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Land Acknowledgements

What are Land Acknowledgements?
A Land Acknowledgement or Land Recognition is a formal statement, often given orally at
the beginning of organized events, celebrations, or activities. It recognizes, respects, and
affirms that there is an irreducible and ongoing relationship between Indigenous people and
the Land. Land Acknowledgements are especially important in contemporary nation-states,
like the US and Canada, in which the political structures are based on settler-colonialism
and the expropriation of Lands from Indigenous peoples. Land Acknowledgements or Land
Recognitions serve to illuminate ongoing Indigenous presence, as well as recognize and
counter settler-colonial legacies of violence and Land expropriation.

Land Acknowledgements are a Responsibility.
We respect the desire to recognize the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary stewards
of the Land. However, we ask that when offering a Land Acknowledgement, remember that
these Acknowledgements must be preceded by relationships with living Indigenous people,
communities, and nations. This declaration must then be followed with ongoing commitments
to these same communities. Land Acknowledgements are a responsibility.

Provisional Land Acknowledgement

We collectively acknowledge that the Great Lakes area occupies the ancestral, traditional,
and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa,
and Potawatomi peoples. In particular, the Greater Lansing area resides on Land ceded in the
1819 Treaty of Saginaw. We recognize, support, and advocate for the sovereignty of Michigan’s
twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan,
for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly
removed from their Homelands. By offering this Land Acknowledgement, we affirm Indigenous
sovereignty and will work to hold ourselves more accountable to the needs of American Indian
and Indigenous peoples. We further recognize the ongoing relationship of dependence upon,
and respect for, all living beings of earth, sky, and water. In offering this land acknowledgment,
we affirm Indigenous sovereignty, history, and experiences.”

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