Making Land Acknowledgements in the University Setting Meaningful and Appropriate

Abstract

Land acknowledgments are one step that educators and institutions can take to begin realigning their relationship with Indigenous peoples. However, many fear doing more harm than good when taking the first step of doing a land acknowledgment. In this paper an instructor who overcame such hesitation and an Indigenous faculty member share a six item framework for land acknowledgments developed in collaboration with Indigenous students, colleagues, and community members that greatly increases the likelihood of doing good rather than harm when delivering a land acknowledgement. This article’s unique contribution is its specific framework and step-by-step instructions for creating an appropriate and meaningful land acknowledgement, using an example crafted for the authors’ institution to illustrate the process. It also suggests resources for learning about land acknowledgment that will be useful to people living on Indigenous lands around the world.

Keywords:

• Allyship
• decolonization
• indigenous methodology
• land acknowledgements

Land acknowledgements matter because they anchor us to the place we are, consistent with place-based pedagogy (Webber 2021). They tell our Indigenous students and colleagues that we believe their experience and the experience of people like them is important and meaningful to the history of our institution. They lift up a truth that is otherwise obscured: academic institutions are largely Western, settler institutions and the land we live and work on has a history longer than that of our institution.

First, a definition: land acknowledgements are formal statements acknowledging the original, Indigenous inhabitants of the land where an event is taking place. They “recognize the unique and enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous People and their traditional territories” (LSPRIG 2020). Giving a land acknowledgement builds on a centuries-long Indigenous traditional custom of speaking to the truth of a place and offers the audience information about the people who lived on the land before colonization and who continue to be there (Duwamish Tribe 2018).

The recent literature around land acknowledgements (i.e., Blenkinsop and Fettes 2020; Cook and Zenovich 2021; Huntington 2021; McKay, Mata, and Parker 2020; Stein 2020; Wark 2021) offers much to consider about the value of and controversies around land acknowledgments in traditionally-settler spaces, such as Western educational institutions. This paper acknowledges the importance of those arguments while, simultaneously, focusing on a related but separate question: how can educators craft a land acknowledgement that is both meaningful and appropriate in the context where they work?

In the United States of America there are 574 federally recognized and 66 additional state-recognized Indian tribes (Indian Entities Recognized by and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs 2021). In Canada, there are more than 630 First Nation communities (Government of Canada 2021). Each of these Indigenous groups have traditional homelands; those lands together comprise the entire countries. No matter where you are (inside or outside the US and Canada), you are on the traditional land of Indigenous people and a land acknowledgment is appropriate. For the purposes of this paper, the authors will share a land acknowledgement developed for their home campus as an illustrative example; we encourage other educators from a wide variety of institutions, including but not limited to universities, to consider crafting similar land acknowledgements for their specific geographic locales using resources offered in this paper and available in their local communities.

The process of drafting a land acknowledgement provides allies with an opportunity to reflect on privilege and oppression, learn about the history of a place and its first peoples, and take a small action to “combat the continued erasure of Indigenous People from their lands” (Smith, Pucket, and Simon 2015, 14). While they are generally effective at combating erasure, these statements are often used as a metaphor and are not effective at legitimizing Indigenous ways of being (Asher, Curnow, and Davis 2018). Speakers who are not prepared to meaningfully engage in this process should not do a land acknowledgement; without that context it becomes performative rather than a demonstration of real allyship (Stein 2020; Wark 2021). However, when done properly, “land acknowledgment demonstrates organizational commitment to creating relationships with Indigenous Nations based on respect, responsibility, and reciprocity” (McKay, Mata, and Parker 2020, 905).

Corrie Whitmore, a white person teaching on Dena’ina land, does land acknowledgements when she gives presentations and in face to face, synchronous online, and asynchronous online classes. On the first day of classes taught in person, she begins by introducing herself and launching into a land acknowledgement. In synchronous online (i.e., Zoom) classes, she similarly introduces herself and does a land acknowledgement, while screen-sharing an image of our campus with “Dena’ina Ełnena” (“This is Dena’ina Land”) emblazoned across it. In asynchronous online classes she includes the written text of our land acknowledgement and the Dena’ina Ełnena image as the first section of the first content module, and delivers it verbally as part of the “Start Here” course tour video.

