For most people, the land acknowledgments that have become common in public gatherings in Canada fall somewhere between a responsibility and a chore. For Aaron Gunn, the filmmaker turned Conservative MP for North Island-Powell River, they are apparently a Trojan horse aimed at undermining private property rights. 

In a recent social media post, he argued that “if the federal government truly believes in the private property rights of Canadians, they should probably stop opening every public meeting by proclaiming the gathering on the ‘unceded territory’ of this or that First Nation. Doing so reinforces the radical and dangerous legal concept that most Canadians live on ‘stolen land’.”

This is a curious position for him to take, given that Pierre Poilievre assured Canadians just last April that Gunn only wanted to “build stronger partnerships with First Nations people” after comments he’d made about the history of residential schools came to light. In a joint statement, the chiefs of the Tla’amin, Homalco, K’omoks and Klahoose nations — whose territory all fall within Gunn’s federal riding — solemnly suggested their member of parliament “chillax, bud.” More seriously, they noted that “land acknowledgements have never seized private property, cancelled a mortgage, repossessed a pickup truck or altered a single title deed anywhere in Canada. They are simply people recognizing the history of the place where they are standing.”

But the reaction in conservative circles to a pair of recent developments — one court decision, one federal agreement — is nothing to joke about. The BC Supreme Court’s August 2025 verdict in the long-running Cowichan Tribes v. Canada case recognized the Cowichan Nation’s Aboriginal title to part of the Fraser River’s south arm, and affirmed its constitutional right to fish there. To hear some pundits and politicians, though, the decision cast the entire system of private property rights into question and poses an existential threat to the future of the province and country. 

Lawyers — many lawyers! — have tried to introduce some facts to these feelings. As a quartet of attorneys from MLT Aikins noted in their summary of the decision, “to some, the decision is a logical and predictable outcome based on the history and jurisprudence of Canada. To others, the decision is a threat and concern.” A trio of lawyers from JFK Law were more blunt in their own analysis. “The gap between what the decision says and how it’s being portrayed in the media and by some politicians is significant, creating unnecessary fear and confusion, and concerningly, a rise in anti-Indigenous racism.”

If anything, the reaction to the so-called “Rights Recognition Agreement” between the federal government and the Musqueam Nation has been even more unhinged. Because the Musqueam Nation’s traditional territory covers much of Vancouver, and because the agreement in question acknowledged the existence of unextinguished rights and title within that territory, some have tried to connect those two dots. 

“Ottawa’s recognition of Musqueam’s Aboriginal title over much of Metro Vancouver is just the latest development in a long list of court decisions and bilateral agreements between governments, particularly BC and the federal government and First Nations,” the Fraser Institute’s Neils Veldhuis and Jason Clemens argued in an op-ed. “These agreements have incrementally weakened — and now genuinely threaten — private property.”

What we need right now is a serious and sober-minded conversation around Indigenous rights and reconciliation. What we're getting instead is fear mongering by Conservatives around the supposed threat to property rights and economic prosperity.

Here, again, lawyers have tried to ground this conversation in reality. “That language does not convey that Musqueam has Aboriginal title to the entirety of its traditional territory, or even a substantial portion of it,” JFK Law’s Mae Price and Maya Ollek write. “Rather, it simply acknowledges the obvious fact that Musqueam has Aboriginal title to some areas that lie within its traditional territory, and within that territory Musqueam also has Aboriginal rights, such as to fish for food. … Canada does not have the ability to unilaterally take away private lands held in fee simple, and nothing in these agreements purports to do so.”

As former BC Green Party MLA (and Tsartlip First Nation member) Adam Olsen pointed out, the agreement between Ottawa and the Musqueam is what reconciliation is supposed to look like. “The courts have consistently advised that rights and title are best recognized through negotiation rather than extinguishment and litigation,” he wrote in a piece for The Tyee. “The agreements create a pathway out of the Indian Act through a self-government agreement, while leaving rights and title to be recognized through continued negotiation. It is a good approach.”

The problem here — well, one of them — is that this whole discussion is happening in an environment where things like fact, nuance and calm have almost no purchase on the algorithms feeding people their information. They reward moral outrage, maximalist statements and thorough investigations of every available slippery slope. To put it mildly, these are not ideal conditions for a conversation about something as complex as Indigenous title. Worse still, it’s an issue most Canadians are woefully under-educated about, predisposing them to hysterical reactions.

Provincial and federal officials could — and should — have been better briefed on both of these developments. They should have done more political spade work to educate the public about the legal landscape in which these things are happening and inoculated them as best they could against the inevitable fearmongering and rage-baiting. Most importantly, they should have been more mindful of the damage all of this would do to relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the province.

But Conservative leaders also have to do their best here. Right now, whether it’s Gunn or OneBC’s Dallas Brodie, they’re an awful long way from that right now. Maybe they were never that interested in what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had to say and maybe they’re not interested in redressing past wrongs. Not, at least, when there are clicks to be farmed and rage to be baited. 

Reconciliation was never going to be easy, though — and we’ve officially reached the part where it gets a whole lot harder. It’s one thing to engage in largely performative acts like land acknowledgments, after all, and quite another to make decisions that may involve material trade-offs and sacrifices. But it’s our willingness to make them, and avoid succumbing to the temptations of political and personal advantage along the way, that will determine whether we actually live up to the promise of reconciliation. 

© National Observer