In Canada, it’s common practice to give a Land Acknowledgment at public meetings, in classrooms, and in media broadcasts. This acknowledgment is a formal statement recognizing the Indigenous peoples who have lived and continue to live on the land and their traditional territories.
However, two women from Circles for Reconciliation are urging a deeper reckoning with what those words truly mean and to make the practice go beyond simply lip service. Bonnie Lowen and Grace Shedler, who have spent years walking alongside one another in reconciliation work, say land acknowledgements risk becoming hollow rituals when treated as a checklist rather than a relationship.
“We’re not here to get it right,” Lowen said. “We’re here to step into a relationship and be shaped by it.”
Lowen describes her own journey with land acknowledgement as a shift away from reading a script out of fear of making mistakes, toward understanding treaties as living agreements rooted in reciprocity, respect, and renewal and drawing on Anishinaabe teachings and her relationship with Shedler.
“A treaty person lives a life of reciprocity,” she explained. “We are people through other people, through the land, through all beings.”
When she begins her acknowledgments, she speaks of the first treaty as an exchange between the sun and the earth, each dependent on the other, neither dominant.
For Shedler, who has heard land acknowledgements increasingly featured on the news since 2015, the concern is what comes after the words. “I still wonder where they’re going with it. What does it mean to them? And what are they doing about it?”
She pointed to ongoing environmental harm, including pollution in the Red and Nelson Rivers, as evidence that acknowledgement without action rings false. “I’d like to hear what you’re doing about the filthy water,” Shedler said. “Can anything be done? I don’t know, but I want to hear [and see] the effort.”
Both women explain that land acknowledgements should be rooted in humility and curiosity. Lowen cautions against what she calls a “colonized version” of and acknowledgement, the ones that feel more like a script than something that comes from respect and the heart. “If it becomes a little prize you check off, it completely misses the mark.” Her own journey continued to be guided by those around her. “What I’ve heard from Grace. Like what [she’s] given to me. What I’ve seen is that it starts with a question like, ‘be curious about,’ or ‘ask wonder.’ Like how? How do I belong inside of this land?”
Other questions she asks are:
- What is my responsibility as a treaty person?
- What do I truly know about the Nations I name, their languages, histories, ceremonies, and present‑day realities?
“Maybe it’s better to live inside the humility of the question than the certainty of the answer,” Lowen said.
Shedler said what is most important is listening to the land, and the knowledge it can bring. “You need to listen to the land. You need to listen to what it’s telling you. That you need to listen as much as you can yourself. You go outside, and you see,” she said.
She describes going to the land for clarity, watching migrating geese, walking in forests, and sensing the presence of ancestors. “We used to hang out in the forest quite a bit when we were children. And even as adults, I mean, we did a bit, but sometimes when you’re walking through the forest and then all of a sudden you get the smell, right, there’s a smell, and you can’t capture that smell again. You can’t find it again. I’m sure everybody has experienced that.”
At a time marked by political division, an environmental crisis, and, as both women describe, growing fear and greed, they see land acknowledgement as a potential bridge rather than a sacred conversation that reminds people they are neighbours first.
– Ryan Funk, U Multicultural
