Land Acknowledgement for the Nutfield Tract & Colquhoun Islands – An Acknowledgment in Four Acts
PREAMBLE:
I was told that a traditional Land Acknowledgement could, would … possibly even should take 2 or 3 days because you need to thank every blade of grass, every tree, every dandelion, every seed … all the places those seeds may go to grow. As a visitor to this land, I am ill equipped to do this since I hardly know this landscape. But as a concept this kind of Acknowledgement makes perfect sense to me: the time it would take, the glorious detail, the fact that it can’t be written in advance and applied to every season. This is so different from the tightly scripted Land Acknowledgements that so many of us Settlers awkwardly recite.
I am acknowledging this land not because I live here or work here, and certainly not because I know this landscape with any intimacy. I have come here to acknowledge this landscape because this is the place where my great-great-great-great grandfather Robert Colquhoun first set foot in Canada. He came from Glasgow Scotland and arrived here in 1803. Between 1813-1820 he was the local Indian Agent for the Mohawk community living across the river. Robert lived right here along this very waterfront until he died in 1828, leaving a large estate to his many sons.
Back in 2018 I started to get to know this land: first through documents and later in person when I visited in June of 2019. I have returned today to acknowledge this land because I know that those distant steps my ancestor Robert took seven generations ago have tread a path to where and how I stand on Turtle Island today. I’ve spent over two years learning the story of this land. And while I am not thanking every blade of grass or dandelion seed, this acknowledgment is not a tightly scripted prologue to some other main event.
A friend told me that the root of the word acknowledge is aknowen from Middle English which means “to know, recognize, admit, or confess.” Standing here today full of all that I have learned, I know there is still so much I do not know. But I have come to recognize things. And now I know there are certain things I need to admit to, confess to as I stand here, a visitor to this land.
Some of what I know I learned in June of 2019 when I was here gathering the materials to make these Land Acknowledgement Shoes. Each material was scavenged from this land: a Tim Horton’s cup, a tarp, a twig, barbed wire, a Miracle Gro bag, a work glove, a turkey feather and more. Finding each of these materials and sewing them together to make these shoes has helped me learn about this land and set me on a journey to understand my place here and my own connection to this land. This will be a long journey, but today, standing here, wearing these shoes … with all that I know and all that I still wonder … here is my acknowledgment.