The Alternative Campus Tour appreciates the importance of land acknowledgements but in the spirit of the Tour, it also recognizes the difficulties, challenges, and contradictions that may go along with them. This is important since land acknowledgements are now often read mechanically at formal events, including theatre performances and hockey games, without deeper reflections. Such reflections may encompass questions related to who to include and exclude, the definition and role of treaties, the meaning of the category of land as material property or collective and spiritual home, whether First Peoples are honoured in mere words but with little restitutive action, and what non-Indigenous individuals can do as allies. Stephen Marche, noting some of these complications, goes as far as to write about a “Canadian land acknowledgement” under the title Canada's Impossible Acknowledgement. Yet land acknowledgements are important, especially for the non-Indigenous people and allies, because they are the guests that should recognize, pay respect and acknowledge their hosts rather than the other way around.
In 2026, York University launched a new series of land acknowledgements, each one of them unique to its three campuses, and one covering the three campuses as a collective. The land acknowledgements were written by the University’s treaty partners, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, who then gifted them to the University. They were then accepted in unedited form. They resemble closely the land acknowledgement at Sheridan College. The acknowledgement for the Keele campus where the Alternative Campus Tour is located, reads as follows:
"First Nations peoples have lived on this part of Turtle Island for millennia, stewarding the land, the water and all that contributes to life in this region. Today, the culture and presence of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples enrich the lands and people of this territory.
More than two centuries ago, the Mississauga people welcomed settlers to this territory, providing sustenance and engaging in trade and commerce. Between 1781 and 1820, eight treaties were signed between the Crown and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, who opened their territory to settlement. Today, York University’s Keele Campus is located on Toronto Purchase Treaty, No. 13 lands and is situated on the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and Haudenosaunee.
Treaty history is foundational, and it is our collective responsibility to honour the land, as we honour and respect those who have gone before us, those who are here and those who have yet to come. We are grateful for the opportunity to be learning, working and thriving on this land, and we commit to learn the truth and be active in the process of reconciliation."
The 2026 land acknowledgement rests on previous versions. In 2017, York University’s first land acknowledgement was formulated by a group of Indigenous faculty and staff members of the then York University Aboriginal Education Council, now called the Indigenous Council. With only a few slight but important revisions made in 2019, the original remained in place until the replacement in 2026. The 2019 version read as follows:
"York University acknowledges its presence on the traditional territory of many Indigenous Nations. The area known as Tkaronto has been care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Huron-Wendat. It is now home to many First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities. We acknowledge the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the Great Lakes region."
The 2017 and 2019 versions illustrate the tensions surrounding who should be acknowledged, a question that is not always agreed upon among Indigenous groups. Dr. Ruth Green spoke in some detail about these tensions in a 2025 lecture titled Unpacking and Understanding the Importance of a Land Acknowledgement: It is Not Just a Script. The 2017 version included the Métis as the traditional care takers of Tkaronto while the 2019 version did not. The change was based on the premise that the Métis, while present in the Toronto region, do not hold the lands as their traditional homelands. The Métis were instead recognized in the sentence "It [Tkaronto] is now home to many First Nation, Inuit, and Métis communities." In the 2017 version, there was the word “and” inserted in the sentence “We acknowledge the current treaty holders, [and] the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.” The “and” was there to denote that the Crown and the Canadian public are also treaty holders, but representatives of the Mississaugas felt it was confusing and suggested that their status as the sole Indigenous treaty holders was obscured, and insisted it be taken out. Two other changes were made. The word “New” in “New Credit First Nation” was taken out because the Mississaguas ceased to use it in January 2019. The term “New” originated from the Mississaugas’ move from the Credit River to the Six Nations territory on the Grand River. The move was occasioned by the influx of settlers on the Credit and their encroachment on Indigenous land and resources which made it impossible for the Mississaugas to survive in the area. The Mississaugas have since reconsidered this name, insisting that they never left the Credit River, they are not “new”, and have always been around, and they are still the treaty holders of the Toronto region. The last change made in the land acknowledgement was the addition of the word “Huron” to the word Wendat, becoming Huron-Wendat because, at the time this is what the Indigenous group called itself. Ironically, on 26 April 2025, the Wendat decided to drop the word “Huron” (a name assigned the Wendat by the French), a fact that the current land acknowledgement will soon, as of mid-September 2026, recognize. The 2026 land acknowledgement is now clear of who is acknowledged, identifying the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit River First Nation.
The 2017/2019 and 2026 land acknowledgements also provide statements and lessons with regards to the Indigenous peoples’ connection to the land. In 2019, the Centre for Aboriginal Student Services and Indigenous faculty members produced a video entitled Understanding the Land Acknowledgement that explained and spoke to such wider and deeper meanings. This included Amy Desjarlais holding a stone, representing the land, at the very beginning of the video.
In the same video, and repeated in her lecture in 2025, Ruth Green referred to the central importance of land in the land acknowledgement. She focused on the importance of the term “care taken” as opposed to the more common “taking care of” as significant in the text. The latter means to be entrusted to take care of something, to carry the responsibility to do it, rather than using the term “taking care of”, which feels more like ownership. We do not own this territory, she claimed in the 2025 video, we are caretakers of it.
