I would be so very interested in learning what TPS Teachers Network users have experienced in terms of land acknowledgements in their own communities and schools. I sense that the quality of such statements must vary depending on how seriously the writers of these statements take the responsibility of researching and representing the original Indigenous stewards of these lands, as well as working with them today.

One of the most helpful resources I've found is A Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgement from the Native Governance Center in Minneapolis. Another is this Guide to Indigenous Land and Territorial Acknowledgements for Cultural Institutions, with links to still more resources. Finally, the Living Sky School Division in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, produced this delightful video with students called Why Do a Land Acknowledgement?

I have real concerns that the forward momentum of land acknowledgements could suffer in the current political climate. In a school district in my city, for example, the Director of Equity and Inclusion recently disbanded a "40-member volunteer team as a preemptive measure as her department prepares for the possible repercussions of the November school board election results." -Gazette, Colorado Springs, CO, Dec. 18, 2021

  Mary Alice Anderson , I really like your idea of creating an album to represent the history behind your land acknowledgement example. I'm imagining such an album being shared before school boards and cultural institution boards. Just one more reminder that the Library of Congress serves all Americans.

I acknowledge that the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum here on the North Dakota Capitol complex sits on a tiny part of Mandan ancestral homeland where they have lived and traveled since time immemorial.

Here the Mandan flourished—raising corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers to nourish their families and to trade garden produce with other tribes up and down the Missouri River until their numbers were ravaged by European diseases.

Part of Mandan resilience is grounded in utilizing wild and cultivated plants and animals for sustenance, as well as medicine, which sustains them physically and mentally.

Working cooperatively, we can learn from and strive to be good stewards of the land and share our heritages in friendship.

My school district adopted a land acknowledgement and partnered with our local tribe to have a video produced (by a production company of that tribe) to help us teach the meaning and significance to all of our students. Our district had done something similar with that partnership when we started observing Treaty Day in our schools.

Short version of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRW-p9OvfaA

 "We, the (Insert name of School, government agency, etc., e.g. Ferndale School District), acknowledge we are residing on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Lummi People. The Lummi People are the original inhabitants of Washington's northernmost coast and southern British Columbia. They lived in villages throughout this territory and continue to have an ongoing relationship with these areas. Since Time Immemorial they have celebrated life on their land, water ways and on the traditional, ancestral and unceded lands of their People to perpetuate their way of life. Please join us in taking a moment of silence as we honor their ancestors and as we acknowledge the past, present and future Lummi People as the original inhabitants of this land.”