MacEwan professor urges personal approach to land acknowledgments
How do we avoid “performative” land acknowledgements?
A MacEwan University professor is encouraging people to write their own land acknowledgements, saying institutional statements often become routine readings with little personal reflection.
Lois Edge is an assistant professor specializing in Indigenous pedagogy, or “Indigegogy,” which represents the art, science, or profession of teaching in Indigenous culture.
Some of Edge’s introductory Indigenous studies classes task students with creating their own land acknowledgements. They visit Edmonton’s river valley, which Edge said gives students the opportunity to contemplate their own lived experiences and relationships to the land and water. The results are “amazing,” she said.
Land acknowledgements are intended to recognize Indigenous peoples and their relationships with their ancestral land, yet sentiments surrounding the acknowledgements remain mixed, with some critics deeming them “performative.”
Edge, a member of the Northwest Territories Métis Nation, prefers the term “rote” over “performative.” She said “if you’ve ever been in an institutional gathering, whoever reads the land acknowledgement, it’s not performative. It’s usually a very bored, monotone, ‘let’s get this over with’ as part of protocol.”
Kaila Dahmer, a student at MacEwan University, said that land acknowledgements are a way for her to learn and understand Indigenous perspectives as a non-Indigenous person. “I won’t ever understand the connection to the land and exactly what was taken from them.”
Ethan Gamache, a Métis MacEwan student, said he supports land acknowledgements but wants greater emphasis on understanding the harm done to Indigenous peoples.
Edge said that those who feel that acknowledgements are performative should, “write your own. Take some time and actually sit down and think about it.”
“The majority of people have not had the privilege of accessing foundational knowledge about Indigenous peoples, and in the not knowing comes fear, reluctance, resistance, rejection, to be non-participatory, and that’s just the gentler side of that,” she said.
For Edge, making acknowledgements meaningful requires people to reflect on their own relationships with the land rather than simply reading an institutional statement.
Meaning “has to come from within,” she said.
