Commercial tobacco, ceremonial tobacco and impact on indigenous people: a land acknowledgment

Eliminating commercial tobacco in the United States is a social justice issue.¹ Commercial tobacco is manufactured and mass produced by tobacco companies; it includes cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco, roll your own, hookah, pipe, heated tobacco, electronic cigarettes, or any other tobacco products that are sold for profit and contain additives, constituents, ingredients, compounds, or chemicals to make them addictive. Commercial tobacco use is the most prevalent form of tobacco product use in the United States and adversely affects the health of historically disadvantaged groups, including American Indian and Alaska Native people.² There is growing acknowledgment that commercial tobacco is a major contributor to Indigenous health inequities.^3–6

The 1998 report of the Surgeon General stated that tobacco control efforts could be enhanced by distinguishing between ceremonial and commercial tobacco use and production.⁷ Ceremonial traditional tobacco is a plant that is sacred and used as a means of communicating with the spiritual world⁸ and for medicinal purposes by Indigenous people, also known as Native American, American Indian, or First Nations people. Ceremonial tobacco has specific protocols for use in different Tribes and is not for recreational use. Land stolen from Indigenous people not only disrupted the ceremonial and cultural practices involving tobacco and the livelihood of Indigenous people, but has been used for centuries to commercialize tobacco, primarily profiting the tobacco industry.

This special issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs begins with a Land Acknowledgement. Health inequities are embedded in the historical and cultural context of Indigenous experiences. The pursuit of social justice in the 21st century requires reflection on the historical roots of tobacco-related injustices, rooted in the colonization of the Americas. The colonization of the Americas, which repurposed ceremonial tobacco into a commercial crop, disrupted the cultural practices and overall well-being of Indigenous people.⁹ Colonization is the practice of dominating and subjugating one person to another.¹⁰ It is often used to describe the process of European settlement, violent dispossession, and political domination over the rest of the world, including the Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia.¹⁰ Colonization determines whose values and cultures are privileged.⁹ Colonization created a slave economy whose evolution throughout centuries contributed to unfair power relationships, interlocking patterns of disadvantage, and systems that perpetuate tobacco inequities for people of Black and Brown descent today. Colonialism is an ongoing process. It is socially just to begin the special issue with a Land Acknowledgement that recognizes Indigenous Tribes, enslaved people of African descent, and Native Hawaiians.

• We acknowledge that the United States occupy the traditional land and territories of over 1000 Tribes, some of whose names are not recognized. This Land Acknowledgement recognizes historical facts because historical context informs our understanding of the present. Since the cultivation of commercial tobacco as a cash crop in the 1600s, the Indigenous peoples’ land and lives were stolen from them through treaties, war, policies, homesteading, and the displacement of children.^11,12

• We acknowledge that Indigenous people were prohibited and disconnected from the use of ceremonial tobacco through the Code of Indian Offenses in 1883 and the Dawes Act of 1887, which were policies that allowed for the stealing and selling of Indigenous people’s land, and the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

• We recognize that Indigenous people petition for formal acknowledgment through the Office of Federal Acknowledgement, U.S. Department of the Interior Indian Affairs, who decides whether to acknowledge Tribal existence and establish a government-to-government relationship or to deny acknowledging a petitioning group as an Indian Tribe.

• We acknowledge that Indigenous people only regained their ability to exercise religious freedoms, including the use of ceremonial tobacco (previously prohibited by the 1883 Code of Indian Offenses), without penalty in 1978 with the passing of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act under President Jimmy Carter.

• We acknowledge that the U.S. 1954 Indian Termination Act (Public Law 108), followed by other termination policies through 1968, terminated federal obligations to Tribes, including federal aid, services, protections, and ending reservations and tribes, resulting in relocation to urban areas and the U.S. sales of Tribal lands.

• We acknowledge that the preservation of the land upon which ceremonial tobacco was and is grown is a social justice issue.

• We acknowledge that the land stolen from Indigenous people was used to profit from a slave economy that resulted in over 400 years of suppression and captivity of people of African descent, whose land was also stolen from them on the continent of Africa.

• We acknowledge that the “40 acres and a mule” that was granted with General William T. Sherman’s Field Order No. 15 for coastal lands on Georgie and South Carolina in 1865, from land originally stolen from Indigenous people, was obstructed through the federal government’s dispossession by President Andrew Johnson less than 1 year later.

• We acknowledge that through the Southern Homestead Act of 1866, land prices were made too high for former enslaved Black people to purchase.

• We acknowledge that Black farmers’ lands were/are stolen from them through unfair policies. This acknowledgement recognizes that thriving black communities were/are terrorized by local, state, and federal governments and residents and destroyed or stolen. A few of many terrorized communities include Tulsa Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Rosewood Massacre in Rosewood, Florida; The Elaine Massacre in Elaine, Arkansas; the Colfax Massacre in Colfax, Louisiana; Celina, Tennessee; Comache County, Texas; Greene County, Indiana; Pana riots in Illinois; Pierce City, Missouri; Marshall County, Kentucky; East St. Louis Race Riots; Ocoee Massacre, Florida; Manhattan Beach, California; and many more.

• We acknowledge that the United States participated in the unlawful overthrow of the sovereign of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, Queen Lili’uokalani, on January 17, 1893—an act protested by a majority of the subjects of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, both Natives and non-Natives. Under continued protest of the unlawful occupation, Hawai’i was eventually made a territory of the United States on August 12, 1898 (Hawaiian Organic Act, U.S. Public Law 56–339) and a state on August 21, 1959 (Hawai’i Admissions Act U.S. Public Law 86–3).

• This acknowledgment further recognizes that this unlawful occupation of Hawai’i has been recognized by 2 U.S. Presidents—Grover Cleveland in 1893 based on the findings of the Blount Report and Bill Clinton in 1993 with the Apology Resolution (U.S. Public Law 103–150). Thus, Native Hawaiians have never relinquished their claims to their inherent sovereignty over their national lands to the United States¹³ “either through the Kingdom of Hawai’i or through a plebiscite or referendum,” as stated in U.S. Public Law 103–150.

• This acknowledgment further recognizes that the United States supported the unlawful turnover of the Kingdom of Hawai’i to the Republic of Hawai’i between January 17, 1893, and August 12, 1898, when it was turned over to the United States. The Republic of Hawai’i was led by Sanford B. Dole, a descendant of missionaries to Hawai’i who participated in the coup d’état that led to the overthrow of the Sovereign, Queen Lili’uokalani, to have special trade agreements with the United States. The use of the Hawaiian language in educational systems was outlawed under Act 57, Laws of the Republic of Hawai‘i, which nearly led to its extinction until it was revitalized through the establishment of Native Hawaiian immersion schools in the 1980s.

• Although Native Hawaiians do not have the same political status and relationship with the U.S. government as do American Indians and Alaska Natives, there have been federal policies enacted to improve the living (Hawaiian Homes Commission Act), educational (Native Hawaiian Education Reauthorization Act), and physical and mental health (Native Hawaiian Health Care Improvement Act) conditions of Native Hawaiians. In 1978, the State of Hawai’i also established the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) to manage assets set aside for the betterment of Native Hawaiians (Article XII of the state’s constitution).

This acknowledgement is a breathing and living document as colonialism has not ended for Indigenous people, Black/African Americans, Native Hawaiians, and many others in the United States. A Land Acknowledgement recognizes historical facts, as history itself is a social science that provides context.

Data availability

No new data were generated or analyzed for this commentary.