AskSaidIt

Essentially it's just sticking a preface onto papers or speeches that says "We acknowledge we are on the stolen land of the xyz tribe". The original idea was to increase awareness of the historical plight of the natives (which is a good goal) but I think the way they go about it is entirely countereffective to that. Especially since the counter argument is the land was "conquered" not stolen. People don't like being told constantly they are terrible for stealing the Indians land because of their race, when nobody alive today was around then and many of them were born on the land that they supposedly "stole".

It's essentially generational guilt which is a concept i wholly reject as barbaric. I think it creates more white supremacists than it stops.

In practice though in universities it's little more than a "mandatory prayer" that you'll see religious institutions impose. You want to give a talk about the mating habits of seagulls or some other totally unrelated thing but you need to acknowledge that it wouldn't be possible for you to give your talk without the help of Jesus, or the stolen land of the natives, or else you risk attracting the ire of someone in the institution for subordination of their policy and jeopardizing your career. As a result , just like in most religious institutions, many people don't actually care about, agree with, or even believe the acknowledgements but do them anyway. And many ambitious and amoral types have no issue using these sorts of things as a way to either advance in the institution or to eliminate rivals so things can become quite ridiculous if there is a lack of competent leadership to quash such people. At the end of it all land acknowledgements are just a silly power game. Nothing more. They have already largely fallen out of favor and new power games rise to take their place. And as you'll see with the changing of the political tides just as how many companies and universities were quick to adopt DEI and other such policies as a way to gain funding they'll be just as quick to drop them to gain funding.

Land acknowledgements therefore have nothing to do with actually acknowledging the land you are on, they are about acknowledging the authority of the institution and how you, much like a dancing bear at the circus, need to perform in order to get fed.