Land acknowledgements divorced from material land return obscure dispossession

(Megan, (Oglala Lakota) is an activist, writer, and college admissions professional. She is currently the Associate Director for Enrollment Management at The 7th Gen Summer Program and the Wizipan Program, a university program in South Dakota designed to help Native students succeed in higher education, , August)

While postsecondary institutions are increasingly recognizing Indigenous peoples, there are performative aspects of land acknowledgements to critically examine. These statements often perpetuate an erasure of Indigenous communities because they acknowledge the historic dispossession but do not accept them as modern-day participants. Many Native students attend institutions that occupy their territorial homelands; land that was and is culturally, spiritually, and emotionally theirs. Their oral traditions, medicines, and ways of knowing are connected to place. Land acknowledgements admit the existence of truth but fail to live up to the reality that those Indigenous peoples whose lands their institutions are built on are still here. They provide a fleeting feeling of satisfaction for admitting guilt for the taking of the land, but it is only that: a momentary feeling, experienced only by students who know their own histories of dispossession.