George Brown College, a public institution in Toronto, recently required students and faculty joining a Zoom meeting to agree to a long mea culpa: “This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat, Mississaugas, Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee. . . . As settlers . . . we benefit from the colonization and genocide of the Indigenous peoples of this land. . . . It is imperative we constantly engage in acts of awareness and decolonization.”
Such “land acknowledgments”—a listing of indigenous tribes that have inhabited the area, followed by apologies for the institution’s “settler colonialism”—have in the past decade become ubiquitous in Canada and are catching on in the U.S. The trend might have started in Australia, where government functions commonly begin with a “Welcome to the Country” from an aboriginal elder—depicting Australian citizens as aliens who need a figurative visa stamp.
The statements are objectionable both in their content and their coerciveness. Like the practice of listing one’s “pronouns,” they creep quickly into the mainstream from the academic fringe. As these deeply ideological declarations become a prerequisite for academic and other kinds of speech, the unwoke on campus will be only further silenced and isolated.
The statements, whose text varies from institution to institution, typically assert that Native Americans have been in the area “since time immemorial,” putting us in the realm of myth rather than history. In fact, Native Americans came to North America at various times, migrated and sometimes displaced each other. (Ironically, the phrase “time immemorial” comes from English common law, which firmly fixed it at King Richard I’s accession on July 6, 1189.)
The statements often apologize for “dispossession” or for being present on “stolen land” or “occupied territories.” This doesn’t necessarily mean the named tribes ever lived on the actual site of the university. Rather, it anachronistically conflates a people’s presence in an area with ownership of specific property, and it equates grazing or hunting grounds with notions of political sovereignty. Conquest and migration have shaped the entire world, yet the French don’t apologize for the Norman Conquest.
Address the conquest! When statements are made institutions act like they are liable to the damage that’s be done but that isn’t really the case. It does more harm than good when they give low effort to these land acknowledgments.
Another common theme involves pseudo-pagan tributes to the tribes’ functioning in the natural order. My own university’s statement begins by giving “greetings and thanksgiving to these Potomac River life sources,” an oddly spiritual incantation in the overwhelmingly secular atmosphere of the university. Native tribes are commonly called “caretakers” or “stewards” of the land, fetishizing Native Americans more than any athletic mascot could.
It’s no coincidence that these land acknowledgments are proliferating at formal ceremonies, even as such patriotic rituals as the Pledge of Allegiance and the playing of the national anthem are under attack. They replace a concise affirmation of national pride with a dense confession of national original sin.
Most land acknowledgments are only recommended acts of piety, not obligatory devotions. But when a university recommends such statements at all events and suggests that professors include them in all course syllabi, websites and even email signatures, all but the bravest professors are likely to fall in line.
Land acknowledgements can become performative quickly as we are seeing with a number of institutions. The best way that people can avoid doing this is just by being informed and honest on the topic. The way we can combat this is by starting to reflect on what it means to actually acknowledge the land you exist on. After this we can reflect on the tribe who the land belongs to. Building these relationships by researching the history is the foundation of addressing how to build genuine relationships and compensate Native Americans in the right way. Using honesty comes in using the proper language to discuss what happens; genocide stolen land, and forced removal are just a few to name.
Source: Author(s). (2022, June 10). Land acknowledgments are the latest woke ritual. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/land-acknowledgments-are-the-latest-woke-ritual-college-bureaucrats-native-ancestors-11654876804
