Land acknowledgments have become one of the most common political rituals in Canada.
They’re recited in government offices, universities, legislative chambers, police press conferences, and even before the national anthem during children’s school performances.
We’re told they’re harmless. We’re told they’re simply about teaching Indigenous history.
But as I explore in this report, many Canadians see them very differently.
For starters, the history behind many modern land acknowledgments is often oversimplified. Long before European settlement, Indigenous nations fought wars, displaced rivals, expanded territories, controlled trade routes, and, in some cases, even practiced slavery.
The Iroquois Confederacy displaced rival nations during the Beaver Wars. The Tlingit expanded their influence through warfare. The Haida famously took captives from neighbouring peoples as slaves.
Yet no reasonable person would argue that modern Indigenous Canadians should be burdened with inherited guilt, or that their connection to Canada is weakened because of what their ancestors did centuries ago.
And yet non-Indigenous Canadians are increasingly expected to sit through, repeat, or affirm statements suggesting they occupy “stolen” land and possess a lesser claim to the country they call home. Some are even being punished for speaking out against such compulsion.
Lara Yates, a B.C. mother of four, was banned from her child’s school after speaking out against a land acknowledgment before a school performance. Catherine Kronas, an Ontario parent council member, was suspended from her duties for refusing to participate in one. And four UBC professors have gone so far as to take legal action against the publicly funded university’s sweeping use of land acknowledgments, arguing that the rituals force faculty and students to conform to the institution’s political views.
The concerns don’t end there. Some Canadians oppose land acknowledgments because they believe they promote a form of racism, one that assigns moral guilt, victimhood, legitimacy, or authority based not on individual character, but on ancestry. And with elected officials such as BC NDP MLA Rohini Aroura, using legislature time to label the majority of her constituents “settlers” and “colonizers,” it’s no surprise that many Canadians feel that land acknowledgments have become about racial division rather than reconciliation.
Hellbound and Down 