Land Acknowledgements are one small, but foundational, act of recognizing Indigenous rights and connecting your life and work to your responsibly and intended relationship to Indigenous rights, land and peoples. At Algonquin College it has become common practice to give a land acknowledgement at the start of an event or at the beginning of the semester and one can now be found in our course outlines for students to consider.

So, how do we go beyond the symbolic act of reading a land acknowledgement and begin living it?

What does it mean to be working and living on Algonquin territory?

What rights, relationships and responsibilities should you be aware of?

How does this connect to your own life and your work at the college?

How might you encourage your colleagues and students to work “in relationship” with Indigenous peoples and “all our relations”?

These are some of the considerations we will explore in this session that will ultimately help you to better understand your own relationship to land acknowledgements and to conceptualize and craft a land acknowledgement you will be confident in sharing.