Over the cacophony of the classroom, the PA system crackled to life and the voice of the office administrator rushed through the daily quota of announcements beginning with the statement, “We acknowledge that this land is the traditional territory…” But the words were lost amid the hubbub of thirty grade one students preparing for the day. Troubled by this, I found myself wondering how such an important idea might be shared in a way that allowed it to sink in and be absorbed rather than disappear into background noise.
For the next few weeks, I pondered. What could help young children in a suburban neighborhood grasp that everything familiar around them—the land where their school and houses now sat, the sidewalks where they rode their bikes, the splash pad where they cooled off in the summer—had once been home to other people? What could nudge them to care about a reality that seemed so distant and abstract? Perhaps the best place to begin was with something more concrete.
When I was a little girl my grandparents had a new driveway poured. Before it dried, they let me write my initials and the date in the wet cement. Every summer I would check on my inscription—proof that my younger self had once been there. I even imagined that someday some other child might notice those wobbly hieroglyphics and wonder who had made them.
With this memory in mind, I wrote a story about a little girl who finds clues that someone else lived in her home before her. There are initials scratched on a baseboard, footprints and a date inscribed in the sidewalk, an old swing dangling from tree, and a pile of junk abandoned in the basement. These hints of earlier inhabitants lead her on an imaginative journey further and further back in time, all the way to the first people who lived on those lands.
My first few readers liked the concept but wondered if I could give the story more of an environmental aspect. So instead of simply zooming back in time, I also zoomed out in space, stretching the concept of home beyond any particular territory to include the entire planet. With this shift came a new vision for the story. Its focus was no longer primarily on the past, but also on the future; it did not only look back to those who had lived here before, but forward to those yet to come. It became a story about all human beings and our relationship with the earth.
This is my home.
I live here.
But I am not the first.
There were people here before me.
They left some things behind.
Some were good.
Others were not.
I tried to depict the nuanced nature of this relationship as simply as possible. I wanted to show that humans have found different ways of relating to the earth, sometimes living gently and respectfully, other times exploiting the planet for their own immediate benefit. I wanted to help children see that how we perceive the earth—as an object to be used, a gift to be cherished, or a living entity with whom we are in relationship—matters immensely, both for us and for those who will come after us. Most of all, I wanted to convey a sense of delight and wonder, because that is the seed from which our actions and choices grow.
Underlying Here is an ancient Haudenosaunee teaching that says the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations in the future. This principle applies both to our environment and to our relationships with other living beings.
Earth has many special places.
Some are so secret hardly anyone ever sees them.
But they are still beautiful—all by themselves.
To care for someone or something you may never see, to preserve it for future generations you will never know, is a radical act of humility, faith, and love.
Here: The Dot We Call Home turned out to be a land acknowledgment after all. It acknowledges that we are all earthlings, made from the same elements as the rest of the material world. It acknowledges the harm we have done, but also the hope we have—hope that begins with our presence and loving attention to what is closest to us.
Start here.
Laura Alary 