Toronto Blue Jays open MLB season with land acknowledgement [Video]

For the third straight year, Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays opened its season at home with an acknowledgement that the team is actually playing on Indigenous land.

It is also the fourth season the team has included land acknowledgements at home games. Since late September 2021, the Blue Jays organization — along with pro teams the Toronto Raptors and Toronto Maple Leafs — has declared before games that Rogers Centre is actually on the “traditional territory” of native people.

This declaration was made around the time Canada recognized National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as a holiday in the country, which was previously known as Orange Shirt Day, and was celebrated as such by the Toronto sports teams, per the National Post.

The Blue Jays organization has recognized that it is “based on Treaty 13 lands – traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit,” its websitehas described. It also recognizes that the team is “located on the traditional home of many other nations …