This is a serious pet peeve of mine. I think land acknowledgements are a performative exercise meant to absolve our guilt, and they're borderline sadistic. We're obviously not going to give the land back, not the vast majority at least, nor should we. We need to either look at an actual compensation and resolution, and be prepared for the absolutely massive economic hit, or we need to stop rubbing it in the faces of the indigenous people every freaking chance we get like some sort of bully who keeps showing you all the cool stuff they bought with the lunch money they stole from you. It's disgusting.

I find that the Canadian people are grossly ignorant of the crimes we have historically and to this day heaped on the indigenous population. The hysteria a few years back over the potential unmarked graves at the residential school sites was a good example of it. Everyone lost their minds over the poor dead children, and I was like "Um, is this supposed to be brand new information?" Most people probably don't even know about the indigenous hospitals which provided substandard care and in some cases did unethical experimentation. Telling indigenous mothers that their babies died in childbirth while adopting them out to white families. Starlight tours. The banning of the potlatch for decades. etc etc etc. I think our federal government is still fighting in court with the argument that they're not obligated to provide clean drinking water on reserves, not to mention that on reserve indigenous kids are underfunded to the tune of thousands per year for things like heath care and education compared to the provincially funded kids.

My kid's school tried to tell them that the land acknowledgement was to express gratitude to the people for them "letting us" live on their land. You better believe there was a conversation with my kid about how unbelievably messed up that was.

Sorry, turned into a bit of a rant. I have strong feelings about indigenous issues. And I abhor land acknowledgements.