EUGENE KONTOROVICH

It’s no coincidence that these land acknowledgments are proliferating at formal ceremonies, even as such patriotic rituals as the Pledge of Allegiance and the playing of the national anthem are under attack. They replace a concise affirmation of national pride with a dense confession of national original sin.

George Brown College, a public institution in Toronto, recently required students and faculty joining a Zoom meeting to agree to a long mea culpa: “This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat, Mississaugas, Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee. . . . As settlers . . . we benefit from the colonization and genocide of the Indigenous peoples of this land. . . . It is imperative we constantly engage in acts of awareness and decolonization.”

It’s no coincidence that these land acknowledgments are proliferating at formal ceremonies, even as such patriotic rituals as the Pledge of Allegiance and the playing of the national anthem are under attack. They replace a concise affirmation of national pride with a dense confession of national original sin.

George Brown College, a public institution in Toronto, recently required students and faculty joining a Zoom meeting to agree to a long mea culpa: “This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat, Mississaugas, Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee. . . . As settlers . . . we benefit from the colonization and genocide of the Indigenous peoples of this land. . . . It is imperative we constantly engage in acts of awareness and decolonization.”