A critical examination of land acknowledgements and relationality
It’s not easy to talk about land acknowledgements. They are situated in a complicated web of relationships, discourses, and histories of responsibilities. The practice of researching whose land you work, learn, or live on is simple, and so is typing the words of a land acknowledgement. Delivering one—whether out loud, in an email signature, or on a website—is not difficult either. What complicates land acknowledgements is the misunderstanding of relationality.
Relationality is a framework for understanding the world we inhabit that recognizes our interconnection with animals, water, land, and each other. Unlike colonial views, which see humans as independent units and land as property to control or exploit, relationality emphasizes the importance of connection. The disjuncture between these worldviews informs how the interpretations of land acknowledgements, their purposes, and political meanings have diverged between Indigenous and settler imaginations. While land acknowledgements are becoming more routine across present-day Canada, their purposes are increasingly mistaken.
Land acknowledgements, also known as territorial acknowledgements, were popularized in 2015 following the publication of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) reports. The TRC’s mandate was to inform Canadians about residential schools by documenting accounts from survivors and their families, and publishing a report alongside 94 Calls to Action for reconciliation. While the use of land acknowledgements is not included in the calls to action, it introduced a new era of reconciliatory efforts to mend relationships between Indigenous Peoples and settlers.
Most land acknowledgements recognize the traditional territories of Indigenous nations, relevant treaties, and the responsibilities of those who live here. Land acknowledgements are meant to assert everyone’s responsibilities to Indigenous Peoples and the land; however, without understanding the relational frameworks they are rooted in, they risk becoming performative, insincere, or futile.
Concordia University’s Indigenous Directions Leadership Group has worked to frame land acknowledgements as more than just a formality. Resources developed by Wahéhshon Shiann Whitebean, now assistant professor of Indigenous Studies at McGill, contend that Concordia’s land acknowledgments recognize Indigenous Peoples’ rich and vast histories on these lands and waters, and that this is their home.
At their core, land acknowledgments emerge from two types of relationships: Relations between people and relations between people and the land.
Human relationships are uncontestably complicated. We offend, we lie, we love, we harm. The relationships between Indigenous folks and settlers are especially fraught, woven with centuries of settler-colonialism. The import of diseases that killed hundreds of Indigenous Peoples in Eastern Canada, the forced relocation of entire nations, the genocidal assimilationist policies enacted by the Canadian government, and the ongoing epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) have seeded mistrust, anger, and intergenerational traumas within many Indigenous folks today. Land acknowledgements bring the history of this relationship to the fore. Too often, this reminder produces guilt that slips into resentment, rather than motivating responsibility and change.
Catherine Richardson Kinewesquao, a Métis professor at Concordia University, emphasizes that land acknowledgements reflect a commitment to cultivating positive relationships. In an interview with //The Tribune//, she said that recognizing “ongoing connection, relationality, protocol, and a little bit about your intent” is integral to writing a responsible land acknowledgement. Not only should we acknowledge the traditional territories, but also incorporate a commitment to healing these connections.
We should commit to change out of desire for a better tomorrow, not guilt from yesterday. Acknowledging those whose traditional territories you live in is a first step in entering relationships with Indigenous communities and peoples.
Richardson argues that these recognition protocols are not novel concepts to Indigenous Peoples.
“You’re entering someone else’s space,” she said. “These Indigenous nations here in Northern Turtle Island, they are sovereign. It’s not just polite or respectful, it’s actually a protocol.”
She cites the Haudenosaunee’s Thanksgiving Address, which greets and thanks the natural world.
“It’s about showing gratitude. [….] I would probably say every religion in the world that I know says some kind of grace.”
Canadians tend to believe that they are alienated from their relationships with Indigenous Peoples and the land, framing their disconnection as a lack of relationality and therefore of responsibility. In distancing themselves, settlers attempt to absolve themselves of accountability to reconciliation, as many regard themselves as too distant to be relational. Disconnection makes us ignorant of our inherent interconnectedness and shapes how non-Indigenous peoples conceptualize their involvement with Indigenous issues such as land acknowledgements.
In an interview with //The Tribune//, Maya Pan-Miller, a U1 Philosophy and Linguistics student said, “I don’t think it’s necessarily up to us [non-Indigenous people], per se, to say if land acknowledgements are helpful or not. It’s not our past that’s being affected.”
Will Meslin, U3 Political Science, echoed a similar sentiment in an interview with //The Tribune//.
“I’m not a good judge of that,” he said, on what should be included in a land acknowledgement. “[My] opinion should be irrelevant. [….] What should be included should be dependent on […] what actual Indigenous Peoples want to see. I don’t think it’s enough for me, a white guy, to be like, they should be represented in this capacity.”
While well-intentioned, settlers often approach land acknowledgements in ways that place the responsibility on Indigenous peoples. Though this may arise from respect, it risks reinforcing the idea that settlers exist outside these relationships.
We’re not separate from each other, our histories, or the land. This is what Indigenous Peoples want settlers to appreciate through the use of land acknowledgements.
Instead, Richardson argues that non-Indigenous peoples mustn’t remove themselves from these dialogues, absolving themselves of the responsibility to educate themselves.
“You do your work and figure out where you are,” she said.
