A Reflection on Current Processes

Jérôme Melançon: To conclude on what we are doing here: we wanted to address what it is that we just did with these talks and what is a living land acknowledgement. It is partly that we realized throughout the talks, and as we thought about the format that we would give to these talks, that we didn’t know what we were doing or what we really meant by “living land acknowledgement.” We knew what we didn’t want to do. This is partly what our introductory discussion sought to do: to explain the problems with land acknowledgements.

Emily Grafton: We saw a real gap between our method and our methodology. We had all of these components to our methodology that we thought important to land acknowledgements. But when we put them into practice, again, we were just often coming down to one to three sentence land acknowledgements. We really wanted to better embody a land acknowledgement, hence the living land acknowledgement. And as Jérôme mentioned earlier in the introduction, in preparation for a conference that we were holding here, we wanted to better develop our own practice around land acknowledgements. And thus we created this series.

Jérôme: It’s important to note that the way in which we did and completed this project is very specific to what we are doing. We have people from all over Canada and beyond coming to Regina, or accessing and participating at a distance and virtually as well in a Series of events,  to talk about settler colonialism. They wanted to have a chance to learn about settler colonialism and what it’s destroying, here, because we’re talking about it here, even though there will be others talking about it in other places.

Every kind of acknowledgement or living land acknowledgement that others might want to do would have to address what it is that they are doing. It would not necessarily take this specific format. It’s important to keep in mind that this type of land acknowledgement might not work for our university itself, or for other institutions here. There just is not time to sit together and talk at every meeting or every public event, although taking some time might be constructive and helpful in many contexts. It may also be helpful for land acknowledgements to take different forms like an ongoing series of talks and discussions that are held with protocol, with somebody with whom there is an exchange, who is not just a speaker. And to do this not only online. There will be different ways of doing this depending on who is doing it, and who is involved. Then when the actual territory acknowledgement statements are read, it becomes possible to refer back to that and evolve, along with ongoing conversations with people who have this knowledge of relation too.

Emily: Yes, that’s absolutely it for me. The takeaway for the institution is that there be ongoing processes as opposed to trying to implement this at the meeting or at the beginning of every event because it’s just not practical in terms of time, but it speaks to and covers some of the ethical challenges that exist with territorial acknowledgements or land acknowledgements. It also pushes the institution towards that ongoing engagement with knowledge keepers around land. And thus hopefully the conclusion, and every evolving land acknowledgement for the institution, will be that there is a need for ongoing education for the folks within the institution who use the land acknowledgement and who essentially embody it through practice.

Jérôme: This specific of a series of talks can be useful to our institution in addition to other institutions, mostly on the Prairies, and not only to people who are coming to this event as well. I hope to use it in the future: it’s there. And that’s part of what makes it living, that it’s available and that it can be built upon. That we can add to it. First, we can add different material, more talks if and as we need to, and others can do as well. Also by making it available freely online, we are giving it as a gift to those we are inviting to learn here.

Emily: Yes, and hopefully with that sort of evolution of land acknowledgements, it deepens perhaps those Indigenous protocols that are connected in some ways to land acknowledgements. Also, perhaps it cultivates ideas around decolonization that can be carried into the practices within the institution.

Ethical and Political Implications of a Living Land Acknowledgement

Jérôme: Another thing we have wondered about is: what does this practice of a living land acknowledgement entail ethically or politically.

Emily: I think the living land acknowledgement is really about animating the experience on the land. It’s really about bringing to life what Indigenous knowledge systems mean in terms of their relationships to land. This is what was so integral with making the selections that we made to our living land acknowledgement series: having those different voices to demonstrate different ways to animate relationship to land.

Jérôme: There are also a few things that we have to keep in mind. This is collective work. No one can individually acknowledge the land or peoples. What we are supposed to acknowledge goes back to a larger experience. There is not one relationship to the land. There is no one single meaning that the land can have. There is not one relationship, one single way to be with other beings, human or otherwise.

Emily: Towards that, one of the things that has become clear to me in this process is that a living land acknowledgement exposes the things that are missing within written land acknowledgements. How do we think about that and how do we act upon that when we start to identify what is missing?

Jérôme: Absolutely. It’s an act in itself, it might be an ethical act. When we make a statement about the land, we are at the middle point between what we have learned and done so far and what we intend to learn and do in the future.

