The Problem With Land Acknowledgments
Last month, I sat through a college hockey game in Colorado Springs where the announcer spent three minutes reading a carefully crafted land acknowledgement. The crowd nodded along. Then everyone went back to watching the game.
Nothing changed and nothing was supposed to.
A growing number of Native people can’t stand land acknowledgements. In 2021, the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists requested that the American Anthropological Association formally pause all land acknowledgements and related welcoming rituals, citing concerns that these statements had become “highly performative, feel-good empty gestures.” Kevin Gover, a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and undersecretary for museums and culture at the Smithsonian Institution, put it more bluntly in an interview with NPR: “If I hear a land acknowledgment, part of what I’m hearing is, ‘There used to be Indians here. But now they’re gone. Isn’t that a shame?’”
I share that frustration.
Performance Without Consequences
The problem isn’t acknowledging Native land. The problem is what happens after. Which is, almost always, nothing.
Land acknowledgements have become the thoughts-and-prayers of progressive institutions: a symbolic gesture that costs nothing, demands nothing, and allows institutions to appear virtuous while the dispossession continues.
When a university administrator intones that their campus sits on “the traditional, unceded territory” of a particular tribe, the subtext is clear. We know this land was stolen. We’re benefiting from that theft. We’re going to keep benefiting. But we feel bad about it.
The gesture amounts to a confession without any level of penance.
The Unpaid Labor Problem
Non-Native organizations routinely ask Native people to craft, edit, or approve land acknowledgement statements. Usually without compensation.
Universities, corporations, and nonprofits expect Native people to volunteer time helping institutions manage their public image. Native communities already carry the weight of intergenerational trauma, language loss, and systemic discrimination. Adding unpaid consulting to that load extracts labor from the communities these statements claim to honor.
In my experience, and in the view of many Native people who sit through these ceremonies, the requests focus obsessively on wording: pronunciation, geographic boundaries, proper terminology. Questions about restitution or land return rarely come up.
Undermining Sovereignty
Land acknowledgements often do something worse than empty performance. They undermine tribal sovereignty.
Many describe Native peoples as “stewards” or “caretakers” of the land, language that implies we never truly owned it. That framing is manifest destiny in progressive clothing.
The finality compounds the problem. These statements acknowledge past ownership while cementing present dispossession. Ongoing treaty violations, water rights battles, and struggles against extractive industries on tribal land go unmentioned. The acknowledgement becomes a historical marker, treating colonization as concluded rather than continuing.
Material Support
Supporting Native peoples requires moving past wording debates toward harder questions.
What concrete actions follow the acknowledgement? Actions already taken, not just promised.
For institutions built on stolen land and funded by stolen Native wealth, the demands are straightforward. Universities should offer free tuition for Native students and hire Native faculty in positions with actual authority. Corporations operating on tribal territory should establish voluntary land tax programs, direct procurement to Native-owned businesses, and advocate publicly for tribal rights. Both should provide material support for tribal sovereignty, not just verbal recognition of it.
For individuals, the bar is lower but still requires action: recurring financial contributions to tribal nations or Native-led organizations, presence at Native-led protests, and support for land-back initiatives.
An Accountability Model
A land acknowledgement that functions as intended should create discomfort. It should demand action beyond historical description.
The Abiayala Sovereign Nations Citizens’ Collective at UNC-Chapel Hill provides one model. Their land and labor acknowledgement states that the university was “chartered in 1789 as an institution designed to educate and further the careers of White men” and “founded as an institution of White supremacy on unceded lands.” The statement specifies revenue the university extracted from Cherokee and Chickasaw land. It demands that the university undertake substantial actions to reconfigure itself as an anti-racist and anti-colonial institution.
That’s accountability. The discomfort is the point.
What Follows?
If you can recite a land acknowledgement and continue your day unchanged, the acknowledgement failed. I’ve stopped participating in most land acknowledgement ceremonies. Watching non-Native institutions congratulate themselves for minimal effort while material conditions remain unchanged serves no one.
Awareness was never enough. For anyone delivering a land acknowledgement: What specific action follows?
What land acknowledgements have you encountered that led to real institutional change, or that struck you as hollow? I’m collecting examples from different institutions and regions.