Perspectives on land acknowledgements from Wabanaki voices:
The Danger of Social and Political Symbolism in the Advancement of Indigenous Rights by Sherri Mitchell. In this article, Mitchell draws an important distinction between symbolic acts and structural change and refocuses us on the real work: protecting indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and land and water rights.
Dawnland Signals: Land Acknowledgements. Maria Girouard, Esther Anne, Dr. Darren Ranco, and Diane Oltrazewski discuss the origin of the new found interest in land acknowledgements, different types of land acknowledgments, and appropriate ways to do a land acknowledgement.
The complexities of land acknowledgements. Covers the reflections made by Darren Ranco, Maria Girouard and Matthew Klingle at a panel on land acknowledgements at Bowdoin College.
...and from beyond Wabanaki Homelands:
So you want to acknowledge the land? By Summer Wilkie. Some notes on the trend, and what real justice could look like.
Honor Native Land: A guide and call for acknowledgement made by the US Department of Arts and Culture, a grassroots coalition of organizers that includes native people. It establishes that lack acknowledgement, while important, is only a beginning in larger efforts to decolonize and suggests other steps forward we can take alongside land acknowledgements.
Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements by Chelsea Vowel (a.k.a. âpihtawikosisân), Métis from Alberta, Canada. They argue that in some spaces, land acknowledgements have lost their disruptive power through repetition. They ask readers to go beyond just making a land acknowledgments to learn about what expectations local Indigenous nations have specific for guests, and of hosts.
A guide to indigenous land acknowledgements made by the Native Governance center shares advice collected from a panel of native speakers about how to craft a land acknowledgement. It advises readers not just to acknowledge the original peoples of the land you’re on, but to commit to returning it.
Example of land acknowledgement signs developed in government-to-government meetings between the Native Village of Eklutna and the local US military base. The signs were posted at the entrance to the military base and acknowledge that the base is within the traditional Dena’ina Homeland.
What Are Land Acknowledgements, and Why Do We Do Them? By Hop Hopkins and Angela Mooney D’Arcy.
Plus some land acknowledgement innovations that inspire us...
Forge Project Check out the experience of navigating to this website (digital home of a project to support Indigenous leadership in arts and culture). What does this land acknowledgement critique? What does it build?