Reconciliation is not achieved by Indigenous Peoples laying out the foundations and settlers just colouring in the lines. We know where our roots are. We know that these are our traditional territories. The resources from Concordia’s Indigenous Directions state that the best way to deliver a land acknowledgement is to infuse it with what is personal to the one presenting it. Scripted land acknowledgements, especially those written by Indigenous Peoples, excuse non-Indigenous people from doing the heavy lifting required to fully respect and recognize their relationships to their neighbours, treaties, and Indigenous traditional territories.
In a written statement to //The Tribune//, Vanessa Reid, high school teacher and English Department Head at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), explains how non-Indigenous settlers play a central role in renewing and nurturing these connections.
“I think [it’s important to include] notions of relationality and how we can better recognize our equal humanity; as a species, we have not done this well. I also think we should consider caring for our more-than-human relatives,” Reid writes. “I always think about the giant maples in my backyard and how they are a habitat for so many birds, insects and animals. They provide so much! I appreciate the oxygen that these maples make and how, when I breathe, they are a part of me.”
Every morning at Reid’s high school, students speak a land acknowledgement, which was created by her and her students in NBE3U, a contemporary Indigenous literature class in the Ontario high school curriculum.
Beyond our relationships with people, how we are in relation with the land is another source of misunderstanding. Colonial entities such as the Canadian government have historically viewed land relationships as transactional, which is evident in how they approached treaty-making processes in Canada, as well as present-day dialogues about their contents. For example, in negotiations for Treaty 1, which covers lands across Southern Manitoba, the Crown’s terms involved the cession, surrender, and release of land. The Indigenous nations did not understand that land surrender was central to the terms of the agreements; rather, the Anishinaabe viewed the agreements as agreeing to share the land with the settlers.
Furthermore, non-Indigenous settlers often express detachment from the lands that they live on.
“My personal relationship to land feels negligible,” said Meslin. “I’m so disconnected from the land that I live on.”
This is a common sentiment among students who grew up in big cities, like Meslin, who was raised in Toronto. To feel disconnected from the land is to also feel disconnected from the responsibilities entailed by your existence on these territories, like fighting for Indigenous land rights, protesting development on the Greenbelt, or even refraining from littering.
Indigenous Peoples view their relationships with land as reciprocal, a commitment to responsibilities to the land that is embodied in their traditions, practices, and protocols. For example, offering tobacco or asemaa is a traditional practice in Anishinaabe culture (as well as other Indigenous groups) as a way to enter and maintain relationships with the spiritual and natural worlds. It is necessary to give before anything is taken. To many Indigenous Peoples, it is impossible not to be in relation to the land.
“It’s funny how we call land—we can call it dirt, soil, Mother Earth, or real estate,” said Richardson. “What we call the soil is actually the remains of our ancestors. Bones, Ash, DNA. So we are, in so many ways, part of the land.”
Criticisms of land acknowledgements by many non-Indigenous people represent how their purposes are misunderstood.
For example, Canadian lawyer Peter Best writes on his Substack, “Instead of binding us together with a constructive vision of the future, with their unrelenting, misrepresentative focus on the distant past, [land acknowledgements] push us apart.”
This perspective positions the past, present, and future as independent, with the notion that we cannot use our histories to guide how we act moving forward. He characterizes Indigenous Peoples as having an unhealthy obsession with the past, as though the past does not have lasting effects on the present. Ironically, land acknowledgements are meant to set a framework for substantive change toward the future, whether personal, cultural, or relational.
Indigenous scholars have critiqued land acknowledgements, pointing out the limits and contradictions of this vehicle of recognition. Instead of renewing relationships between people and land, land acknowledgements today legitimize the colonial state and settler occupation. They read as performative allyship without action and authentic relations.
Over time, land acknowledgements have changed context, meaning, and purpose in their co-optation by corporations and institutions. Co-opted land acknowledgements are no longer about challenging power, emancipation from oppression, or relationality. They have become impersonal and hollow, dissolving the relational frameworks upon which they are meant to be written. They instead serve as a box to be checked for a company’s reconciliatory policies or a mechanism to erase settler guilt. In this sense, land acknowledgements are no longer even about Indigenous Peoples, histories, or land.
Reconciling these worldviews is not a new challenge, nor is it a simple one—we have been taught to conceptualize land and relationships in a very particular way. This is not an impossible task, though. Taking the time to understand the true purposes of land acknowledgements within Indigenous frameworks is a step toward deconstructing these misleading perspectives. When you go from seeing land as something you can be detached from to seeing it as interwoven in your food, livelihood, ancestors, and more, you can begin to understand how crucial it is to recognize the histories of whose land you live on. It’s undeniable that we are in relation with each other and the land. What is important is how we wish to conduct ourselves in these relationships. We must pledge to respect and care for these lands and each other in the name of truth, reconciliation, and relationality. This is our collective responsibility.//If you are writing a land acknowledgement, I recommend you consult the resources by Concordia University’s Indigenous Directions, native-land.ca, and the Guide to Acknowledging First Peoples & Traditional Territory by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). These materials provide guidance in acknowledging the traditional territories and treaties relevant to your address. I also highly encourage you to make the acknowledgment personal to your relationships with others (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) and the lands you occupy.//