And we are recording this concluding discussion on the day after the Pope has apologized for residential schools in Canada. Again, the standard complexity is shifting a little bit towards institutions, but we do not know what the future of that apology, that statement will be, because there is a larger statement in making the apology than the words the Pope has shared. This is not the time or the place, but I think that it will be interesting to study as well where he was coming from in making the apology, where the Church has come from, and where the Church is going with this. The ethnical meaning of those statements and apologies is very much tied to their model. We can only guess at people’s intentions. But a statement – to acknowledge the land or to apologize – should be a way to embody a relationship, embody ideals, ideas, values. I am not saying that we have been perfect and that we will remain perfect. But we do have to begin by recognizing what we have done in the hope to go further.

Emily: That conceptualization of being in the middle is so important, because we don’t know – and we’ve spoken about this before – we don’t know the impact of a land acknowledgement. We can see the ways that they have fallen flat thus far, but we don’t know how these kinds of acknowledging and honoring land and Indigenous sovereignty might shape future generations or shape future relations across non-indigenous and indigenous relations. That’s an integral thing, understanding this middle point in this whole process.

Jérôme: Yes: a land acknowledgement, if it’s done in a living way, can be an act itself – if we prepare for it, and if we follow up on it, we’re able to think about the kind of actions we want to be performing; how we want to perform them with, who we can count on, who we can join. It’s also a way of asserting value and convincing others of those values. Which is often not the case if you are only reading a statement that has been prepared for you. It can also bring us to consider what needs to change in our behaviour, and the people with whom we choose to gather, the reasons why we gather together. To think about what change is necessary, what structures, what institutions have to be transformed so that these statements actually have a meaning.

Emily: Yes, because what we’re doing is continuing to operate within a colonial institution. The institution doesn’t change. It’s still a colonial system, that structure is intact. And would that structure change through a living land acknowledgement? Unlikely. But does the living land acknowledgement create some sort of idea to instigate an action that follows and leads to change? Potentially.

Acknowledging the Land, Relating to the Land

Emily: One of the things that we have been thinking about, when we think about a living land acknowledgement is: does it shift our own relationship to land? How do we relate to land – even just conceptually speaking?

Jérôme: Yes. This is a starting point. We are not going to be solving everything right here. I think the first thing is to situate ourselves. This is not something we have to share with other continuously. We do not need to say it every time we open a meeting, I do not need to state that I am a settler, in a manner where I am going to guilt trip myself, and hurt myself. It is more a matter of knowing where I am speaking from, where I am speaking specifically. Beginning with this consciousness that we are in relation, regardless of what individualism might teach me, regardless of where my desire to be left alone, to not be responsible for things that I can control, lead me – regardless of any of that, of what might feel like a burden. This relation to other people, to land, to other beings, makes it that it is good to be there, regardless of whether I want it to be or not.

Emily: I think this word, individualism, is really important when we think about land acknowledgements. Because here, at the University of Regina, we say we are in Treaty 4, and Treaty 4 is a large expanse of land, but we are actually in the City of Regina. And this sort of urban experience, I think, is really important for us to think about when we are thinking about how we relate to the land. We are very much centred within this machine of capitalism and urbanization. I myself just returned yesterday from camping up at Batoche for the annual Back to Batoche celebration. That experience of leaving the forest and returning to urban centers is a very jarring experience. So when we are thinking about how we related to land, we have to include that component of urbanization and that reality of this capitalist colonial system in which we are operating. We are not just breaking down small barriers. We are potentially thinking through how we overhaul a massive system, a massive entreprise built upon oppressing Indigenous folks for profit. And so we can never overcome that individually. How do we bring that into how we relate to land? When we do land acknowledgements, we are thinking about land, but we are also within these walls, which are more oppressive than we really encapsulate within our land acknowledgements.

