A land acknowledgement at an event in Regina malfunctioned on Tuesday, causing the city and huge parts of Saskatchewan to be briefly returned to First Nations.
Land acknowledgements are statements made by mainly non-Indigenous people before meetings and events that recognize the territories in which they occur.
The return of land occurred when a city official stated that a new school was being built on ‘land belonging to the Cree and Ojibway Peoples’ instead of the required statement, ‘the traditional homeland of the Cree and Ojibway Peoples.’
“After he said it the ground trembled and the lights started flickering,” said Mia Delorme, a Cree woman who witnessed to the event.
“Then all of a sudden the land was ours again. It was pretty awesome.”
A senior official quickly evoked the correct land acknowledgement and returned the land to Saskatchewan. The province issued a statement blaming the temporary land return on ‘human error.’