Tag Archives: stephen marche

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.”