This Land Is Our Land
I love how this book starts. The words on the first double-paged spread say “This is my house.” Behind it is a river. Beside the house is a tall pine tree. We see a family by the tree.
Turn the page and see “Before us, another family lived here.” On that page, the illustrations are family portrait style. Four different families are shown, each family unique, each clad in modern clothes.
Turn the page again and we read the words “Before our house was here, there was another family, with a different kind of house.” On that page we see wigwams in a village and the families who lived in them. The people in that village are wearing clothes with Anishinaabe designs. Behind that village is the river we saw earlier, and that tree? It is a small, young tree.
All the faces and families up to that point are cheery, happy. With the words and illustrations on these pages, Fairbanks and George take us from the present into the past, helping readers see, learn, and feel that the land they’re on was someone else’s before.
Another page turn and we get hard history. It is a fact that Europeans who came on to Native homelands wanted that land, and the government helped them get it by removing Native peoples from their homelands. We see that on the next page turn. The image below is a portion of that page.
It is followed by another page of hard history.
But then, we turn the page again and see the little girl from the very first page, running down the street to her friend’s house. That friend, TJ, is Anishinaabe. We see him and his grandma standing in a doorway, smiling and waving at the little girl.
With another page turn we see the little girl, TJ, and his grandmother making bread. The little girl tells us that TJ’s grandmother told her about other Native people. At the top of the page, we see nine different people in traditional clothing.
Picture me, smiling. One of them is a Native woman dressed the way I dress when I’m home for one of our ceremonies. The “wow” I felt when I first read the book continues. The little girl is on a road trip. Here’s a sentence you’ll get to:
At the Grand Canyon, I learned that eight tribes call it home: the Havasupai, Yavapai, Paiute, Hopi, Zuni, Hualapai, Apache, and Diné.
Eight tribes call it home. Present tense verbs. In workshops and professional development, I push hard to encourage educators to use present tense verbs to talk about us. Again, picture me smiling.
This book is going to be featured in my work. Another page spread tells us that Disney World is on Seminole land, the White House is on Nacotchtank and Piscataway land, and that Mount Rushmore is on Oceti Sakowin land. There’s a link to a database to see what land you, the reader, are on, and that page is followed by a page of discussion questions and suggestions to learn more about the people of that land. Illustrations show Native people holding up signs with their tribal nation’s name.
Get more than one copy if you can, and if you’d like to support Native-owned bookstores, go to one in person or online. One option is Birchbark Books. But get the book.
