Reflections on our Living Land Acknowledgement

Today in North America, many institutions open events with land acknowledgments. This gesture is intended to recognize the harms and exclusions caused by settler-colonial histories and create and nurture new relationships and ways of being. However, it remains a contentious practice, with many wondering if and how land acknowledgments can lead to dialogue, learning, or tangible action. A few years ago, the CCA formed a Living Land Acknowledgment working group not only to initiate an institutional land acknowledgment, but also to foster new forms of engagement with Indigenous communities. We call our project a “living” land acknowledgment to emphasize that we make an ongoing, active commitment to these goals, and that our responsibilities and efforts do not end when we recite one text at the beginning of an event or publication. We share the following text, initially circulated as an annotated document among staff to elaborate on the decisions and research involved in conceiving the statement, to now offer institutional transparency about our work and learning in progress. It is our hope that, with engagement from our public, the focus and purpose of this statement can be strengthened and it will find a life beyond our walls.

The story of the CCA’s Land Acknowledgement process

The CCA’s Living Land Acknowledgment grew out of a confluence of circumstances at the end of the 2010s. In 2018, during the process of putting together an exhibition touching on Indigenous activists’ 1969 occupation of Alcatraz, it emerged that Indigenous curators were not happy that the CCA was leading such a project with an American, non-Indigenous curator, and that the CCA itself was seen as a closed institution (the feedback was used to develop the project as a Singles publication entitled Prospects Beyond Futures). In 2020, a Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion working group made up of CCA staff also produced a three-hundred-page report in which the CCA’s lack of a land acknowledgement was singled out. Finally, the process of preparing the exhibition and publication ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home: Inuit and Sámi Placemaking brought the CCA into closer dialogue with Indigenous curators, editors, and researchers, and spurred reflection on the CCA’s position as a cultural institution in a country born from settler colonialism.

The Land Acknowledgment Working Group began meeting in 2021. The notion of a “Living Land Acknowledgment” was alighted on to emphasize that for the CCA, the land acknowledgment would not be a simple, easily forgotten statement, but an ongoing process of institutional self-transformation and community engagement.

The CCA’s Land Acknowledgement statement

Kwé. We recognize the longstanding connections of Indigenous Peoples to Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal, in particular the Kanien’kehá:ka people of Kahnawake, Kahnesatake, and Akwesasne, whose ancestors—along with those of Wendat, Anishinaabe, and Abenaki communities—lived here long before the arrival of settlers. Still today, the island is home to many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. These communities continue to face challenges to their rights and the erosion of their traditional territories as a result of ongoing processes of settler colonialism. The CCA itself puts on exhibitions and events, maintains its collections, and publishes texts on these lands that have never been ceded by their Indigenous inhabitants. The CCA therefore recognizes its settler-colonial roots, and we are committed to fostering affirmative relationships with Indigenous peoples across Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal and beyond. We invite you to learn more about the CCA’s ongoing commitment to our living land acknowledgement process by visiting our website or contacting us directly.

Annotations

“Kwé.”

Kwé is a greeting in many Indigenous languages, including Kanien’kéha or Mohawk. Because of its wide use, it is increasingly being used in Indigenous contexts, particularly in Québec.

“We recognize the longstanding connections of Indigenous Peoples to Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal, in particular the Kanien’kehá:ka people of Kahnawake, Kahnesatake, and Akwesasne, whose ancestors—along with those of Wendat, Anishinaabe, and Abenaki communities—lived here long before the arrival of settlers.”

This sentence is intended to recognize the historic, ancestral connections of particular Indigenous communities to Montréal. Indigenous people have lived on the island of Montréal for thousands of years. At some point roughly 1000 years ago, these original inhabitants began to erect large villages on the island and the surrounding territories and to clear fields to plant crops.¹ These people were part of a larger group of “Iroquoian” nations, which included the Huron/Wendat, the six members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Petun, Cherokee, and other nations.² Villages in these societies moved locations every few decades to avoid resource depletion. When the first French visitors arrived in 1535, they recorded the name of the existing village on the island as “Hochelaga.”

In the 1500s, war and disease caused a grave social crisis for all people in the east of North America, and Montréal’s original inhabitants fled as a diaspora to surrounding nations. According to Ange Loft, “Research indicates that the Iroquoians who lived on the island most probably moved in with neighbouring Kanien’kehá:ka, Wendat and Algonquin communities.”³ French missionaries encountered members of this diaspora and recorded these meetings. Still today, these nations maintain oral histories of this process of adoption.⁴

