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WHAT IS A LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT?
Land Acknowledgments are short, formal statements that name and recognize the Indigenous peoples who lived on, used, or stewarded a particular area before it became part of a modern state, city, campus, or institution.
Basic Definition
A land acknowledgment (also called a territorial acknowledgment) typically identifies specific Indigenous nations or tribes associated with the land where the event or institution is located.
Verbiage often describes them as “original inhabitants,” “traditional stewards,” or “First Peoples,” and notes an ongoing relationship between those communities and the land, not only a historical one.
In practice, these statements may appear as a brief paragraph spoken by a host before a lecture, performance, or meeting, or as a fixed text on an institution’s website and printed materials.
Where and How They Are Used
The modern custom took shape in countries with strong public debates about Indigenous dispossession, including Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, and then spread into the United States more recently.
By the early 2020s, many North American institutions—universities, museums, arts organizations, nonprofits, churches, and some local governments—had adopted land acknowledgments in events, on websites, or in policy documents.
Purposes, Motivations, & Critiques
Supporters describe land acknowledgments as a way to counter “erasure” of Indigenous histories and to remind audiences that present‑day institutions sit on lands shaped by earlier dispossession.
Supporters feel these statements are supposed to prompt reflection and lead to concrete commitments—such as partnerships, policy changes, or support for Indigenous students and communities—rather than existing as stand‑alone gestures.
Critics, including some Indigenous scholars and commentators, argue that when acknowledgments become rote or purely symbolic, they risk functioning as “empty gestures” or performative signaling that substitutes for substantive action.
Land acknowledgments function as a symbolic ritual to signal an awareness of history without, by themselves, resolving any of the underlying political or legal questions they reference.
Here is a video of the Land Acknowledgment at the start of the San Diego Unified School District governing board meeting (Nov. 18, 2025):
