Creating kinship with the land: Indigenous plants return home at Marlborough Elementary
By Miriam Tratt, teacher, Burnaby
Paying attention to anything in a sustained way gives rise to kinship. – Michael Stone, Buddhist teacher, author, and mental health advocate
Five years ago, my colleague Amelia Dare and I posed ourselves a question: if reconciliation is to become an ordinary part of school life, what kind of changes take place when we start with our relationship to the land? And in what way might students come to realize that learning occurs not only in classrooms but also as a result of lasting relationships with the places where we learn?
The school vegetable garden has long served as an outdoor classroom where students engage in planting, harvesting, and exploring nature. Yet, we identified a missing element: native plant kin. Originally, our goal was to provide students with opportunities to learn about indigenous plants. But recognizing that plants are living relatives of the land rather than mere objects of study, we decided to shift our approach. We started making plans to reintroduce some indigenous plant species. We wanted to begin to integrate them into our school ecosystem.
The courtyard at our school provided such an opportunity. It is a public space used by students, teachers, parents, and neighbours every day. Now it is a place that brings together community, school, plants, and learning.
In the spring of 2021, Amelia and I sourced indigenous seedlings from the Environmental Youth Alliance and reclaimed a section of the courtyard for the plants to come “home.” As the plants have grown year by year, students have built close bonds with these living teachers. This space has become a place where students come to understand stewardship as a continuous relationship requiring them to return, observe, and respond.
For the past three years, my Grade 2 and 3 students have worked in small inquiry groups, learning alongside six indigenous plant species at a time. They learn the plant names in the Skwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and Hən’q’əmin’əm (Downriver dialect of Halkomelem) Coast Salish languages, explore traditional, ecological, and medicinal knowledge, and record their observations through detailed drawings.
Rather than being taught as separate subjects, science, language, art, and story are woven together through careful observation of living systems. Students gain knowledge through relationships — with plants, with language, with the community, and with the land.
I compile students’ work into small field guides. Each guidebook is then printed and added to the collection in Marlborough’s library. In this way, they become part of the school’s shared memory and are available to future students, teachers, and schools within our district to use. Currently there are three volumes in the collection, with more books planned for the coming years.
From the start, we also wanted to have a ceremony to welcome the plants back “home.” Last June, thanks to the Burnaby Teachers’ Association Reconciliation Grant, we were able to carry out that plan. We invited Indigenous Knowledge Keeper Senaqwila Wyss (daughter of Cease Wyss) to bless the plants and share teachings.
The day after National Indigenous Peoples Day and the summer solstice, as the new summer sun shone brightly, Amelia and I gathered students around the indigenous plants and all our other classes joined via livestream. Several of our district’s Indigenous learning teachers and Burnaby’s board of education chair Kristin Schnider were also present. Through song, drumming, ceremony, and story, we participated in a different kind of gathering — one grounded in relationship, gratitude, and respect.
After the ceremony, every student and staff member took part in a procession, walking past the indigenous plants, each holding a personal promise written on a traditional Coast Salish shape that they placed on scrolls of paper spread out on the gym floor. These scrolls are now displayed on the bulletin boards in the main foyers and will be there to welcome us in September, serving as a reminder of our promises and of our kinship with the land.
These plants are home again. They have belonged to this place since time immemorial. The return of the indigenous plants reminds us that recon-ciliation does not mean introducing some-thing new but rather giving relationships that have always been there a chance to thrive. These relationships show up when students slow down to notice seasonal changes, greet familiar plants as they pass by, share what they have learned with younger students, and keep coming back year after year to look after them. These simple acts remind us that land-based learning is not just a one-off outdoor activity, but an ongoing educational practice.
