Land acknowledgements—formal statements recognizing Indigenous custodianship of land—are widespread in Australia, where they originated, and have been gaining traction in the USA. Proponents argue they raise awareness of Indigenous histories and build support for reparations, but causal evidence is limited. Here randomized experiments on non-Indigenous populations in Australia (N = 1,724) and the USA (N = 1,773) find that exposure to land acknowledgements increases awareness of local Indigenous groups but can reduce interest in Indigenous culture and heritage.
We find no significant effects on a range of political attitudes, including collective guilt and support for reparations. Additional experiments (N = 3,638) suggest that the adoption of land acknowledgements provides small reputational benefits to institutions facing public scrutiny. Costlier practices—such as financial compensation and Indigenous participation in decision-making—have significantly larger effects.
These findings suggest that land acknowledgements primarily improve organizational reputation rather than generate sociopolitical change. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout All replication data and statistical code for this research have been deposited in a public Dataverse repository (10.7910/DVN/6ZW5HN)115. Source data are provided with this paper.
All analyses were conducted using open-source statistical software (R version 4.4.2) and did not rely on any custom or proprietary mathematical algorithms. The replication code to reproduce all analyses presented in this Article and its Supplementary Information is provided in the public Dataverse repository (https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6ZW5HN)115. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States (Duke Univ.
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