As a white person who is – relatively speaking – a recent arrival on this land, Dr. Whitmore recognizes that systemic racism continues to harm our students, colleagues, and communities today. Incorporating land acknowledgements into her practice is a small action to combat racism and make her classroom a space that welcomes Indigenous students. This is an important part of her pedagogical approach these days, but has not always been so. Whitmore started thinking about including land acknowledgements several semesters before she began doing them at the beginning of presentations and classes. She was originally uncertain whether she was qualified to do a land acknowledgement, since she is not Indigenous herself. She was unsure whether she could do it right and fretted that doing it wrong would be worse than doing nothing.

Interestingly, Whitmore was empowered by hearing secondhand that a local tribal leader had politely but firmly declined to schlep to campus, again, to do another land acknowledgement at a large university event. Rather than attending the event, the tribal representative reminded the person who invited them that outsourcing the work of the land acknowledgment and asking tribal leaders to do unpaid emotional labor was disrespectful. He encouraged the campus representative who had approached him to take on the work of researching and sharing a land acknowledgment themself. Hearing this perspective, which framed the delivery of land acknowledgments as one more service obligation being pushed to colleagues and community members from historically disadvantaged groups, made it clear that outsourcing land acknowledgements was unfair. If we believe land acknowledgements are important – which we do – it is our responsibility to do the work to make them happen.

Whitmore drafted her first land acknowledgement and delivered it with a shaky voice to students in a senior seminar course. It took two minutes, at most, and the class quickly moved on to other content. She wondered if it had actually made a difference to anyone, but consoled herself with the idea that at least it was short and no one seemed to find it off-putting. Sixteen weeks later, at the end of the semester, an Indigenous student (from a different region in Alaska) wrote in her course evaluation that the land acknowledgment had helped her feel like she belonged in the class and made it easier for her to participate fully. That convinced us of the utility of land acknowledgements in the classroom, forever.

Our personal commitment to delivering meaningful and appropriate land acknowledgements sparked many conversations with Indigenous friends, family members, and colleagues about what land acknowledgments are for, where and how they are done, and sharing examples of the best (and worst) acknowledgements we have heard. We are very grateful for the wisdom shared in these exchanges. The most disturbing answer Whitmore heard about what land acknowledgements are for came from an Indigenous professor, who casually said “land acknowledgments are about making white people feel better.”

Erik Carlson is a member of the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska. He is also a member of the academy and can pass for white. His historical opinion of land acknowledgments can be summarized as somewhere between skepticism and derision. Because he does not immediately appear to be a minority, he is privy to the casual racism that often gets filtered out when there is someone with darker skin in the room. Witnessing Caucasians with significant organizational power talk about using land acknowledgments as a “checkbox” to “appease” Alaska Native groups fueled his animosity toward this practice. This tokenization and even fetishization of Indigenous Peoples can be an unfortunate side effect of mandatory efforts to realign the relationship of institutions and Indigenous People (Daigle 2019).

Resisting this “checkbox” framing of land acknowledgements fueled our determination to craft meaningful and appropriate land acknowledgements that served a larger purpose. This began with reading about land acknowledgements in the pedagogical literature and on the internet. Whitmore facilitated a series of faculty discussions about land acknowledgement and hosted a faculty workshop featuring Melissa Shaginoff, a talented Alaskan artist and museum curator. Two amazing Indigenous academics brainstormed with us about how to make land acknowledgements meaningful and appropriate (Fullmer, A. & Milligan-McClellan, K., personal communication, July 14, 2020).

Through this process, we arrived at six key principles:

1. Do no harm.

2. Recognize the strengths of Indigenous people.

3. Acknowledge history and talk about the present.

4. Focus on allyship, not ownership.

5. Acknowledge Indigenous people’s stewardship of the land.

6. Do your own homework.

First, do no harm. Indigenous people have experienced trauma around colonization and removal from their traditional lands, but that distress should not be the focus of a land acknowledgement. There is no rule that acknowledgements have to be 100% positive, but land acknowledgements should not linger on trauma, abuse, or exploitation. Land acknowledgements must not re-traumatize students in the classroom or audience members at a presentation, as part of an effort to behave respectfully toward their community. Similarly, they should not put forward unsubstantiated claims. This feels very salient to us because, a few years ago, a leader at our institution delivered a garbled land acknowledgement in which he thanked the local Indigenous people for taking care of the land for the university. Rather than improving the campus climate by acknowledging the role of Indigenous people in its history, he alienated the Indigenous people in the room and limited his credibility with those of us who knew that our campus is located on the traditional, unceded homeland of the K’enaht’ana people. In cases such as that one, where the speaker was unwilling or unable to devote the time to crafting an appropriate land acknowledgement, we would all be better served by skipping the land acknowledgement entirely (Eklutna Inc. 2020).

