag. The performance lasted about an hour and, toward the end, included many of the hundreds of people who watched in the plaza.
But Thursday night, the opening ceremony for the center began with an awkward admission that the center itself rests on land that rightfully belongs to Native Americans.
Valerie Jarrett, the former senior advisor to Obama when he was president and the current CEO of the Obama Foundation, kicked things off.
“We’d also like to take a moment to recognize the original inhabitants of the land upon which we are gathered today,” she said. “We honor the Anishinaabe, the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, the Odawa and the Potawatomi nations.”
Some of Saturday’s performers were from the Ojibwe tribe.
Land acknowledgments like Jarrett’s are sometimes criticized as woke performative gestures that often ring hollow, as noted by a huge number of X users after Jarrett’s speech.
“Obama Presidential Center grand opening begins with acknowledging they’re on stolen land. And then they kept the land,” one X commenter said. “Pretty sure Indians would remove the apocalyptic looking Soviet bloc style dumpster building from their land first thing.”
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck unleashed on the hypocrisy.
“The sheer arrogance of the Obama Foundation using the $850 million Obama Presidential Center to lecture us about standing on ‘stolen land’ is HILARIOUS,” he said. “They’re basically saying, ‘Yeah, we acknowledge we stole this land. IT’S SO WRONG. But the gift shop is to your left, and tickets are 30 bucks.’ If they genuinely believe they’re holding stolen property, they should either GIVE IT BACK or shut the hell up.”
Town hall senior strategist Siraj Hashmi roasted Obama and company with a reference to infamous Chicago rapper Chief Keef.
“Pretty disrespectful for the Obama Presidential Center to not acknowledge the current tribe leader of the South Side of Chicago: Chief Keef,” Hashmi quipped.
Further, the center features a placard recognizing that the land actually belongs to “Indigenous peoples.”
The sign says that the Obama Foundation acknowledges “the sovereign Indigenous peoples who have, since time immemorial, inhabited and stewarded the lands many of us call home.”
It also says that “Indigenous peoples” have worked to “combat and rightfully reverse the forces of settler colonialism” and features a 2009 Obama quote reflecting on broken treaties, lost lands and the treatment of Native Americans.
“Treaties were violated. Promises were broken,” Obama said at the time.
Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
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