The land we came from: My people are my homeland

I hate to think the place I played in as a child might someday become unrecognisable, but I still give thanks.

Listen to this story: In this series “The land we came from”, we asked writers to reflect on the environment they grew up in and how it has shaped their lives. Here, author Terese Marie Mailhot reflects on the land of Seabird Island Band in British Columbia and the people who make it home. White people dug up the things my grandmother planted. I felt betrayed by my own family for letting it happen. How could they rent the land to those Yé xwelítem (white) farmers? But I love my people. My God – they are as much my homeland as the land itself. How could I fault them for exchanging the blueberry bush for groceries? An apple tree for meat? Our snowball tree, and the cedar – for rent? My mother did the same when I was young. I remember summers in a white man’s cow corn, running through the field with my brother, kicking stalks, feeling less like it was our land, and more like it was theirs. Even to a baby, like I was then, it seemed unfair that money can snatch up every sacred thing.