Second, land acknowledgements should recognize the strengths of Indigenous people. In our setting, Alaska, Indigenous people have thrived for more 10,000 years in a harsh climate, taking care of one another and the land they lived on. Today people from the same communities play important roles managing tribal corporations and governments, operating Indian Health Service-compacted healthcare facilities around the state, and participating in state and local government and educational institutions. Indigenous people in other geographic regions have similar histories of overcoming challenges, caring for their communities, creating beautiful things, and building important infrastructure. The strength of their communities are remarkable and worth noting publicly.

Third, in a land acknowledgement one should both acknowledge the history of the land and talk about the present. How the land we are acknowledging is used has changed over time; it is meaningful to recognize that. What was on your campus’ lands, before your institution arrived? In the land acknowledgement we use, for example, we describe how “Chester Creek, which runs through our campus, was the site of fish camps where residents harvested food for ten thousand years, before development interfered with the salmon return” (Eklutna Inc. 2020).

Simultaneously, it is important to notice that the tribal communities that were on the land historically are still here: they are our students, our neighbors, our colleagues, and a vital part of our community. We specifically recognize that by including information about current tribal members. In the land acknowledgement we use right now in Anchorage, we specify that “Today the K’enaht’ana people are members of the Eklutna (Eydlughet) and Knik (K’enakatnu) tribes” (Eklutna Inc. 2020). Similarly, Indigenous people live, work, and play (Carlson 2020) in the lands you plan to acknowledge and can be recognized in your statement.

Fourth, in crafting and delivering an appropriate land acknowledgement it is important to focus on allyship, not ownership. As a white person striving to deliver a meaningful and appropriate land acknowledgement, Whitmore does not make claims about her relationship to the land (nor her institution’s): in fact, she does not mention her own background or experiences at all, since they are not relevant. She also recognizes that as a white settler she cannot speak to the experiences of Indigenous community members or provide expert historical analysis; she just speaks for herself, which is enough (and anything more would be presumptuous).

Fifth, it is vital to recognize Indigenous people’s stewardship of the land. Indigenous communities have historically played important stewardship roles and had strong relationships with the land where they lived. It is appropriate and respectful to acknowledge that stewardship, directly, which we do in our example by saying, “We acknowledge their stewardship of this land for generations and say ‘Chin-an,’ which is thank you in the Dena’ina Language” (Alaska Native Language Center 2021). When we craft land acknowledgements for use in other places, we try to find and include the words for “thank you” in the local language as part of our statement.

Sixth, anyone who chooses to do a land acknowledgement has the responsibility to do their own homework. It is not reasonable to request that Indigenous people, who are already asked to take on disproportionate amounts of emotional labor and institutional service, deliver or write a land acknowledgement for someone else’s use. Individuals who want to incorporate a land acknowledgement in their teaching or presentations have the obligation to investigate Indigenous inhabitants of the land being acknowledged, learn about their history and current status, and craft an acknowledgement. Many good resources exist to help and it is likely that someone in the local community would be happy to review a land acknowledgement once it is drafted, but the responsibility for creating it belongs to the person who will deliver it.

Determining how to start can become a barrier. With that in mind, we offer a very short, incomplete list of resources that may be helpful to people crafting acknowledgements for territories around the globe:

• Native Lands Digital, a Canadian not-for-profit organization “strive[s] to map Indigenous lands in a way that changes, challenges, and improves the way people see the history of their countries and people… in a way that goes beyond colonial ways of thinking in order to better represent how Indigenous people want to see themselves” (Native Land Digital 2021). Their website and searchable maps provide educational resources to identify Indigenous territories, languages, and treaties linked to lands in the Americas, Australasia, the Arctic, and northern Europe and provides an excellent jumping off place by linking to local tribal organizations for more information. This resource is online at https://native-land.ca

• Code for Anchorage’s Land Acknowledgement SMS bot leverages data from Native Lands Digital and will text back the name of Indigenous groups from a specific area, when texted the name of a city and state at 1-907-312-5085. This service provides the name of Indigenous tribes who have history at a particular location, for all areas included on the Native Lands Digital maps.

