Land Acknowledgment - Bishop's University

Overview drone image of the Bishop's campus

K’wlipaï8ba W9banakiak wdakiw8k. Bishop’s University is located on the traditional territory of the Abenaki people (the people of the rising sun). We acknowledge their stewardship and appreciate that we are all guests on Abenaki territory.

Why are land acknowledgments important?

Land and treaty acknowledgements are important to disrupting invisibility and ongoing erasure of Indigenous peoples. They serve to help people recognize where the land came from and how it is has changed, celebrate those who have made contributions, and recognize how we have benefitted from it. Decolonization, Indigenization, and Reconciliation must go beyond words.

Land and treaty acknowledgment is also a part of Indigenous protocol. It is a way to raise awareness of Indigenous presence and land rights in everyday life. It is done at the beginning of ceremonies, lectures, important gatherings, or any public event. This protocol asks us to acknowledge any treaty that the event is taking place on and to respect the Indigenous peoples who have lived here over time, and still live here.

Land and treaty acknowledgements are therefore about relationships. We have a responsibility to understand and honour our relationships to this land and all the peoples who gather here. We have the responsibility to take care of each other and the land. As an institution of higher learning, we have the responsibility to create relational spaces that recognize many peoples and voices who come together to learn and grow in respectful, productive, and sometimes uncomfortable conversations.

Like many institutions, Bishop’s University is impacted by historic and evolving questions around rights, power, belonging, and justice. Unceded territory to many means stolen land. The idea that land can be owned, given, taken, or stolen is a colonial idea, not an Indigenous one. Yet, Indigenous peoples have not ceded their right to belong to the land.

The land that Bishop’s University occupies is known as Ndakina to the Abenaki people, who have been stewards of these lands and waters since time immemorial. This land has been settled and exploited without treaty or relationship. These questions invite us to reflect on and address our complex legacy in both our pursuit of academic excellence and our relationship to historical and present-day (in)justices. Our commitment calls upon us to honour our relationships, explore and challenge dominant ideologies, and call out injustices and inequalities. We must discover and pursue new ways of seeing, doing, and relating. Bishop’s University commits to (un)learning and relearning, building respectful and reciprocal relationships, and pursing truth-telling and reconciliaction as part of our ongoing relationship with the land, waters, and peoples here.