As someone who grew up in Canada during the early 2000s, I don’t remember hearing land acknowledgements throughout elementary and secondary school. It wasn’t until I came to Toronto Metropolitan University in 2021 that I regularly heard them being performed at institutional events and gatherings. But as their commonality has grown, so has controversy about their use.
Land acknowledgements have become a way for Canadian universities, organizations and institutions to engage in acts of reconciliation towards Indigenous Peoples and reckon with the colonial history of our country. But according to Michael Doxtater, they usually don’t acknowledge any wrongdoing.
“It’s an act of diplomacy that actually does not cast any type of direction for blame or any cause for what’s going on,” said Doxtater, who is from the Mohawk First Nation. Doxtater is a professor at TMU, the former head of Studio One for the National Film Board of Canada, an award-winning documentary producer and director, and the head of Saagajiwe, the home for participation, action and research in Indigenous creative practices at TMU.
Trevor Green, a contract lecturer in the School of Journalism at TMU and an award winning journalist affiliated with his mother’s Cowichan nation, first became aware of the use of land acknowledgements back in 2015. “I liked them at first, but I found that, like so many things with settler colonialism, they often aren’t genuine.”
Instead of using territorial land acknowledgements that seem to act as absolution of guilt, Green says that it would be more impactful to draw attention to the issues that Indigenous Peoples in this country still face. Those issues include the murder of Indigenous women, the First Nation communities that still don’t have access to clean water and the impacts of the Indian Act. “It’s an acknowledgement without action,” said Green.
Before colonial institutions used land acknowledgements, Doxtater would hear them used when Indigenous Nations gathered together. Visiting Nations would thank other Nations for allowing them to visit their land and communities.
In Mohawk, Anishinaabe and other Indigenous cultures, there are also traditional Thanksgiving addresses that acknowledge the land and creation. They are a way to show appreciation for all that the land does for the people. These addresses are sometimes used in ceremonies or as part of an opening prayer.
“We greet and honour our mother, the earth and thank our mother, the earth, for all the help she gives to us, to help us look after our children and our future generations and all of our relations, and acknowledge that she gives us food, medicines and a safe place to live,” said Doxtater.
He says the practice of using land acknowledgements for inter-communal relations and the traditional statements used by Indigenous Peoples in ceremonies may have influenced the land acknowledgements that we see being read at colonial institutions today.
In 2014, TMU implemented the consistent practice of reading a generalized land acknowledgement statement that was written by then members of the Indigenous Education Council (formerly known as the Aboriginal Education Council).
They are used, for example, in classes and at university events and convocation ceremonies.
When asked why land acknowledgements are important at TMU, in an emailed response, Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano, the Provost and Vice-President, Academic at TMU said, “Land acknowledgements are an act of reconciliation and an opportunity to speak to the importance of change in our society, to voice our respect, recognize our responsibility, commit to action, and work towards the rebuilding of relationships with Indigenous Peoples and lands.“
However, Green said, “At the end of the day, if TMU really wanted to ensure reconciliation was a top priority, then they would hire more Indigenous faculty, they would provide more scholarships to Indigenous students. They would consult more with Indigenous students and community members within TMU about how to proceed on these things. And that’s not being done.”
TMU’S original land acknowledgement statement recognizes that “Toronto is in the ‘Dish With One Spoon’ territory. The Dish With One Spoon is a treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee that bound them to share the territory and protect the land. Subsequent Indigenous Nations and Peoples, Europeans and all newcomers have been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship and respect.”
This particular statement honors the One Dish Wampum Belt and the treaty it represents. The One Dish Wampum treaty was established between the Anishinaabe Three Fires Confederacy and Haudenosaunee Confederacies before colonial treaties. However, the acknowledgment is slightly misrepresentative of the roots which it wishes to honour, according to Doxtater. He grew up hearing the stories and teachings of the One Dish Wampum from Elders and said that it was not about who owned the land or territorial agreements.
