Group Facilitation Week: Land Acknowledgement

Group facilitation by Giulia Di Giovanni, Terry Kent, Andrea Livingstone, and Darren Wilson

Welcome to our final facilitation week, Fostering Inclusion in Digital Learning.

This weekend is one where we give thanks, and in the spirit of decolonization and reconciliation, we invite you to re-examine the giving of thanks through an Indigenous lens.

Rituals of giving thanks have existed for millennia, across many cultures.

While the colonial tradition of Thanksgiving in Canada is a more solemn tradition of gratitude for the harvest than the American celebration, it is still founded in Protestant religious values and the European idea of a “divine destiny” to the land. 

Many indigenous nations have thanksgiving rituals that acknowledge the place of humans within an interconnected set of relationships between earth and moon, sky and water. 

One such tradition, which is well documented in the public domain, is the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address.

Most often used to open and close ceremonies, the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address acknowledges the relationships of humankind to our environment, and recognizes that all we need is provided to us by the land.

Rather than recite the text of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address in its entirety, we invite you to reconsider colonial traditions through this indigenous framework, based on the most commonly referenced version told by the late Chief Jake Swamp.

Most importantly, we invite you to give thanks in your own words, in ways that feel authentic and meaningful to you, acknowledging the land and its traditional peoples wherever you may live, work, learn, and play.

We invite you to give thanks to each other as people, and give thanks to the Earth Mother.

Give thanks to the water and the fish; to the plants, the herbs and trees; give thanks to the animals and the birds.

Give thanks to the four winds, and to the thunderers. 

Give thanks to the Sun, to Grandmother Moon, and to the Stars.

We give thanks to you, our fellow Enlightened Teachers.

And we give thanks to the Creator, for all gifts of creation.

And lastly, we thank you for joining us on this journey.

Welcome to our week of learning.