The “Along the Road” podcast recently offered a glimpse into the deeper meaning and history behind what has become an increasingly common practice in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): land acknowledgements.
The episode titled “Nourish: Acknowledging the Original Habitants of the Land” featured a conversation with the Rev. Lauren Sanders, who is an ordained PC(USA) minister and an Indigenous person who serves as Indigenous care chaplain for an organization called First United in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Sanders also serves on the General Assembly Committee on Representation. She was interviewed by host Martha Miller, who is a ruling elder and certified Christian educator and is the manager for ministry education and support in the Interim Unified Agency.
A land acknowledgement is a formal statement offered at the beginning of a gathering that recognizes the Indigenous peoples who originally inhabited the land where an event or gathering is taking place.
In 2018, the 223rd General Assembly of the PC(USA) voted to include land acknowledgements at the beginning of all official meetings and events. Virtual PC(USA) gatherings have often invited participants to do land acknowledgements of their own, recognizing the Indigenous inhabits of the lands from which they are calling in.
In keeping with this PC(USA) practice, Miller included a land acknowledgement at the beginning of a Leader Formation webinar she facilitated for ruling elders and deacons on March 6. After recognizing the Anishinaabe people and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian tribe who historically resided on the land where she was, Miller invited participants to type in the chat space and recognize the Indigenous inhabitants of the land where they were joining from.
The webinar was part of the reason Miller wanted to have Sanders featured on an episode of “Along the Road.” The episode was part of the podcast’s “Nourish” series, which — like the Leader Formation webinar — are particularly aimed at ruling elders and deacons. Miller wanted her conversation with Sanders to provide some background and depth of meaning around the practice of land acknowledgement.
“I think there’s a danger, particularly when there’s something that has passed through the General Assembly, that it could become a box to check, rather than something that comes from the heart,” Miller said in the episode. Indeed, authentically heartfelt intention is a key part of making a land acknowledgement, Sanders explained.
“How and when you give your land acknowledgement, how that looks, where that is, and how we all engage with it, does need to come from our heart,” she said. She went on to explain that there are no formal parameters about how one might include a land acknowledgement in a worship service, for example — it could be an opening, a prayer, a confession, a response to the sermon, a benediction or something else. The important part, she said, is truly recognizing that the land you’re on was once inhabited and tenderly cared for by Indigenous peoples and that those people were forcibly moved and the land was stolen from them.
At the outset of the episode, Sanders offered her own greeting in Potowatomi, which is the Indigenous nation she belongs to. While she is Indigenous herself, Sanders lives and serves on lands that were historically inhabited by other Indigenous nations who she acknowledged in her greeting, referring to those nations with the names they use to refer to themselves.
As the conversation unfolded, Sanders clarified that a land acknowledgement is part of a larger ritual.
“My Indigenous community … and the Indigenous communities that I am familiar with have a ceremony that is called a welcome. A welcome is a two-part ceremony, where one half is the welcome of the host nations — the peoples’ lands that we’re on. And the land acknowledgement is the second part. It’s acknowledgement that we are all guests on that land.”
Layton Williams Berkes, Communications Strategist, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Rick Purdy, Manager, Human Resources, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Jim Quiggins, Strategic Communications Manager, Unification Management Office
Let us pray:
Gracious Lord, you affirmed the worth of every human being. Help us do the same. You loved the unloved and the unlovable. Help us do the same. You set the captive free and consoled the sorrowful. Help us do the same. Amen.
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