As part of Canada’s efforts to reconcile with its Indigenous people, land acknowledgements have become a ubiquitous feature of public events — everything from grade school announcements to symphony performances. Though this ritual is a well-intentioned gesture to help heal the wounds of colonization, there is reason to doubt how much good it actually accomplishes.
While land acknowledgements recognize this country’s Indigenous heritage, they say little about what responsibilities we all currently have to develop our shared homeland. Meanwhile, many Indigenous land claims go unresolved, and development in major cities increasingly alienates citizens from one another, as well as the land that unites us.
Much of the criticism of land acknowledgements comes from Indigenous communities, where it’s often noted that such declarations are typically performative rather than substantive. As Lynn Gehl, an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley, told Global News, “It’s become meaningless and patronizing.”
Though some believe finding the right words could make land acknowledgements more impactful, the practice of routinely reciting them at public events may nevertheless turn them into hollow platitudes. In the process, land acknowledgements run the risk of creating a false sense of accomplishment, obscuring the real efforts needed to address pressing Indigenous issues.
That’s because reconciliation, within a modern, democratic society, requires hard work and complex legal solutions, as well as historical knowledge that defies brief summation in a mundane context, such as at the start of a hockey game.
To get at the heart of the issue, it should be noted that the land acknowledgement is more accurately described as a colonization acknowledgement that’s predicated on the division of people into two distinct groups: Indigenous and settler. Among its many limitations, it fails to identify what responsibilities the individuals within these groups have. Instead, it simply gestures towards a past when the land was unspoiled by the injustices of colonization.
Since returning the entirety of the country to a pre-colonial state is not possible, we are left with the complicated business of resolving disputes and shaping development as best as we can. To that end, this work has largely been taken over wholesale by federal and provincial governments, which — in their drive for greater economic growth — often ignore the desires of existing residents, who would surely prefer development that contributes towards beautiful and thriving communities, as opposed to growth for its own sake.
The irony of this dynamic is especially acute in highly developed areas that are actively contested, such as the region encompassed within the Grand River land dispute. In this part of southern Ontario, members of the Six Nations may find little consolation in the land acknowledgements read there, given that they are seeking proper recompense for land that was formerly in their possession. Meanwhile, development continues unencumbered.
Even in places that are relatively free of such disputes, land acknowledgements can seem a bit surreal given that developers routinely disregard the wishes of the people who actually live in the affected communities.
Take, for example, how development typically plays out in a growing city like Toronto, where construction is largely dominated by towers. In such cases, politicians and developers often dismiss residents’ concerns as mere NIMBYism, instead promoting ultra-dense development as the necessary means of solving the housing affordability crisis.
However, the resulting buildings typically fail to address the needs of a sustainable population, providing mostly small apartments located high above the street that are more suitable as investment properties than homes for families. Despite the frenzy of construction, no meaningful reduction in cost ever seems to materialize.
The physical effect on the land is an architecture of increasing alienation. Instead of living beside your neighbours, you are placed high in the sky, where finding your way down to the life of the street below can be a time-consuming ordeal. Meanwhile, your options for connecting to the outdoors are confined to small windows and tiny balconies, usually left unutilized because of the fear such heights naturally provoke.
To the surrounding community, your massive building casts long shadows and is dressed anonymously in plain walls of glass and metal, presenting no discernible face or meaningful way to distinguish one home from the next. While this kind of architecture might facilitate a good way to comparison shop for housing units, it does little to create a sense of home or neighbourhood.
There are some systems in place to help facilitate more humane developments. One tool implemented is the creation of site- and area-specific policies. In this approach, city officials identify locations that are well-positioned for densification. Planners then work with local community members to fashion suitable design parameters.
This method usually delivers the kind of gentle mid-density that’s advocated by new urbanists like Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, who writes that, “In the past, town planning involved design.… Today it has become totally a matter of words and numbers.” Unfortunately, appointed boards like the Ontario Land Tribunal routinely overrule site- and area-specific policies to suit the numbers-driven demands of big developers, even when those local policies meet provincial growth targets.
As the Ontario Land Tribunal demonstrates, it’s a challenge to reconcile the drive for economic growth with peoples’ desire to oversee development in their own communities. However, bringing residents into the process may be the only way to avoid some of the mounting strains afflicting our country, including the lack of affordable housing. This might require making tough compromises, but doing so may be what’s necessary to restore a sense of stewardship to the national consciousness.
Similarly, rectifying the injustices suffered by Canada’s Indigenous people will require more than what can be summarized in a humdrum acknowledgement. Living in a reconciled homeland requires a different kind of work than that, as does providing Canadians — Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike — with the powers necessary to develop beautiful, thriving communities.
National Post
Brian Hagood is principal of CAB Architects.