Do you live on stolen Indigenous land?

June 10, 2025

A lawsuit filed by four UBC professors in BC’s Supreme Court argues that the university’s formal land acknowledgements are political, and therefore contrary to provincial law. They argue that by using words like “unceded” — meaning the land was never surrendered through treaty agreements — such acknowledgments say Canada’s land is “stolen” and therefore question the state’s legitimacy. A number of legal scholars and Indigenous leaders warn that such action will undermine progress on Indigenous land rights and reconciliation. Some have outrightly dismissed the case as irrelevant. When surveyed most Canadians do not believe that they re living on stolen indigenous land according to a May 2025 survey done by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies. Some 27% believe they are living on stolen indigenous lands, 52% don’t and 21% don’t know. A June 2021 ACS-Leger survey asking whether Canadians felt that they currently lived on ‘unceded’ indigenous lands found that 25% said yes, 42% said No and 33% didn’t know. In short, Canadians are more likely to reject the idea that they live on stolen rather than on unceded indigenous land even though the difference between the two is widely regarded as semantic. The 2025 survey reveals that the majority of British Columbians reject the idea that they live on stolen indigenous lands as do most Vancourites that were polled. The findings emerge from a survey conducted by Leger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies over the period May 16-18, 2025.with1537 respondents in Canada. A margin of error cannot be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey for comparison purposes. A probability sample of 1537 respondents would have a margin of error of ±2.5%, 19 times out of 20.