The website native-land.ca offers excellent ideas for developing and extending land acknowledgments, including a helpful map so students can learn about the nations who have called this land home.

Many instructors deliver an acknowledgment at the beginning of their first class; others offer one at the beginning of every class. Some have tasked a student or students with the responsibility to deliver this acknowledgment in each class, making it an unofficial but meaningful assignment for students to learn about the history and present of Indigenous relations to the land. There are many ways to incorporate land acknowledgments into classrooms. Ask colleagues for ideas if you are stuck.

Depending on the level of your students and the general makeup of your class, you may need to explain key ideas or terms in the acknowledgment. Students who did not grow up learning this history may be unfamiliar with terms like “unceded” or “treaty”; some may not understand that the Indigenous peoples of Canada are made up of many nations, each with their own language, history and culture. In this way, the land acknowledgment can be a springboard to important discussions and learning.

Preferred Form

Emily Carr University is situated on unceded, traditional and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.

Short Form

ECU is situated on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories.

Additional resources:

• Guidelines for Indigenous style
• Writing about Indigenous peoples

Feel free to use or adapt the model below for your own classes, shared by Justin Langlois, Associate Vice-President Research + Dean of Graduate Studies.

I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered here today on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. Unceded means that this land was never surrendered, relinquished or handed over in any way.

Today, most of B.C. remains unceded sovereign Native lands, over which neither the Canadian nor B.C. governments have the legal or moral authority to govern. For those of us who are settlers on this land, I hope that our words and actions today can help to foster a better understanding of how we can support Indigenous sovereignty and work to create new relationships with the Original Peoples of this land, based on honour and respect.

• The Aboriginal Gathering Place at ECU has created this guide to territorial acknowledgments.
• The website Native Lands provides a map listing many nations in B.C., Canada and around the world: input any address to determine the appropriate nations to acknowledge in your territorial acknowledgment.
• The Canadian Association of University Teachers collected sample territorial acknowledgements from institutions across Canada.
• The following book is available from the ECU Library: Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education.
• The library at Concordia University has prepared this comprehensive resource, Indigenous educational resources for faculty and students, to help faculty understand and respond to the 94 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
• The What I Learned in Class Today: Aboriginal Issues in the Classroom project from First Nations Studies at UBC created this 20-minute video which is valuable viewing for faculty and students alike.
• The Interdisciplinary Initiative in Applied Indigenous Scholarship at Western University recently produced this short video: What I wish my professors knew about me.