Jérôme: There’s so much that cuts us off from the land. When it is minus 45 or plus 45 degrees – and it is not going to get better in any way since we are messing with our climate and the land – we do need shelters and some protections. It is convenient to have habitations of the sort that we have at present, but having reminders and spending time on the land is also necessary. This land might be in urban areas as well, this is not to romanticize access to land that is far away from cities, because on the one hand urban land is also land that has been cut off from the rest of the land by the state, and on the other hand Indigenous peoples have often been pushed out of national parks, provincial parks, to keep them pristine and free of human interaction, which is far from the way that Indigenous people have lived on the land. But also, not everybody has the capacity to go out on the land. So it can be a great opportunity. I don’t camp, but I spend time out by Meadow Lake Provincial Park, and for a short while I live a different kind of life, spend more time outside of course. Hopefully there are ways for that to be offered to more people. At the same time, we need to be able to continue to be close to the land around where we happen to be in that moment.

Another aspect of shifting this relationship to land and beings is to recognize care, the need for care, and all the ways in which everything and everyone around us to some degree does care for us, takes care of us, is offering something to us, while expressing and showing a need for care as well. We can perhaps call this empathy, but the reality goes further. It is not just feeling what others are feeling, or feeling for other people. It is recognizing when others are offering, when they are giving, when we are taking and when others are asking to take. Because we are always taking, and being caring.

Emily: Indigenization, as it is practiced within institutions, has really demonstrated this give-and-take and the way that it is valued or devalued, and often devalued when it is a giving from Indigenous peoples. There is a call there to recognize that gift, that gift making, that gift giving that occurs within these kinds of Western institutions that can really ultimately contribute towards reconciliation in various ways – when we have that element of empathy or recognition of the gift that is present.

Jérôme: I think understanding interdependence as well is a part of that reflection. Our dependence, in the first place, our weakness or vulnerability, the fact that no matter how we represent it, no matter what ideologies teach us, we do depend on other people, on other peoples, on non-human animal peoples, on vegetation on the land in general (and I’ve heard others refer to plant peoples too). We mutually affect each other. Without that recognition of interdependence we cannot be responsible, we cannot be accountable, we cannot have any kind of values and practices that allow us to maintain good relations, which is the way to be responsible. We cannot see those who call out, call us out, call us in, or help us work through our attempts at making good relations – which is a way to be accountable.

An Attempt at Defining Living Land Acknowledgements

Emily: Let’s recap. A living land acknowledgement is fostered by knowledge from collective lived experiences, that have collective components as well as individual in the sense that we are always bringing our authentic self to it, and we are always recognizing the ways in which we change in relation to land and in relation to each other. It’s interdependence. There is a recognition of the mutual dependencies and exchanges that occur amongst folks and amongst folks or people and land.

Jérôme: Yes, I’d that addresses openly the relationship between the land and the Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples who are making the acknowledgement in relation to their reasons for gathering. It addresses those who are present; it speaks to people. It’s an address. It brings those who are present into an active – or passive – position to question their relationship to land, to the Indigenous peoples who never ceded or surrendered the land. And it is turned towards something that will be done in common.

Emily: And that questioning, that turning towards something can have decolonial value when it becomes something that is embodied, something that instigates a later action. It can also have Indigenous protocols built within it, depending on the person speaking the address.

Jérôme: Part of why I like these talks we’ve organized and these semi prepared discussions we have had together and with our guests, is that this reflection cannot be written down once and for all. It doesn’t have to perfect, and it cannot be perfect. There are things we have each said in these exchanges that were not right, not quite correct. These mistakes we all make are normal. Treaties work in the same way. When Indigenous peoples made treaties, they always had moments of gathering to air grievances and say: you did not quite show up here, you did not quite honour the treaty this way or that way, then they kept it going. It’s normal, people will mess up. We have messed up. We have corrected ourselves, we have not written a text or a book for instance, as we might also have done with the transcriptions, which may or may not have carried that trace and our embodied transformation that we are undergoing as we are speaking. Texts give the impression of perfection, of simplicity, of the definitive. And a living land acknowledgement can’t be that, because then it wouldn’t be alive.

Acknowledgements, Again

Emily: With that, we want to thank you for joining us. We want to thank you for watching our series. We hope that you have enjoyed and learned from the speakers as we have. And we also want to recognize the funding that we have received, that was provided to us for this series, predominantly from SSHRC, but we also have many community partners that have been assisting this large project. And you’ll find them attached at the bottom of this page.

Jérôme: We also thank the Office of Indigenous Engagement of the University of Regina for the space that we have used for the two discussions, the introduction and conclusion to this resource. And thank you, Emily.

Emily: Thank you Jerome.