Since returning from our recent visit to Saskatchewan to celebrate the release of the Pelican Lake buffalo herd, a project of Loko Koa’s Bring Back the Buffalo initiative, I’ve been thinking very deeply about the practice of reading Land Acknowledgements at public gatherings. Many of my thoughts are still tentative and somewhat ambivalent, but they’re at least formed clearly enough to share some of them in the context of a blog post like this.
On the one hand, I’ve heard many critiques of the use of land acknowledgements: that they don’t accomplish anything tangible; that we (i.e. settlers like me) use them simply to make ourselves feel better, instead of taking concrete action; that they’re usually little more than lip-service and tokenism and often disguise hypocrisy and racist attitudes.
This bit from the Baroness Von Sketch show riffs playfully on that particular line of critique.
I’ve heard more pointed critiques than these, though: that they paint a historically inaccurate picture of the First Nations' territorial claims and inter-tribal relationships, portraying these things as entirely idyllic and peaceful when historically the situation was far more complicated than most land acknowledgments want to admit; that they only deepen the guilt and shame that white people in Canada already feel about the history of our dealings with the First Nations of this land, without pointing to any helpful path forward; that all that happened a long time ago, and it’s not like we can return things to the way they were.
I hope it’s clear that in sharing these critiques, I don’t agree with them; I have, in fact, pushed back against many of them.
Most recently, in a discussion about land acknowledgements, where some of the aforementioned criticisms were made of the practice, I suggested that a land acknowledgement is not so much for the sake of the Indigenous people they refer to; it is, rather, for the sake of the settlers who are making them. They are there to remind settlers of the simple, historical truth, that the reason we are “using the land” that we use is because we made treaties with the peoples who were using it before any settlers arrived, and it’s on the basis of those treaties that we’re here. In that sense, Land Acknowledgements might better be thought of as “Treaty Acknowledgements.” When we think about it in these terms, a Land Acknowledgement reminds settlers of the responsibilities and commitments that were part of the treaties we made, and implicitly asks settlers to ask themselves whether we are living faithfully by those commitments.
I realize this is not a perfect answer. I believe that many of the treaties that Canada made with the First Nations of this land were made in bad faith. Many have not been kept. Many have been hotly contested.
My understanding is that the Williams Treaties, for example, which cover the land of the Durham Region of Ontario where I currently live, was a highly controversial series of agreements. Signed in 1923, the Williams Treaties abolished Indigenous hunting and fishing rights in the region, rights that had been guaranteed under previous treaties. Over the subsequent decades, many Williams Treaties First Nations bands disputed these treaties in a series of contentious legal battles. In 2018 the governments of both Ontario and Canada finally settled with the Williams Treaties First Nations, agreeing to pay $1.1 billion dollars for surrendered lands. As part of the settlement, the government issues an apology which said, in part, “We are sorry [that] continued injustices provided insufficient compensation and inadequate reserve lands [and] failed to recognize and protect your treaty rights.” (While this was a significant step, the payout amounted to approximately $85/acre for the land covered by the treaties, when the value of the real estate at the time of the settlement was somewhere north of $10,000/acre.)
So appealing to treaties is not, on its own, enough to answer all the problems people may have with land acknowledgements (although it is possible that the moral impetus to finally settle a dispute like the Williams Treaties was shored up, at least in part, by the practice of regularly reminding settlers of their treaty obligations, through the consistent use of land acknowledgements).
Nevertheless, I want to be clear that I am very much in favor of an intentionally used land acknowledgement, provided it is connected to a broader commitment to and practice of real, concrete action towards reconciliation and right relationship.
What I’m thinking about today, though, as I continue to reflect on the role of land acknowledgements from a Christian perspective, is the theological basis for the practice.
As modern, Western, post-enlightenment, capitalist Canadians, we are deeply conditioned to think about the “land” in terms of “ownership.” This is partly why something like a land acknowledgment rubs some settlers the wrong way. The thinking runs something like this: “The land was ‘theirs’ once, but it’s ‘ours’ now, and acknowledging that must imply that we don’t have a ‘right to it,’ and we need to ‘give it back.’” I doubt many settlers would put it that crassly, but that is certainly the subtext of some critiques of land acknowledgements that I’ve heard.
From a Christian perspective, though, I think this is a profoundly unbiblical way of looking at it. One of the most fundamental axioms of the Faith—the first statement of the Creed, in fact—is that we believe in God, the “Father Almighty,” who is the maker of heaven and earth. As the creator of all that is, God is also the “owner” of all that is (to whatever extent you can describe his entirely generous and loving relationship with the universe in terms of “ownership”). The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, is how the Psalmist put it—the earth and everything in it, because (why?) He (and not we ourselves) founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.
A Christian with a full-orbed, biblical theology of creation would inevitably embrace, with it, a full-orbed, biblical theology of stewardship. When God made human beings in the Divine Image, it was for the express purpose of stewarding God’s creation (to “serve” the earth and “govern it” wisely.
As the Creator’s Stewards then, all Christians, settler and indigenous alike, must recognize that (1) none of us “own” the land in the modern, Western, capitalistic sense of the word, and that (2) we are deeply obligated to live in right relationship with all the rest of God’s children who also inhabit the land, sharing it generously and handling it with transparent integrity. This is why the Old Testament Law enjoins God’s people to practice radical hospitality to the stranger in the land—because it’s not theirs, it belongs to Creator God, and that’s how he’d use it. It also explains the deepest reason for the exile that forms the central heartache of the Old Testament story. The reason God’s People were exiled from the land is because they had forgotten their responsibility to use it as Creator’s stewards, and were living in it as though it belonged to them (read the entire chapter of Leviticus 26 for more).
Christians who appreciated all the implications of the Bible’s opening verses would see a land acknowledgement—at least one that was carefully written and intentionally used—as a profound act of worship, reminding them that everything they feel they “owned” (in the capitalistic sense of the word) was really the possession (for lack of a more divine word) of Creator God. And they would participate in land acknowledgements with a renewed desire to live as God’s stewards of the Creation in the fullest sense of that word, pursuing justice for those who have been exploited by our misuse of God’s green earth, practicing radical generosity towards those with whom they share it, and taking up the responsibility to handle the land with gentleness, integrity and, above all, right relationship with others.
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