Planning Through Land Acknowledgments

How do non-Indigenous planning students understand the purpose, meaning, and intention of land acknowledgments in relation to their future work as land-based practitioners? What responsibilities lie in land acknowledgments, and how can planning serve as a platform to enact those responsibilities? This final research project sought to explore these questions through interviews with planning students and analysis of planning policy and theory. Taking my cue from topics covered in the interviews, I developed a research process and analysis framework and produced a four-part podcast series entitled “Planning Through Land Acknowledgments,” which weaves these discussions through my analysis. Ultimately nonparticipatory in nature, this project uses the principles of critical praxis-oriented research (CPOR, Klodawsky, Siltanen, and Andrew 2017) to align itself with goals of “critically reflecting on, and attempting to re-balance, power relations in the production and valuing of knowledge” (Klodawsky et al. 8). In interrogating how land histories in the Toronto area are referenced through actions the Canadian state regularly participates in, like land acknowledgments, I explored how recognizing Indigenous history and contemporaneity is the foundation of reconciliation, while never firmly placing my full confidence in the possibility of reconciliation. Understanding the undergirding truth of land acknowledgments became an especially transformative force as the project progressed. My commitment to being in solidarity with Indigenous struggles deepened and fundamentally changed the way I think about land use. As a part of the ethics of accessibility inherent to CPOR, I chose to present these findings in a podcast as an expression of bringing academic work outside of the academic sphere. I aim to bring other non-Indigenous new planners and more seasoned practitioners into a conversation around responsibility, place, and reflection on who and where we are.