Green also commented upon the Dish with One Spoon Covenant and its three central lessons. They symbolize the proper relationship between people and the non-human world. The first is don’t take more than your share. It means to make sure that everybody gets their fair share, depending on their specific needs. The second message is to make sure that there is enough for everybody, and that nobody is being left out. The third adage is don’t foul the dish, which means to not pollute, destroy, or exhaust the gifts of the earth.
Though not mentioned in the land acknowledgement, Green also mentioned the Two Row Wampum as representing the presence and effort of Indigenous people and settlers living parallel lives, respecting each other’s mores and customs. She here pointed to the word peaceably as distinct from peacefully, because the relationship is not only about peace (the absence of war), but also about friendship and mutual respect.
This sentiment is echoed in the 2026 land acknowledgement, where it is stated that First Nations “have lived on this part of Turtle Island for millennia, stewarding the land, the water and all that contributes to life.”
These land acknowledgements are similar in that they identify treaty history as the prime guide for future actions, behaviours and relationship to the land, mentioning in detail the various treaties between the Crown and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. It is based on the principle of recognition, the assumption that treaty relationships can lead to positive change for Indigenous people.
The position articulated in past and present land acknowledgements is a respectable and common position, but it is also contested by some Indigenous observers. They are less sanguine about treaties being the solution to the disputes between Indigenous people and the Crown. They argue that treaties are tricks or colonial institutions that seek to displace the treaties that Indigenous people had and continue to have with the land, the water, the air, each other, and the non-human worlds. They employ the term refusal to reject colonial governance structures and insist that they already have their own sovereign governance institutions, nations, and laws. Audra Simpson proposes that concepts like consent, land acknowledgements, and colonial definitions on who is “Indian” are ruses aimed at dividing and weakening Indigenous communities. Glen Coulthard argues similarly in Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Indigenous peoples point instead to their own existing, operating, and constantly changing legal orders as the source of their responsibilities and obligations to protect and defend the land. This inevitably involves the re-possession of their own land, as articulated in the land back movement.
In an article titled "Naagan ge bezhig emkwaan: A Dish with One Spoon Reconsidered," Dean Jacobs and Victor Lytwyn argue that the incorporation of non-Indigenous constituents in the Dish with One Spoon Belt Covenant constitutes a form of cultural appropriation that proposes that a concern for the environment takes precedence over Indigenous people’s role as caretakers and holders of the land. The covenant is in fact an exclusive treaty between Indigenous people. It is erroneous to suggest that it applies to everybody, including colonial settlers.
There is a tension between the foundational nature of treaties with the Crown in comparison to treaties between Indigenous people and between them and non-human worlds. Stephen Paquette at Sheridan College in the video In Our Voices: Land Acknowledgement provides an interesting intervention. He states that a land acknowledgement is not about acknowledging who the land belongs to because Indigenous people never owned the land. The land acknowledgement is not about territory, it is more about relationships between people and between people and all the animals, the plants and other forms of matter that inhabit Mother Earth.
Paquette gives pause to ponder where change begins, with treaties with the Crown, or with Indigenous treaties that are asserted on their own terms, unilaterally and independently of the Crown.
One concern about land acknowledgements raised by York University Indigenous faculty in the 2019 video Understanding the Land Acknowledgement, is that they often become a “tick off” and rote statement at events that is read and then summarily forgotten. Hayden King, who formulated the original land acknowledgement at Toronto Metropolitan University, even rejects them altogether, stating that he regrets having been part of writing the one at his own university. The seeming ineffectiveness, even meaninglessness of land acknowledgements to many Indigenous people, often prompt them to call on potential allies to develop their own land acknowledgements or to personalize already existing ones.
Jeffery Hewitt, in an article titled "Land Acknowledgment, Scripting and Julius Caesar," provides a compelling account on the lack of action contained in land acknowledgements, and an equally compelling call for action. His reading of the land acknowledgements of each university posted online in Canada shows that they recognize at least one Indigenous Nation who occupied or occupies the lands where the university now sits. But they make no mention of how colonization violated and still violate Indigenous peoples and lands and they do not incorporate any action-based words that commit to change. These are precisely the elements that should be contained in land acknowledgements.
York University’s land acknowledgement is nevertheless a potentially powerful one. Though one may be suspicious and mistrustful of the formal treaties between Indigenous people and the Crown as “foundational”, the acknowledgement does provide a call for action and puts emphasis on a collective responsibility to honour the land and to “commit to learn the truth and be active in the process of reconciliation.” It also invites readers to personalize their land acknowledgements to “engage in reconciliation and contribute understanding and respect for Indigenous sovereignty and treaty rights.”
The Alternative Campus Tour is a modest attempt to respond to the call for action. It posits that it is important to know the land you move across, to not only acknowledge Indigenous people, treaties, and the land, but also knowledge it, infuse it with knowledge of its past and the options it has faced, and to imagine different futures. For me personally, it has inevitably meant calling attention to the presence of the Wendat on campus, the fact that part of the campus sits in corn fields once cultivated by the Wendat, and one of their Ancestral villages is located south of the campus by Black Creek under a hydro-corridor. But it has also led to a more general attempt to Indigenize the Alternative Campus Tour, and to question the campus and its various features, and to find the expressions of both Indigenous presences and erasures.
