Tag Archives: land acknowledgement

POST 5 – Classroom Climate: Territory Acknowledgment – David Loti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LApHrjFPFp4

Visited 21 November 2018

 

Drs. Lisa Nathan and Liisa Holsti, UBC faculty members, discuss land acknowledgement practices as a way to understand the place and history of the UBC community. Nathan indicates that professions rooted in knowledge management have been complicit in colonization and that the land acknowledgement can be a piece in changing that trajectory. She also recognizes that by itself a territory acknowledgement does little, but it can be the start of a meaningful conversation.

Post 4 – Regions differ in Indigenous acknowledgement at Canadian universities – David Loti

https://news.ubc.ca/2017/03/01/regions-differ-in-indigenous-acknowledgement-at-canadian-universities/

Visited 20 November 2018

 

This article summarizes Linc Kesler, Rima Wilkes, Aaron Duong, and Howard Ramos’s academic study, a first of its kind, “Canadian University Acknowledgement of Indigenous Lands, Treaties and Peoples”, published in Canadian Review of Sociology in February 2017. The study investigates land acknowledgements at Canadian universities. The article quotes UBC Professor Linc Kesler, “Acknowledgements indicate respect for Indigenous communities and bring attention to an often ignored history.” He continues, “It sets a context for present relationships among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples that can be thought of in a more deliberate way.” The summary also indicates that, “The researchers also question whether or not acknowledgement helps promote reconciliation or merely acts as a ‘tokenistic practice of checking the box.’”

POST #4 – 10 Ways To Be An Ally To Indigenous People

This article is from a local magazine and it focuses on ten ways settlers can be better allies for Indigenous people.  The first five recommendations include:

  • IDENTIFY THE TERRITORY YOU’RE IN & LEARN A GREETING IN THE LOCAL LANGUAGE
  • LISTEN TO INDIGENOUS VOICES
  • SELF IDENTIFY
  • DON’T SUPPORT THE ERASURE OF HISTORY OR PROBLEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PAST
  • REASSESS YOUR ENTITLEMENT TO THE LAND YOU LIVE ON – WITHOUT GETTING DEFENSIVE

Please read the article to find out last five suggestions.

http://looselipsmag.com/features/10-ways-to-be-an-ally-to-indigenous-people/

Post 4 – Unceded territory – Megaphone – David Loti

http://www.megaphonemagazine.com/unceded_territory

Visited 24 October 2018

 

This 2016 article provides a helpful overview of some of the history and varying perspectives of land acknowledgements in Vancouver and Victoria. Okanagan Grand Chief Stewart Phillip offers a hopeful perspective saying, “Its [sic] encouraging to know we have made that kind of progress [to hear official acknowledgements . . . from Vancouver city council]. We’ve come a long way from the dark days of racist denial that existed when I first got involved” while Musqueam First Nations activist Audrey Siegl (sχɬemtəna:t) says these sorts of acknowledgements are “just tokenism, pretty but empty words, spoken so we will be pacified for at least a little bit longer.” Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps states, “It’s simple, really—it is their territory,” referring to the Songhees and Esquimalt people. However beyond a political platitude I wonder what it actually means to say that the city of Victoria “is their territory.”

POST 5 – What is the significance of acknowledging the Indigenous land we stand on? – David Loti

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/territorial-acknowledgements-indigenous-1.4175136

Visited 11 October 2018

CBC journalist Ramna Shahzad provides an overview of land acknowledgements, a tradition “that many Indigenous people say marks a small but essential step toward reconciliation” as they become more commonplace across Canada. Shazad interviews Alison Norman, a Trent University researcher and Ontario Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation research adviser, who says that land acknowledgements are not enough, but they are the start of a personalized learning process which leads to questions about the people referenced in them and the history of the land.

POST 4 – Canada’s Impossible Acknowledgement – David Loti

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/canadas-impossible-acknowledgment

Visited 4 October 2018

Stephen Marche argues that in the time since Justin Trudeau’s election with “great gusts of hope that we might finally confront the horror of our history . . . the process of reconciliation between Canada and its First Nations has stalled.” However land acknowledgements have spread from elementary schools to hockey arenas, and land “[acknowledgments force] individuals and institutions to ask a basic, nightmarish question: Whose land are we on?” Marche contests land acknowledgements because their wording is passive, useless, jargon written to “express a sentiment without . . . feeling it.”

POST 5 – Blue & Goldcast – Episode 1: Indigenous Ways of Knowing – David Loti

http://blueandgoldcast.com/

Visited 19 September 2018

President Ono’s inaugural podcast to tell UBC’s story is on the topic of Indigeneity and UBC.

Some of the interesting highlights are:

“We are fortunate to be on this land. Uh, we owe it to the Musqueam people, uh the Musqueam people have been wonderful uh working with us and so we also as an institution need to give back to the Musqueam.” — President Ono

“We are all Indigenous people from somewhere.” — Eduardo Jovel

“How can we as a university recognize different types of of knowledge product?” — Jennifer Gardy

It was interesting that originally the land acknowledgement in the episode description was as follows:

“We’d like to acknowledge that the UBC campus sits on the traditional, ancestral, and unseeded [sic] territory of the Musqueam people.” Unseeded was corrected on 20 September 2018, but it is perhaps indicative that unceded is a term that few people understand.

POST 4 – Musqueam & UBC – Aboriginal Portal – David Loti

http://aboriginal.ubc.ca/community-youth/%20musqueam-and-ubc/?login

Visited 6 September 2018

Speaking on the land acknowledgement of the Musqueam Territory, Linc Kessler says, “People don’t always understand why we do this and some have indicated a concern that this acknowledgement may be more nominal than indicative of a deeper commitment.” Who are the parties expressing this concern?

 

POST 3 – What is a land acknowledgement? – David Loti

https://students.ubc.ca/ubclife/what-land-acknowledgement

Visited 6 September 2018

This site introduces the land acknowledgement at UBC, stating that “this land acknowledgement has become common practice at University events, business meetings, and in official documents” but it is not “just a formality.” The site defines traditional, ancestral, and unceded, and what most strikes me about this statement is the acknowledgement of unceded—that UBC is built on “land that was not turned over to the Crown by a treaty or other agreement”—and the silence of anything else. It feels like a person standing before a judge saying, “Your Honour, I admit that the $2,000,000 piece of land on which I built my house I acquired from Bob without asking Bob for it.” There is no apology. There is no offer to give the land back or purchase it at a fair price. It is simply an acknowledgement of guilt: “Yep. I took it.” Is unceded a legal euphemism for stolen?