Land Acknowledgements: Moving Beyond Performative

I have been working with preservice teachers for almost 10 years now and the biggest question that I continue to receive is how to do a land acknowledgment. I do want to say that I haven’t talked a lot about this topic but I think in this moment it seems to be more important than ever.

I had a student ask me to look over what they had prepared for a land acknowledgement and asked me for my feedback. It was a lovely acknowledgment and recognition of Indigenous Identity and a poem that connected to an Indigenous worldview but what was missing from the acknowledgement was acknowledging the land itself. So my question back to them was, how does this teach/explain/connect to the land that we are on in this moment? The poem didn’t connect with this location and the story shared was also not from this location we were on. So then how does that honour and acknowledge that this land that we are standing upon today and the stories that it holds, the wisdom it has, and the peoples who have cared for it for 20, 000 years?

For me this is the point of land acknowledges. I do have a section in Re-Storying Education that talks about what is a land acknowledgement and what is a territory welcome. Please check it out.  

I want to be clear that I believe land acknowledgements are important. They can create opportunities to recognize Indigenous Peoples, challenge colonial narratives, and remind us that the lands we occupy have histories, stories, languages, and relationships that existed long before Canada became a country.

But I also believe that a land acknowledgement without reflection, learning, or action risks becoming another performative gesture of reconciliation.

When the Words Lose Their Meaning

I am wondering if you have been at a gathering where a land acknowledgement is read from a piece of paper or projected onto a screen? Then the person reads it word for word. My question about this is how does this engage the audience in the learning process of the history of the land?

Sometimes in these moments the person reading it struggles with the names of the Nations. Other times, the acknowledgement is delivered so quickly that there is barely a moment to consider its meaning before moving on to the next agenda item. And if I am being honest sometimes, I wonder whether the people in the room even hear it anymore.

We have become so accustomed to hearing land acknowledgements that they can become background noise rather than an invitation to think critically about our relationships with Indigenous Peoples and their lands. The land that has been taken from them and we say thanks for letting us be here? But are they really letting us be here? Or is it I know this land wasn’t given away to us but thanks so much for that anyway?

This is where I think we need to challenge ourselves. What are we actually acknowledging?

Are we acknowledging that Indigenous Peoples were displaced from their lands? That colonial governments imposed systems of ownership and governance that disregarded existing Indigenous laws and relationships? That many Indigenous Nations continue to fight for recognition of their rights, territories, and sovereignty? Or are we simply saying the words because someone told us that this is what we are supposed to do? If we acknowledge the land but refuse to acknowledge the ongoing impacts of colonization, what exactly are we accomplishing?

This is the work that I think we should be doing when we are tasked with being the one to open up the work you are doing in good relations to the peoples and the land you are on.

There are so many questions and ways to think about what it is we are doing when we have that moment before all the meetings and gatherings. I would really like people to think about what are we calling to action in this moment? What are we sharing about what we know about this land and the peoples of this land? How are we holding them up? How are we engaging the audience also to think about their relationship they have with the land and the peoples of the land.

Moving From Acknowledgement to Responsibility

One of the questions I want you to think about as you learn more about the history of this place is: What are you going to do differently because of what you now know?

I think this question is especially important when we talk about land acknowledgements. If we acknowledge that we are living and working on Indigenous lands, then what responsibilities come with that acknowledgement?

For educators, it could mean taking the time to learn whose territories your school is on and ensuring that you are sharing accurate information with your students. It could mean moving beyond teaching Indigenous perspectives only during Indigenous History Month or around the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Perhaps it means examining the resources in your classroom and asking whose voices are being centred and whose stories are missing. It could mean learning about the local Indigenous Nations, their histories, languages, governance, and contemporary communities, rather than presenting Indigenous Peoples only through stories of the past.

All of these pieces are important to know and to invite people into the work. This is how we demonstrate through our actions.

Whose Voices Are We Centring?

Another thing I think we need to consider is who is creating our land acknowledgements.

Too often, institutions create a standardized statement that everyone is expected to use. While these statements may be developed with good intentions, they can also remove the personal responsibility of the person delivering them. People can recite the same acknowledgement for years without ever learning anything more about the Indigenous Nations they are naming.

I encourage educators to think about how they can make their acknowledgements meaningful and a call to action. This does not mean inventing a poetic statement or making the acknowledgement about yourself. It means doing the work to understand where you are, whose lands you are on, and what your responsibilities might be.

It also means respecting the guidance and protocols of the local Nations. We should not assume that all Indigenous communities have the same expectations or that one approach will work everywhere. An acknowledgement should be grounded in learning, respect, and accuracy, not simply in our desire to say something that sounds meaningful.

What Does This Look Like in Our Classrooms?

I would love to see educators move away from land acknowledgements as a daily script and begin thinking about how land can become part of their ongoing teaching practice. This could be a classroom where students are learning the Indigenous place names of their community and exploring the stories connected to those places through resources that local Nations have chosen to share. It could mean that students learning about the plants, waterways, mountains, and ecosystems around their school while also understanding the longstanding relationships Indigenous Peoples have with these places.

From this work I can imagine students asking questions about why some territories are described as unceded, what treaties mean, and how Indigenous rights and responsibilities to land continue today. This way students do not simply memorize the names of local Nations but begin to understand that these are living, thriving communities with their own knowledge systems, governance, histories, and futures.

In my work around Re-Storying Education, I often ask educators to examine the stories we have been taught and the stories we continue to tell through our education practices. Land acknowledgements offer us an opportunity to do exactly that.

For generations, Canadian education has centred colonial narrative stories we have been taught and the stories we continue to tell through our educational practices. Land acknowledgemives about land, ownership, settlement, and nation-building. Indigenous Peoples have been positioned as part of Canada's past rather than as Nations with continuing relationships, rights, and responsibilities to their territories.

When we acknowledge the land, we have an opportunity to challenge those narratives. But that challenge cannot end with the acknowledgement itself. We need to ask how our teaching practices continue to reinforce colonial ways of thinking about land and how we might begin to create space for different understandings.

This requires us to move beyond simply knowing whose territory we are on and begin considering what it means to live, learn, and work in respectful relationship with that territory.

It is ongoing work that requires us to examine our practices, challenge our assumptions, build relationships, and take responsibility for the ways we engage with Indigenous Peoples and Knowledges.

A land acknowledgement should not be the end of our responsibility. It should be the beginning of it.