• Duwamish Tribe’s “Land Acknowledgement” page, at https://www.duwamishtribe.org/land-acknowledgement, describes the centuries-long traditional custom of land acknowledgement and provides an example acknowledgement for their own land, in the Seattle area, which they encourage people to use as a model in constructing other, locally -relevant land acknowledgements.

• United States Department of Art and Culture “Honor Native Land” page, online at https://usdac.us/nativeland, provides resources for use in acknowledging the traditional Indigenous inhabitants of land, along with the rationale for doing so. This website will be useful to readers both inside and outside the United States because the concepts outlined here transcend geography.

When developing a new land acknowledgement, (for example, when we prepare to offer a land acknowledgement while delivering a conference presentation outside Dena’ina land), our strategy is to start with the Native Lands Digital mapping resource, click through to the links provided there, and use that tribal affiliation information to do our own online search for tribal web sites. Tribal government or community websites often include “About Us” or “History” pages that outsiders can draw from in crafting land acknowledgements. This is particularly appropriate because it amplifies the most current information that these communities want shared about themselves.

It is also helpful to research the tribal language using online resources to find a few words or phrases (like “thank you” or “this is the land of this group”) to incorporate, then locate online videos of those words spoken aloud, to learn correct pronunciations. Youtube is an excellent resource for these videos: by searching for the names of prominent community members and tribal organizations, it has been possible for us to learn the correct pronunciation of words in Indigenous languages, without asking anyone to take on additional work to teach us.

In crafting land acknowledgments, it is important to remember that their inclusion is only a first step. For a land acknowledgement to be meaningful and appropriate in the classroom, it is important to take additional steps in linking course material to Indigenous peoples’ past and present experiences. This will obviously look different in different disciplines, but could include incorporating discussions of the social determinants of health and health equity in public health courses, highlighting the contributions of Indigenous scientists and mathematicians, reflecting on how welding is used in tribal communities, or including writing by Indigenous authors in literature classes. With some creativity and reflection, teaching in every subject can explicitly include Indigenous people and their experiences.

Upon witnessing these land acknowledgment principles in action, Dr. Carlson revised his opinion of land acknowledgments and now advocates for their use when this framework is followed. Adoption of the framework outlined here is an important step in moving from a situation where there is no commitment from the speaker to act on their acknowledgment and a stance where the land itself is a passive participant to a more aspirational and active stance (Blenkinsop and Fettes 2020). It is this implied intent, recognizing that land acknowledgments are both a first step and a commitment to including Indigenous people’s contributions, that has changed his mind about the appropriateness of the practice.

Some educators interested in adopting a land acknowledgement practice may worry that their diligent efforts to convey respect will instead produce a performative, make-white-people-feel-better land acknowledgement (Robinson et al. 2019). To avoid this outcome, we encourage those crafting a land acknowledgment to do so as a practice of allyship, following the framework outlined in this paper and reading materials from Indigenous experts, such as those offered by the Duwamish Tribe and US Department of Arts and Culture. Every pedagogical choice we make as educators involves both risk and benefit: choosing to move forward with land acknowledgment may feel vulnerable, but the benefits it offers are worth the risk.

Conclusion

Land acknowledgements are powerful. Choosing to add them to your practice may feel intimidating; however, this paper has provided the orientation necessary to craft an appropriate and meaningful land acknowledgement. Start where you are. The land acknowledgements we deliver have iterated over time, as we learn more, and it is likely that yours will too.

The bar for delivering a land acknowledgment is that whatever is done needs to be better than nothing (i.e., no acknowledgement), since a poorly done land acknowledgement can be worse than nothing, alienating your audience or providing false information (A. Fullmer, personal communication, February 1, 2021). Many people worry that they are not qualified to take on this job; however, anyone who is willing to learn about the Indigenous people connected to the land they are on and stand as an ally can do so. As an educator, your research and writing skills will serve you well on this project.

In crafting a land acknowledgment, it is useful to identify your specific goal. We suggest beginning with the aim of delivering a factual acknowledgement, drafted with respect and conveyed with humility and openness to correction. By committing to the six principles outlined in this article – doing no harm, recognizing the strengths of Indigenous people, acknowledging history and talking about the present, focusing on allyship (not ownership), acknowledging Indigenous people’s stewardship of the land, and doing your own homework – you will be able to craft a meaningful and appropriate land acknowledgement that is far better than nothing.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.