The first owners of this land

L

and is unanimated. Land is continental crust rising higher above the mantle because of its lower density. Land is where terrestrial organisms live. Land is arid until it becomes someone’s place. Land without life is dead. So, what makes land memorable is life; from the smallest and simplest forms of life such as microorganisms, to people. People who live in it, people who cultivate and respect it. Land also make people’s stories possible, and those stories make people own that land as the Tsimshian elder would say “If this is your land, where are your stories?” (from J. Edward Chamberlin’s book).

Last week was about the owners of the land beneath my cold feet. We had the opportunity to learn about them, the people European colonizers thought were not. We went to the Secwepemc museum a quarter of an hour away from campus.

As normal, recently, the sky was covered in dense grey clouds and the temperature was not very pleasant. I was feeling a little bit dizzy, and the cold was not helping really much. Fortunately, they had the heat on inside the building. I observed the building as I stepped in, it was not the fanciest nor a high-profile museum; it was old and dusty. A map of the world was hanging in the wall with lots of pins in it indicating every visitor’s homeland; I saw home.

Jackie, our guide for the afternoon, was awaiting in the following room. She was the one to guide us through the history of her people and her land, her experiences and her own stories. Could we ask for more? The protagonist of the museum explaining her stories; not a random guide who has no relation to what the museum exposes and that has to do its job just to get paid at the end of the month. I could tell from the beginning that she would do it differently. If only Leonardo da Vinci could tell us the story behind “La Gioconda” himself, as well as Michelangelo of “La volta della Cappella Sistina” or Antoni Gaudí of “La Sagrada Família”.

We soaked up every piece of information she gave us: games, rituals after funerals or before hunting, music, beliefs, cooking and their relationship with nature. For all the modern commodities you could think of, they had an alternative; land provided everything they would need to survive: wood was used for canoes or tools, the fluffy parts of some plant served as absorbent pads or bandages… The rest, to make that space a place, was their responsibility.

The hours flew by and it was already time to leave. As I was heading out, there was something stuck in my mind that wouldn’t leave: “It’s impossible not to survive in nature, there’s everything out there” Jackie said quoting her mom. I kept on thinking about it… “there’s no way that I could survive into the wild right now… I would get eaten by a bear or I would freeze to death… No way”. Something hit on my head. “Well… Yes, I could but I wouldn’t know how, because I’m not more of than a tourist in nature, I’m not synchronized with it”. The cold out there hit me hard which it made me return to planet Earth.

The afternoon still: the far sound of the train accompanied the honk of the geese flying over our heads. As we were approaching to the shore of the river, I identified three humps on the ground; winter pit houses. They used to build those houses underground to keep the arctic cold outside and to avoid wind slamming to the walls of the house. Those places would be home for a single family for 5 years, more or so. A place full of stories, laughter and joy. A place built by the owners of this land.

---

As I was thinking about ten verbs related to a profession and ten nouns about my surroundings, my head tried to relate the Secwepemc people history to my very own, but I couldn’t, because as European I'm in the other side of the story. However, I can say that, as a visitor of this land, this first unanimated and arid space has now become a place to me.