“The One Dish has to do with a vast way of seeing the land. It says that from Georgia to James Bay, and from Mississippi Valley across to the Alleghenies and the Adirondacks, that we’re to see this land as one dish that we are all nourished from and makes us all happy,” said Doxtater.
The stories of the One Dish that Doxater heard never included a spoon. But they did encourage the neighboring Nations to put down their sharp objects, in case they hurt each other with their sharp deeds or their sharp words, and to share the resources of the land, because it had the ability to nourish all of the people. He feels the use of the One Dish treaty within institutional land acknowledgements strays from the treaty’s original meaning: “The One Dish treaty has nothing to do with territoriality, or who owns land,” said Doxtater.
Hayden King, an associate professor at TMU and an advisor to the Dean of Arts on Indigenous Education, was one of the people who helped write the original land acknowledgement for TMU. In a CBC article he said, “We wrote it under pressure and not really anticipating the growth of the acknowledgement in Ontario or the politics that would accompany it.”
King told the CBC that he soon realized that land acknowledgements could become a superficial act. “The territorial acknowledgement is by and large for non-Native people. So if we’re writing a script then providing a phonetic guide for how to recite the nation’s names, then it doesn’t really require much work on behalf of the people who are reciting that territorial acknowledgement.”
Indigenous Peoples are often the ones advocating for and helping work towards large reconciliation efforts. But, if the goal of land acknowledgement statements is an act of reconciliation within an institution, then it should not be the responsibility of Indigenous Peoples to read these statements.
In the case of TMU, Provenzano said that “Indigenous community members will usually carry out a welcome while a non-Indigenous person will lead a land acknowledgment.” However, as an Indigenous community member, I know that we are still asked to read the land acknowledgement on occasion. Having a First Nations community member read such statements, though, can defeat the purpose of colonial institutions having to reckon with their history.
TMU is now encouraging faculty and students to build on and personalize the original land acknowledgement statement. “Land acknowledgements are deeply personal, and should be created authentically, each one as unique as the person sharing it,” said Provenzano in her emailed statement. There are resources available on the TMU website to help non-Indigenous folks write a land acknowledgement.
Personalized, authentic land acknowledgements that show gratitude do make a difference. Wyatt Wichert, a third-year social work student at TMU from the Grassy Narrows First Nation, said that he appreciates when his professors take the time to write and read a land acknowledgement statement that is personal to them.
“The impacts living on that land and title in their life, their family’s lives, things like that, how they’re grateful to be on the land, it’s nice to see,” said Wichert. “That’s how land acknowledgments should be every time.”
Encouraging the practice of personalized land acknowledgements is also a way to protect Indigenous students within institutions. It is important for students in education systems to place themselves in relation to the land and colonial history. Some faculty are trying to do this, but careful consideration has to be given to best practice.
In Wichert’s second year in the undergraduate social work program at TMU, one of his professors included an assignment in the curriculum that had students write a land acknowledgement statement from the perspective of a colonial settler. For Wichert, the expectation that an Indigenous student should have to write a land acknowledgement specifically from a colonial perspective was problematic. But, even after raising the issue with his teacher, in order to meet the requirements, he was forced to comply.
“I found it rough as an Indigenous person with, you know, kind of a conflicting perspective from the settler perspective,” said Wichert. He said that being forced to think like a settler was burdensome because it didn’t align with his Indigenous identity and ways of being.
Because of the historical oppression of Indigenous Peoples by colonial settlers, and the impacts of colonial views and beliefs on Indigenous Peoples, Wichert said the problematic aspects of the assignment could have been avoided by allowing students to write the statement from their individual perspective. That way the students who were settlers could reflect on their position within colonialism and Indigenous students could reflect on their ancestral connection to the land.
“The assignment itself was a good place for non-Indigenous people and for settlers to reflect on their identity on Turtle Island. Maybe it might inspire them to inform themselves to an even deeper understanding about their connection to this land and our connection,” said Wichert.
For non-Indigenous people that means ensuring that they are putting in the work to use land acknowledgements meaningfully and well and, perhaps most importantly, recognizing that using a land acknowledgement is just a small step – not the only step – to reconciliation.
