Land acknowledgments have become increasingly common in certain countries over the past few years. Many public events from soccer games and performing arts productions to city council meetings and corporate conferences begin with these formal statements recognizing Indigenous communities' rights to territories seized by colonial powers.

For example:
“We would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the occupied territory of [Native peoples]. We would like to acknowledge that this event is located on the traditional and ancestral territory of [Native peoples]. We thank them for their hospitality and stewardship of this land.”

It looks like it becomes routine and performative, but does it have any meaning at all?  I think it started in Australia back in the 1970s in the push for Aboriginal peoples' rights and more recently in Canada with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which brought to light how generations of Indigenous schoolchildren had been stripped of their native languages and cultural traditions and can also feel disempowering to the very people they're supposed to uplift. Hearing these statements just sounds like: There used to be Indians living here, we stole their land, and we thank them for their stewardship, but they won’t be getting it back.

It may sound like this does have some value; a first step towards action.  Now it's time to think about what that actually means for us and Indigenous peoples. What are the ways you're gonna assist Indigenous peoples in uplifting and upholding their sovereignty and self-determination? The public is asked for donations for them to move forward but the government and institutions instead should be ones returning cultural items to the descendants of those artifacts, and protecting burial grounds. More reparations should be paid to supporting reservations (you know the land that natives were showed into) and buying farmland to give back to the ones it really belongs to.