Soon after the French established a colony on the island of Montréal in 1642, Indigenous people began to return on a permanent basis, establishing a village called Kentake on the south shore in the 1660s. Many of the people who moved to Kentake came from Kanien’kehá:ka communities to the south in what is today New York state. As these communities had absorbed many of the original refugees from Hochelaga, some of the founders of Kentake carried with them memories of their ancestors having lived on the island less than a century earlier. Facing poor soil and the theft of their lands by the French settlers of La Prairie, within a few decades the village of Kentake split into the three Kanien’kehá:ka communities that persist near Montréal today: Kahnawà:ke, Kanehsatà:ke, and Ahkwesásne.⁵

Nonetheless, in the nineteenth century settler archaeologists erected a narrative of the mysterious “disappearance of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians,” a story in which Montréal’s first inhabitants simply vanished and there is therefore no ancestral connection whatsoever between the people of Hochelaga and the Kanien’kehá:ka communities around Montréal. The disappearance narrative rests on a limited attention to two facts: that when the French explorer Jacques Cartier visited the area in 1535, he found the village of Hochelaga, but when Samuel de Champlain returned in 1611, the village was gone. This narrative necessarily disbelieves and disrespects the oral histories of the nations who count Montréal’s original inhabitants among their ancestors. Historians and archaeologists also affirm that the Hochelagans or “Saint Lawrence Iroquoians” dispersed into the surrounding Indigenous nations and that some of their descendants later returned to the area.

Unfortunately, the disappearance myth persists today, supporting the fiction that when the first settlers arrived in Montréal in 1642 they took over empty and unused land.⁶ It is therefore important to continue to affirm, clearly and precisely, the historic claim of these communities to the island of Montréal in order to resist racist and colonial narratives of Indigenous disappearance.

Christian Gates St-Pierre, “Iroquoians in the St. Lawrence River Valley before European Contact,” Ontario Archaeology no. 96 (2016): 47-64. ↩
Charles Julian, cf. https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/6b2df4a6-c15a-4d2d-8042-a189bf638df4/content (PhD diss., University of Manitoba, 2010). Note the distinction between “Iroquoian” and “Iroquois.” The “Iroquois” is a historic name by which the British and French referred to the Six Nations Confederacy, or the Haudenosaunee, while “Iroquoian” refers to a larger language family, of which the Haudenosaunee languages form a part. ↩
Ange Loft, Visibly Iroquoian booklet accompanying her exhibition. ↩
E.g., “the mystery has never been a big issue for the Huron-Wendats because they never considered the St. Lawrence Iroquoians as distinct from themselves; thus the latter’s apparent disappearance is not a curiosity… For the ancestral Wendats, these St. Lawrence Iroquoians were simply family members who were living in a remote area and who, by the conjuncture of European diseases, warfare, and environmental changes, decided to move to their closest family members for a better future.” (“Introduction,” Louis Lesage, Neha Gupta, and Georges Sioui, Ontario Archaeology 96 (2016): 4.) ↩
Jean-François Lozier, Flesh Reborn: The Saint Lawrence Valley Mission Settlements through the Seventeenth Century (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018). ↩
See for instance the controversy over the Montréal Canadiens’ land acknowledgment. ↩

“Still today, the island is home to many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. These communities continue to face challenges to their rights and the erosion of their traditional territories as a result of ongoing processes of settler colonialism.”

Montréal stands at the confluence of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers, the two main thoroughfares for travel of people and goods in the Northeast of North America until the construction of railways roughly 175 years ago. Hornfels stone was being mined on Mount Royal and used across southern Quebec some four thousand years ago.¹ Slightly later, as Ange Loft writes, “The St. Lawrence region had a distinct set of patterns for their pottery, patterns which can be found across Kanien’keha:ka territory and into Ontario.”² When the Indigenous people of the northeast put an end to a century of warfare in 1701, they chose this island as the meeting place, hosted by the Indigenous residents of Kahnawake.

Today, there are around thirty five thousand Indigenous people living in Montréal, one of the largest Indigenous populations in Canada.³

Christian Gates St-Pierre, Adrian L. Burke, Gilles Gauthier, and Greg Kennedy, “Nouvelles données sur l’utilisation préhistorique de la cornéenne par les Amérindiens du Québec méridional,” Canadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d’Archéologie 36.2 (2012): 289–310. ↩
Loft, Visibly Iroquoian booklet. ↩
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/fogs-spg/Facts-cma-eng.cfm?LANG=Eng&GK=CMA&GC=462&TOPIC=9 ↩

“The CCA itself puts on exhibitions and events, maintains its collections, and publishes texts on these lands that have never been ceded by their Indigenous inhabitants.”

Unlike elsewhere in Canada, there was no treaty process in Montréal; the land was simply claimed for the French crown in the 1500s, and the British inherited this claim via conquest.

“The CCA therefore recognizes its settler-colonial roots, and we are committed to fostering affirmative relationships with Indigenous peoples across Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal and beyond.”

