In her new book, Anishinaabe author Ashley Fairbanks invites children to honor their ancestral land

On August 27, Minnesota-born Anishinaabe author Ashley Fairbanks released her first book for children, titled This Land, which invites children to trace the history of their homeland and honor the indigenous people who lived on this land.

It's part of a larger children's series called “Race to the Truth,” which emphasizes the importance of talking to children about race. MPR News digital producer Sam Stroozas spoke with Fairbanks ahead of the release.

Can you give a summary of the book?

This Land is a book aimed primarily at non-natives, introducing them to the history of the land and how we can remember who lived before us on the land we live on.

A lot of people talk about land acknowledgements and it's so superficial, just mentioning the names of the people who were there before. I wanted people to really imagine who lived on that land before.

We start with a child thinking about his own backyard and all the families that lived in his house before him, and then about the Native American village that must have once been there. Then he learns from a Native neighbor and his grandmother that everywhere you go you should think about the Native people who lived and lived on that land before they were displaced.

You're from Minnesota but now live in Texas. Are there any references to your home state in the book?

When I was writing the book, I intentionally left the exact location of the main character's family open so that other children could fill in the gap. But in reality, Duluth was kind of the place I had envisioned in my head.

And then it was really interesting because the illustrator of the book, who is also Anishinaabe, lives in London, Ontario. And so I think that since she's thinking of London, Ontario and I'm thinking of Duluth, we have a kind of Ojibwe town that we can fill for the kids.

And because I'm Ojibwe, the characters in the book speak Ojibwe. We talk about “Nookomis,” which means “my grandmother” in Ojibwe. So it's all very Ojibwe-related, but not so much the colonial borders of the state of Minnesota.

Why do you think it is important to introduce children of this age to such conversations?

I actually started my career developing and designing museum exhibits at the Minnesota History Center. I worked on an exhibit that's still there called “Then Now Wow,” and it really struck me that we only teach Native American history to kids in Minnesota in fifth and sixth grade.

For most children, it's basically just a one-week curriculum. Other school districts have gone even further and expanded the curriculum to other school years. However, the standard for what we teach about Native history is very low, and that's true in virtually every state.

I think it's really important that from the time children develop a concept of who belongs where and who lives on their block, they also think about who lived here before them.

And when we talk about Native people in the United States, so much of it has to do with “a long time ago.” When you put it in context – you know, before my house was built, there was a family living here – I think it becomes much more tangible to people that Native people lived on the same land not that long ago that they live on today, and that many of us, even young people, have relatives who were displaced.

My own grandparents were moved from my reservation to the city. I wanted to make it clear to the children from a very early age that they are not the first to live here. Columbus did not discover the USA. People were here, people lived here and people are still here – the present tense is still very important.

What's next for you?

I'm currently writing my next book in the Race to the Truth series (which I'm almost finished). It's for middle school. It's aimed at sixth through eighth grade students and it's about the history of residential schools and the removal of children from indigenous families, which is not a new topic for me.

I studied it in college, went to the University of Minnesota, and worked with great professors like Dr. Brenda Child, without whose training and her own work on residential schools I could not have written this book.

That book will actually come out in 2025, and it's very different from this one. It's not a children's book, it's not a picture book, but it's a pretty serious introduction to everything from boarding schools to the adoption era to ICWA and today to cultural revitalization and language immersion.

Can you explain your writing process on this topic and how it affected you?

It was a very emotional process. Compared to the last book, it was really hard to write this new book. Of course, it's 40,000 words and not a lot. So it was a real challenge.

But when I worked at the History Center and did the exhibit that I did there, I was in charge of the whole residential school section, so I know a lot about that subject, and the exhibit is designed for sixth graders. When I was working on it, I spent a lot of time at the National Archives, reading letters from parents and letters home from kids that were never sent, looking at school records and seeing how many kids died in residential schools.

I also have a 13-year-old daughter, so it was a real challenge to think about how I would explain these things to her. How do you not sugarcoat the story, but really give children as much honesty as they can handle?

“This Land” can be purchased locally at Moon Palace Books and Birchbark Books & Native Arts.