Importance of Place 

A Note about Family and Belonging

Before reading about place and placelessness generally, and within the realm of place-based education, it is important to pause and understand my position within the literature. My family escaped persecution during pogroms in Russia by immigrating to Winnipeg, Manitoba, after being denied access to the United States at the ports of Ellis Island while the quota system for Jewish immigrants was in place. After being placeless, my family became settlers on Anishinaabe land, providing a sense of belonging and rootedness. Their sense of belonging unintentionally furthered the colonial agenda to displace people Indigenous to the land. I sit with this tension -- knowing that my family’s safety could mean extraction and loss for a family who was Indigenous to the land.  However, the essence of a place is not limited to the location or place it serves, but rather the “unselfconscious intentionality that defines places as profound centers of human existence” (Relph 1976, p.43).

Importance of Place

The land is always stalking people. The land makes people live right.

The land looks after us. The land looks after people.

-Annie Peaches quoted in Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places

A  relationship with place is contingent on relationships formed within that place -- both socially and with the natural world. There are many concepts of place that go beyond the physical, "multifaceted dimensions of place, including in relation to considerations of temporality (rhythms of place, events in place), embodiment (hearing, listening, being in place), and power (who occupies, intervenes in, or who has access to place)" (Mckenzie and Bieler 2016, p.62). Places inspire feelings in those who inhabit them. These feelings can be personal, but the experiences within place are felt in community. In Wisdom Sits in Places, anthropologist Keith Basso, through storytelling, explores how an Apache community shares knowledge. He says, "the most basic dimensions of human experience--that close companion of heart and mind…is known as sense of place" (1996, p.106). 

We shape our sense of belonging and identity by "building a relationship with place. When we learn to strengthen our relationships with and understanding of place, we learn to better ourselves" (Lake 2018, p.8). Places are filled with memory -- of experiences of ancestors who once walked the land. Memories create stories within place to disseminate ideas, traditions, and values. In Wisdom Sits in Places, Apache Dudley Patterson recounted a memory to Basso about how place-making enables Apache selfhood. His grandmother "gave" him  "the trail of wisdom," which is based on the Apache theory of wisdom and includes three mental conditions - the smoothness of mind, resilience of mind, and steadiness of mind. All are acquired through experience - relationships with others and the land:

“Wisdom sits in places. It's like water that never dries up. You need to drink water to stay alive, don't you? Well, you also need to drink from places. You must remember everything about them. You must learn their names. You must remember what happened at them long ago. You must think about it and keep on thinking about it. Then your mind will become smoother and smoother. Then you will see danger before it happens. You will walk a long way and live a long time. You will be wise. People will respect you.”

(Basso quoted Patterson 1996, p.70) 

Patterson continues to explain that a steady mind is not self-serving and relinquishes any need for superiority; to "forget about themselves." You reach a level of understanding of those around you and "conduct social affairs in harmony and peace," rid of hierarchies between people and people to the land. Wisdom transcends time, connecting places, people and stories. Wisdom is of the place, but the place itself is the body of knowledge. These ideas stem from the importance of place-making, which is created through storytelling, imagination, and memory (Basso 1996).