It is important for institutions to both acknowledge their links to the settler project, and to build substantive links to Indigenous communities and support the broader project of decolonization. It can be surprising to hear an institution call itself a settler or colonial institution; however, the intention is to recognize that in a settler-colonial context, an institution which is not Indigenous belongs to “settler” society in the broader sense of the term. At the same time, “settler colonial” is not a neutral term, and part of the purpose of recognizing it is to work to undo it. In addition to the efforts of the land acknowledgment working group, the CCA is working to expand its connections with architects and researchers from Indigenous communities and the Global South.

“We invite you to learn more about the CCA’s ongoing commitment to our living land acknowledgement process by visiting our website or contacting us directly.”

Visit our Living Lands page.

Terms in the statement

NB. In Canada today, it is considered respectful to use Indigenous place names when possible, and to refer to Indigenous Nations and Peoples by endonyms (the name a group calls itself) rather than exonyms (a name given to a group by outsiders). This means many French and English exonyms familiar to Canadians of non-Indigenous heritage are passing from use, and some are even considered offensive.

Tiohtiá:ke: Name for Montréal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Kanien’kehá:ka.

Mooniyang: Name for Montréal in Anishinaabemowin, the language of the Anishinaabe.

Haudenosaunee: Confederacy of six nations Indigenous to the northeast of North America: the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), the Oneniote’á:ka (Oneida), Ononta’kehá:ka (Onondaga), Kahoniokwenhá:ka (Cayuga), Tsonontowane’á:ka (Seneca), and Thatihskarò:roks (Tuscarora). This confederacy, formed six to eight hundred years ago, is still active as a political organization.

Iroquois: Historic French and English exonym (name used by outsiders) for the Haudenosaunee.

Kanien’kehá:ka: One of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee; have three communities around the Montréal area.

Mohawk: Historic exonym for the Kanien’kehá:ka. Though using endonyms is commonly seen as a sign of respect, “Mohawk” remains in wide use, including among the Kanien’kehá:ka themselves.

Kahnawà:ke: One of three Kanien’kehá:ka communities situated around Montréal and geographically the closest to the city itself, being situated on the south shore across the Pont Mercier from Lasalle.

Kanehsatà:ke: One of three Kanien’kehá:ka communities around Montréal, situated on the lac des Deux Montagnes. Unlike Kahnawà:ke and Ahkwesásne, Kanehsatà:ke does not have federal status as a reserve, and in recent decades has had to fight particularly hard for its land.

Ahkwesásne: One of three Kanien’kehá:ka communities situated around Montréal, located southwest on the St. Lawrence River across from Cornwall. Ahkwesásne is bisected by the Canada/US border.

Wendat: Confederacy of Iroquoian people who originally resided north of Lake Ontario, and were allied with the French during the fur trade. Scattered by war and colonization, today the Wendat are dispersed across Canada and the US, with one of their largest communities, Wendake, being outside of Quebec City.

Huron: Historic French and English exonym for the Wendat.

Anishinaabe: Peoples with traditional territory in the Laurentian mountains northwest of Montréal. “Anishinaabe” (plural form “Anishinaabeg”) is used as an endonym by a large group of nations; those who live north of Montréal have been referred to by the exonym “Algonquin.”

Indigenous: Preferred collective term for the first peoples of Canada. Collectively refers to the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis.

First Nations: Indigenous Peoples of Canada excepting the Inuit and the Métis. When categorized as “Indians,” First Nations people have been subjected to specific policies and practices by the Canadian government, but First Nations people are enormously diverse culturally, linguistically, and ethnically.

Inuit: Indigenous people originating in the far north, who share a common history, culture, ancestry, and family of languages.

Métis: Specific Indigenous people of both First Nations and European ancestry. N.B.: Not all Indigenous people with partial non-Indigenous ancestry identify as Métis.

Settler: Historically used to refer to the first European inhabitants of Canada and the rest of the New World, this term is often used today to refer to people living in Canada who are not of Indigenous descent and whose ancestors were not brought here forcibly in the context of the slave trade. While many Indigenous people prefer for non-Indigenous people to so identify, it is important to understand that this is done so in a spirit of honesty and reconciliation—the term retains a negative connotation.

Settler colonialism: The historic process by which Indigenous territory was appropriated for use by non-Indigenous people, initially of French and British descent. Since the 1980s, scholars and activists have characterized settler colonialism as distinct from other forms of colonialism that only seek to dominate and extract wealth from an Indigenous population and its territory. Because settler colonialism demands the wholesale replacement of Indigenous people, it generates specific forms of violence and erasure, and in Canada and elsewhere has been linked to genocide. Settler colonialism is often supported by enabling mythologies, such as the idea that the land was sparsely inhabited or not being “used” prior to colonization, or that Indigenous people welcomed European presence.

If you have feedback about or reflections on this living land acknowledgment, please contact us at lawg@cca.qc.ca.

Reflections on our Living Land Acknowledgement

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