This experimental nonfiction essay discusses re/cognition of the land which UMF stands on. It began as a singular perspective piece from the eyes of a person of settler-colonial descent looking through a camera lens at native flowers and commenting on UMF’s 2019 land acknowledgement, but it has since grown into an essay which also looks to and converses with the Wabanaki Confederacy, whose ancestral land UMF stands on. While it discusses Wabanaki hardship, it more importantly brings forward Wabanaki joy and what the beauty, the cultivation, and the acknowledgement of this land means to Wabanaki peoples. This essay discusses what land acknowledgement means, and what activism needs to take place after land acknowledgement in order to combat the systems which still exist to hinder Wabanaki joy and growth, so that we can have a reciprocal, healthy relationship with this land and the Wabanaki peoples.
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