Deconstructing land acknowledgements: from oral to cinematic expression

What kinds of stories do we tell within the genre of land acknowledgements? What kinds of stories are we telling about ourselves in relation to the land? And how do land acknowledgments on film tell a different story than oral ones? After a brief discussion on the purpose and intention of the contemporary land acknowledgement, I will describe how Indigenous filmmakers go about acknowledging the territories where their stories are set in Falls Around Her (2018), Blood Quantum (2019) and Kayak to Klemtu (2017). Indigenous cinema often challenges the habit of locating treaty agreements in utterly past contexts as the act of acknowledging the land where the film is set is front and centre.