{"id":34431,"date":"2024-04-04T17:49:01","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T21:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=34431"},"modified":"2024-04-04T17:49:03","modified_gmt":"2024-04-04T21:49:03","slug":"its-time-to-move-past-land-acknowledgements-to-something-more-meaningful-says-educator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/its-time-to-move-past-land-acknowledgements-to-something-more-meaningful-says-educator\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time to move past land acknowledgements to something more meaningful, says educator"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need saviours, we need conspirators\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Land acknowledgements have become a routine part of our public life, a regular feature at cultural and political events, concerts, and even ribbon-cuttings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what do these words mean? Who wrote them? What do they convey?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those are questions Dr. Ruth Green, an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at York University, is asking the community to consider ahead of a talk later this month at the Aurora Public Library (APL).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Green, a member of the Haudenosaunee nation, will explore these questions at APL on Thursday, April 18, at 7 p.m., encouraging a move away from Land towards Solidary Statements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahead of the talk, she shared as much as land acknowledgements are ostensibly to further efforts towards Truth & Reconciliation, it\u2019s time for a \u201creimagining\u201d of how to \u201cbuild these relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen people are just learning [about this history] and they hear these land acknowledgements, they think that is enough,\u201d says Green. \u201cHow do you build a relationship where people can say, \u2018I am going to acknowledge this territory, but I am also going to acknowledge who I am in this territory?\u2019 A land acknowledgement can\u2019t just be a script because then it becomes performative; instead of being performative, how do non-Indigenous people understand themselves as guests in Indigenous territory and how do we make a commitment to do better?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDr. Cindy Blackstock says she shares dreams of a generation of Indigenous children who don\u2019t have to heal from their childhood and a generation of non-Indigenous children who don\u2019t have to apologize. We\u2019re not going to do it coming at each other with barbs; we\u2019re going to do it by caring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In doing so, Green says she has to remember who she is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History, she says, wanted to \u201cmake us disappear\u201d and Green describes herself as \u201cthe grandchild of Indigenous people they couldn\u2019t kill.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy grandfather was in a residential school and my grandmother was in Indian hospitals; she was experimented on. My mom escaped the child welfare system by being thrown out of a window. This is my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of us have \u201csat in spaces where our homes don\u2019t feel peaceful, be it when we were teenagers and pissing off our parents; be it when we moved into our first apartment and had horrible roommates; we went through a break-up of an intimate relationship \u2013 we all know what it feels like to be in a home without peace. If you understand that, that\u2019s what it feels like to be an Indigenous person every day, times all of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can try and come at it in ways that individuals can connect with their own lived reality, but also see the political and national implication. That\u2019s how I take this from being a land acknowledgement to somebody saying, \u2018I need to do these things to stand in solidarity; I need to learn more; I am going to write letters to the paper, to the Prime Minister, to Members of Parliament, to my Mayor\u2026. I am going to say we need to do better.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Green is in a situation where a land acknowledgement is said, she often asks the host who wrote it. The answers are interesting and varied from an organization \u201casking a few Indigenous community members to work on it,\u201d to \u201cWe got it off Google\u201d or, \u201cWe read a bunch off Google and wrote it ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That base of knowledge, she says, comes from Indigenous-led writings and that \u201ctook emotional labour\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s important we don\u2019t lose sight of the fact Indigenous people did the work to get the land acknowledgement there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to stand and do it more than just a script \u2013 who are you in relationship to that land acknowledgement? How do you understand your roles and responsibilities to the treaty people you\u2019re in?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt should not be our work anymore. We did the foundation and a lot of spaces and places have that access to that Indigenous person\u2019s labour, but that is going to tell you how to build it yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will be a learning journey, she says, and nobody is going to get it right the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No non-Indigenous person she\u2019s met nailed \u201cHaudenosaunee\u201d the first time just by looking at it. But Green says \u201cwe have now had enough time where people should be able to say the name of my confederacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have asked many, many language-speakers across Canada and the U.S., \u2018What is the word for \u2018mistake\u2019 in your language? I get virtually the same answer every time, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s not really a word for mistake. It\u2019s kind of either a \u2018teaching\u2019 or a \u2018learning.\u2019 If that is our worldview, if we don\u2019t have a word for \u2018mistake\u2019 and people are coming with good intentions and are willing to hear if their impact is not their intention, then we can move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCanada has had a problem where their intention and their impact has not always been to the benefit. If somebody\u2019s intention is to the benefit and their impact is not, but they are willing to hear it, I am willing to talk to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be a part of the conversation on April 18, visit bit.ly\/3SA3Gdz<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe don\u2019t need saviours, we need conspirators\u201d Land acknowledgements have become a routine part of our public life, a regular feature at cultural and political events, concerts, and even ribbon-cuttings. But what do these words mean? Who wrote them? What do they convey? Those are questions Dr. Ruth Green, an Associate Professor in the School […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8Xl","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-23 13:55:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}