Land acknowledgement

A land acknowledgement or territorial acknowledgement is a formal statement that acknowledges the original Indigenous Peoples of the land, spoken at the beginning of public events. The custom of land acknowledgement is a traditional practice that dates back centuries in many Indigenous cultures.

Australia
In Australia, the Welcome to Country or Acknowledgement of Country is a ritual performed which is intended to highlight the cultural significance of the surrounding area to a particular Aboriginal Australian or Torres Strait Islander clan or language group. It has been performed since the 1970s, becoming more common since the early 2000s. Significantly, a Welcome to Country must be performed by a Traditional Owner/Custodian of the land that you are currently on. It is important as a rejection of the colonial idea of terra nullius, which was overturned by the Mabo decision in 1992.

Canada
In Canada, land acknowledgments became more popular after the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission report (which argued that the country's Indian residential school system had amounted to cultural genocide) and the election of a Liberal majority led by Justin Trudeau that same year. By 2019, they were a regular practice at events including National Hockey League games, ballet performances, and parliament meetings.

United States
In the United States, the practice of land acknowledgments has been gaining momentum as well. Early adopters included arts institutions, museums, institutions of higher education, non-profit organizations, local governments, and churches. After the 2020 Oscar land acknowledgment statement by Taika Waititi, the practice has received more attention, both positively and negatively. Native Governance Center has resources on the topic of land acknowledgment, as do a number of sites geared toward colleges and universities.

New Zealand
In New Zealand, land acknowledgments recognize the indigenous Māori and Moriori peoples. Māori words are commonly used in greetings of public speakers, acknowledgments of publications, and legislation to recognize their presence. Usage of Māori place names before English place names similarly acknowledges Māori relations with the place. In 2022, Te Pati Māori delivered a petition with 70,000 signatures to the New Zealand Parliament which called to change the country's official name to its Māori name, Aotearoa.

Criticism
Land acknowledgements have been criticized by both conservatives, who have described them as excesses of political correctness, and by those on the political left, who have expressed concerns that land acknowledgements amount to empty gestures that avoid addressing the issues of Indigenous communities in context. Ensuring the factual accuracy of acknowledgments can be difficult due to problems like conflicting land claims or unrecorded land exchanges between Indigenous nations.

Graeme Wood has argued that a land acknowledgement delivered in any context besides the actual return of land is nothing more than a "highwayman's receipt", "moral exhibitionism", and "a counterfeit version of respect", and that such statements should be limited to occasions "that preserve their dignity and power". To argue that genuine reconciliation requires the return of stolen land, Cutcha Risling Baldy has drawn an analogy between a land acknowledgement and a thief who steals a laptop, refuses to give it back to the true owner, and then attaches a plaque to publicly admit his crime, so that every time he uses the laptop in public, everyone will know that it used to be the victim's computer—which is cold comfort to the victim. Kevin Gover has noted how such statements can be inadvertently disempowering towards the very peoples to whom they are supposedly offered as a gesture of respect, by publicly highlighting the involuntary absence of those peoples from their traditional lands. However, Baldy has also pointed out that land acknowledgements can be used in positive ways short of accompanying the return of land, such as highlighting specific, concrete actions the audience can take to assist Indigenous Peoples.