5 Step Guide
The purpose of this guide is to provide guidance for speakers, business leaders, community organizers, teachers, and facilitators who want to thoughtfully recognize the Indigenous Nations upon whose territory they are working or holding events.
This step-by-step guide outlines key considerations and provides reflection questions to take your land acknowledgement from a stiff recitation to a in-the-moment, sincere and heartfelt moment of reflection and commitment.
You are hosting a gathering, opening a meeting, or adding a line to your email to acknowledge the Indigenous lands on which you are working.
You've heard cringe-worthy land acknowledgments that sound like dry recitations. You want to do something that is sincere and actually meaningful.
But how?
To thoughtfully prepare an in-depth acknowledgement requires time and care. Though an important step towards reconciliation, land acknowledgements too often become token gestures. They are not meant to be static, scripted statements that every person must recite in exactly the same way. Instead, territorial acknowledgments are expressions of relationship.
A good land acknowledgement recognizes not just the Nation whose territory you are on, but describes your understanding of how relationships have been damaged, and what your commitments are to do the work of repair.
This guide shows you how to make land acknowledgments into tools that inspire, challenge, and motivate listeners, taking something that could be a “box-ticking” exercise towards a commitment to put reconciliation into action.
