It’s 2023. Are you still using a ‘lip service’ land acknowledgement? There’s a better way — and a new Indigenous-led fundraising school is here to help.

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For the David Suzuki Foundation, “lip service” land acknowledgements are on the outs.

You know the ones: A speaker reads from their notes. They name the Indigenous peoples whose territory the event is taking place on. They might also briefly describe their organization’s commitment to supporting Indigenous people — but there’s little more to it.

At the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF), one of the country’s best-known environmental organizations, on the ins, instead, are land acknowledgements that are more personal, authentic and fresh.

“We’ve [gone from doing] these kind of ‘lip service’ land acknowledgements to taking the opportunity for more education every time,” says Siobhan Aspinall, the organization’s director of development.

In part, Aspinall says, the change has come as a result of a workshop her team attended. In January of last year, the organization’s whole fundraising team gathered online for “Indigenous protocols for fundraisers,” a workshop led by the New School of Fundraising.

The aim of the session, says the school’s founder, longtime fundraiser Rowena Veylan, is to provide a safe space for fundraisers and their teammates to ask questions about a topic that’s not always simple. For instance: If an Indigenous person introduces themself by sharing their lineage, should a non-Indigenous person reciprocate? Or, as a fundraiser, how should you do a land acknowledgement if your bike-a-thon covers multiple territories?

The workshop, hosted more than a dozen times since launch, has been a hit. Last year, Veylan had to hire a second instructor to accommodate the demand.

For Aspinall’s fundraising team, learning how to better respect Indigenous protocols has been important because her staff serve as the face of the organization with donors.

DSF works with more than two dozen Indigenous nations across the country, Aspinall says. “[And we] are paying more attention both out of respect and out of an interest in learning more about our partners to be able to serve their needs better.”

Before the holidays, we caught up with the workshop’s instructors who offered their suggestions on two key topics they cover in the fundraiser-focused workshop: land acknowledgements and inviting an elder to host a welcome.

Fundraisers: focus less on memorization and more about your relationship to the land

For folks who raise money for a living, giving a land acknowledgement can be a high pressure activity.

By nature, when you do it, you’re in front of a group of people — be it during a fundraising event, panel discussion, or grant review committee gathering. And second, for many, the content of your address can prompt anxiety: What if I pronounce a Nation’s name wrong? What if I say the wrong thing and it impacts how people see me and my commitment to Indigenous peoples?  

Morgan Kalk, a member of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, and an instructor of the Indigenous protocols workshop, encourages session participants to lean into their vulnerability, rather than shy away from it.

“The most important piece is authenticity and being completely genuine in what you bring forward,” she says. “I think that truly, people would rather not hear an acknowledgement, than hear one that just totally misses the mark and has no sentimental value to the person who is delivering it. That’s where it becomes tokenistic.”

Leaning into authenticity means using your own voice, wherever possible, and avoiding reading from a statement pre-written by your organization.

It also means sharing your personal relationship to the land that you’re on, Kalk says.

This means taking stock of where you are: what the land looks like, what it might have looked like before you arrived, and who has been on that piece of land before you. It could also include how you or your family came to be on that land and who might have been displaced in that process.

“You are providing a piece of history to that land there, today,” she says. “And so [it’s important to] give genuine thanks to that and to understand that it would not be possible if it wasn’t for the sacrifices of the people who were there before you.”

Kalk says talking about your relationship to the land may be tough if you don’t have much of a connection to it or if you haven’t spent much time thinking about it.

She adds, additionally, that there are certain things that probably wouldn’t be appropriate for an acknowledgement. “You don’t want to say, ‘I’m in my backyard and I appreciate the flowers and how tall they’ve grown,” she says, with a laugh.

But Kalk underscores that land acknowledgements are principally about relationship building and that the vulnerability of the speaker counts for a lot. “That intent is just invaluable,” she says. “That’s what Indigenous people are looking for.”

Cut the platitudes and offer a tangible commitment

In addition to bringing yourself to the acknowledgement, it’s also important to be specific in the commitment you’re making to the land and to Indigenous peoples.

That’s the advice of Nicole Taylor-Sterritt, the workshop’s other instructor, who is of mixed heritage, with Gitxsan and European roots. “It should be a tangible commitment,” she says. “What can you do in your daily life?”

This could be a monthly commitment to learn about one of the 94 calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Taylor-Sterritt says, or a commitment you’re making to support Indigenous people in your personal giving.

By contrast, you could also share the actions you’ll take in your role to support Indigenous people — be it to pass along the names of Indigenous-led organizations to donors with an interest in providing support, to ensure there are Indigenous people on your grant review committee or to champion Indigenous granting priorities within your organization.

In addition to offering a tangible commitment, Taylor-Sterritt and Kalk also encourage being precise and specific when naming the connection of Indigenous peoples to the local territory. There’s a big difference between unceded land, traditional territory and ancestral lands — and it’s important to know the difference. (The team covers this in their workshop.)

Kalk also says it’s best to not “umbrella term” Indigenous people, and instead to be specific: are you on the territory, for instance, of the Swampy Cree, the Woodlands Cree, or the Plains Cree? In Saskatchewan, Kalk says, her acknowledgement differs depending on the part of the province she’s in.

If all of this feels a bit overwhelming, Taylor-Sterritt says it might be fine to offer a simpler land acknowledgment if you are new to learning about Indigenous peoples and cultures, especially if you name your commitment to learning more.

But if you’ve been delivering the same old, memorized acknowledgement for some time, “you’re risking using that as a checkbox — the bare minimum,” she says, and you might be doing yourself and others a disservice.

