Your Land Acknowledgment Is Not Enough

Joseph Pierce contributed an essay in the anthology STOLEN GENERATIONS: Survivors of the Indian Adoption Projects and 60s Scoop: Book 3 in the Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects book series.

his new op-ed

Land acknowledgment without action is an empty gesture, exculpatory and self-serving.

by
Joseph Pierce October 12, 2022

A
protester at the Whitney Museum during the "Nine Weeks of Art and
Action." Taken with permission on May 17, 2019. (photo Hakim
Bishara/Hyperallergic)

You’ve probably heard one. You may have helped craft one. A land
acknowledgment is quickly becoming de rigueur among mainstream cultural
and arts institutions. An official will stand at a podium and announce: This building is situated on the unceded land of the XYZ people. As if those people are not still here. As if this all happened in the past. He will breathe deeply and continue: We pay homage to the original stewards of these lands. The audience will nod in agreement. As if homage were the same as returning stolen land.

A land acknowledgment is not enough.

Museums that once stole Indigenous bones now celebrate Indigenous
Peoples’ Day. Organizations that have never hired an Indigenous person
now admit the impact of Indigenous genocide through social media.
Land-grant universities scramble to draft statements about their
historical ties to fraudulent treaties and pilfered graves. Indeed,
these are challenging times for institutions trying to do right by
Indigenous peoples.

Some institutions will seek the input of an Indigenous scholar or
perhaps a community. They will feel contented and “diverse” because of
this input. They want a decolonial to-do list. But what we have are
questions: What changes when an institution publishes a land
acknowledgment? What material, tangible changes are enacted?

Without action, without structural change, acknowledging stolen land is what Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang call a “settler move to innocence.” Institutions are not innocent. Settlers are not innocent.

The problem with land acknowledgments is that they are almost never
followed by meaningful action. Acknowledgment without action is an empty
gesture, exculpatory and self-serving. What is more, such gestures
shift the onus of action back onto Indigenous people, who neither asked
for an apology nor have the ability to forgive on behalf of the land
that has been stolen and desecrated. It is not my place to forgive on
behalf of the land.

A land acknowledgment is not enough.

This is what settler institutions do not understand: Land does not
require that you confirm it exists, but that you reciprocate the care it
has given you. Land is not asking for acknowledgment. It is asking to
be returned to itself. It is asking to be heard and cared for and
attended to. It is asking to be free.

Land is not an object, not a thing. Land does not require recognition. It requires care. It requires presence.

Land is a gift, a relative, a body that sustains other bodies. And if
the land is our relative, then we cannot simply acknowledge it as land.
We must understand what our responsibilities are to the land as our
kin. We must engage in a reciprocal relationship with the land. Land is —
in its animate multiplicities — an ongoing enactment of reciprocity.

A land acknowledgment is not enough.

To engage with the land on the land’s terms is an act of reciprocity.
Reciprocity, rather than recognition, is what the land requires because
that is what it has already given. Are you not alive, breathing,
because of this land?

The land exists regardless of settler acknowledgment, which can only
ever be the first step toward meaningful action. Next steps involve
building relationships with that land as if it were your kin. Because it
is.