“I think that the whole point of reconciliation…is that we’re trying to create relationality,” Taylor-Sterritt says. “We’re creating those relationships and deepening those relationships with the people and the land and we’re trying to have that kind of self-reflection.”

This orientation is one that should be familiar to fundraisers, Veylan says, given that the entire industry is built around relationship building.

In addition, Kalk underscores that the suggestions she and Taylor-Sterritt offer in the workshop are just that: suggestions. “Every Indigenous person is going to have a way of delivering this based on what they’ve learned and they’ve experienced.

“I think what’s important…is a non-Indigenous person’s willingness to participate despite the different pieces of information that might come forward to them at any given time and to be vulnerable in that learning,” she says.

The nuts and bolts: inviting an elder to host a welcome

In addition to supporting workshop participants to develop land acknowledgements, Kalk and Taylor-Sterritt also spend time during the session supporting attendees to understand the ins and outs of inviting an elder to offer a welcome at an organization’s event.

First, there’s the why: helping attendees understand the different reasons why it might be valuable to issue that kind of invitation.

For one, Taylor-Sterritt says, inviting an elder to offer a welcome shows respect to the nations whose territory you’re on, recognizing that you’re an uninvited guest. “Inviting them to your space in a good way shows you are committed to including those Indigenous voices,” she says.

In addition, Kalk adds, elders can help set the tone, direction, or energy for the day — helping to open a gathering in a way that honors the group’s intention for the meeting.

Deciding whether to invite an elder shouldn’t be determined by the size of your gathering, Kalk says, but rather the significance of what’s happening on that day.

A six person meeting where decisions are being made that will affect hundreds might be more important than a twenty person gathering, Kalk says.

It might thus be beneficial to invite an elder to open the first meeting of a new, volunteer-led, grant review committee process. It might also be valuable to have an elder offer a welcome for a major fundraising event.

At DSF, Aspinall says, an elder is approached to offer a welcome when the organization is hosting an event that requires a “thoughtful approach and collaboration” — a special event, such as a recently held management retreat on diversity, inclusion and reconciliation held in Whistler, on the unceded shared territory of the Squamish Nation and Lil’wat Nation.

Finding an elder to invite: work through relationships or a local Indigenous org

As for how to identify an elder to offer a welcome, Kalk recommends starting from existing  relationships you or your colleagues have with elders from that territory.

If you don’t have any existing relationships, she encourages reaching out to a local friendship centre or Indigenous organization, and respectfully asking if they might be able to direct you to someone who could help you.

At DSF, Aspinall says her team identifies elders or representatives of local Indigenous nations through their existing connections with Indigenous people.

In addition, she says they try to ensure they’ve offered something to that organization or nation before asking for something in return. “It comes down to…ensuring we’re not just showing up for a local nation when we need something from them,” she says.

For instance, DSF has recently supported a guide book on clean energy projects led by Indigenous groups, Aspinall says. In addition, since 2015, they’ve partnered with the Squamish Nation on hosting “Camp Suzuki,” a multi-generational summer camp for kids, youth and adults which offers education on both coastal protection and Squamish history, practices, and culture.

When approaching an elder, Kalk says, it’s important to honor the time, energy and wisdom they’re bringing to you and your organization. Different nations have different protocols for showing that respect — be it by offering a gift of tobacco, a piece of cloth, Indigenous medicines, or otherwise. (If you don’t know the appropriate gift, this is a good question to ask the person who is connecting you to the elder, Kalk says.)

In addition, honorariums are an important way to recognize an elder for the time and knowledge they’re offering. Some elders prefer a monetary honorarium, while others prefer another gift of some sort, Kalk says.

She also underscores that elders are, by nature, older people, and often frail. Asking an eighty-year-old to leave their home at night at -30 below to speak with an at-capacity crowd is a big request, she says. “So we just need to be considerate of the time, the knowledge, the awareness and the energies that they’re providing us and take that with the utmost value.”

Taylor-Sterritt adds it’s important to understand that it’s appropriate to invite an elder for a territorial welcome — not a land acknowledgement.

An elder she spoke with this summer explained it this way: “She said, ‘I was invited here to do a land acknowledgment, but this is the land of my people. I was born here’…She was like, ‘I’m doing an opening, I’m welcoming you.’”

An invitation to an ‘open space’ for questions

This past November, for the first time, when Rowena Veylan opened registrations for the Indigenous protocols workshop, nobody signed up. This followed a workshop in September that was only half-subscribed. The change in attendance numbers surprised her, after sold out workshops the year prior.

“Was last year largely a raw response to the unmarked graves?” Veylan asks. “I don’t know. We’ll see.”

Those low numbers came as a surprise to Tania Vrionis, CEO of Ovarian Cancer Canada. Last March, her whole team of about 30 staff took the workshop, looking for an opportunity to build upon the solo education they’d done during the first Truth and Reconciliation day.

For Vrionis, the time investment was well worth it, helping to fill in missing knowledge, to hear from an elder, and to develop a more personal approach to land acknowledgements.

“This wasn’t about getting a textbook and learning what to say and what not to say,” Vrionis says. “This was really about understanding why and self-reflecting.”

As part of the workshop, participants are given the opportunity to develop a land acknowledgment; and crucially, to do so alongside their whole staff team.

For both Vrionis and Aspinall, too, another benefit of the workshop was the facilitation team’s approach, one that prioritized welcoming their staff wherever they are on their learning journey.

“There’s just a big fear that I think white people share of getting it wrong,” Aspinall says. “And the course gave us the guidelines and the background so that we are much more confident in saying: we can educate ourselves and honor Indigenous relationships.”

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