Land. Instead of holding it back let’s give it back. What does it mean to hold land in a bank? Land Bank? What a perverse concept. However, Land Bank is actually only one letter away from Land Back. It’s time for a Detroit Land Back Authority. Detroit sits between what she once was, an unpaved and untrashed Waawiyaatanong, and what she is yet to be, a vast city retrofitted with nature. We can never bring back what was, but we can create a future that responds to the harms of the recent past and is informed by the natural order of the deep past. There are small steps like cleaning the landscape, and there are huge steps like ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to reconnect with the land.
As Detroit has shrunk, Detroit has grown. Houses are demolished and space is opened up. For half a century we have witnessed a progression away from the built environment back towards nature. This transition has not been a neutral one. Many people have been sacrificed in this racist capitalist story. And, still we remain hopeful as we attempt to heal from these wounds. When we peel back the pavement and open the soil to the sun and the rain we release life that has remained dormant for generations. We have a chance now to nurture this life, Detroit’s greatest gift. Instead of holding land in vaults beneath pavement, or in a bank, we can release it, give it back, and reconnect.
The burned and crumbling house next door that has cast its shadow on us for decades is finally demolished. We suddenly have access to a sunrise, a sunset, a garden, and a forest patch. This is the Detroit dream that so many of us have lived. We now have the privilege of shaping pieces of this land to our own visions and that of the natural world. Overnight we are reunited with the land in ways we may have never known.
We all know that a million people moved out. The white flight that ensued after the 1967 rebellion catalyzed this process of abandonment and decay. To many, this was the sad end of a story. For others it was the story, a life of watching a city unravel, struggle, and crumble. And yet, even though fifty years on these vacant lots created by the terrible fallout of redlining and neglect carries deep pain, they have also planted hope, have also meant a rebirth of nature. I’m talking about the birds, the plants, and the trees. I’m talking about the rich culture of folks who have made the Detroit I know and love. We know Detroiters by their grit and perseverance. This city is constantly changing as Detroiters usher in this dynamic activation of nature. We watch how our community sculpts land reborn. I’m told that this is not a “normal” urban experience. In Detroit, if we want to see it we create it. Some people want a farm, some an orchard, a meadow, an arboretum, a park, or a community space. I think there is room for everyone to dream.
Many questions arise in these reunions of soil with sun and rain. Personal questions like, how much food can I grow? What kind of trees do I want to see out my kitchen and bedroom windows? There are bigger questions too. What does the land want? What acts create mutual happiness? Who has access to the land? What opportunities does this new landscape hold for repair and reparations?
We are honored to be here pushing the rubble and trash out of the way so that the Earth can breathe and express itself, curbing the habit of suppression that has shaped this land in recent centuries. Land that was clearcut, bulldozed, paved, and built over has not been allowed much self expression. So much land once buried under a city is now free. Land Back is happening; the plants and trees return lot by lot. Land Back is engaging with them and recognizing that we too are nature.
Land stewards have the best job in the world; we work for the trees. We work for the birds. We work closely with the Earth. Yet most of us do so as visitors and it is time to work for the original people of Waawiiyatanong, the Anishinaabeg, as well. How can we make sure that we all share in these opportunities to connect with the land? We first give the land back to the land. We plant the seeds and we water them. We stop mindlessly cutting everything down. We see that the land wants to be forest and flowers. It’s what we need now and what we have always needed. It is time to heed the wisdom of those who have always known this. Land Back is listening.
The first step in the transformation of vacant space is to do nothing. Slow down and sit. Witness who occupies this space. Carefully consider the trees who showed up and have been making shade, oxygen, habitat, and beauty long before we arrived. Honor them. Clean up around them. Offer them a frame of wood chips so that others can see that they are loved. Stop mowing and more trees will show up with the wind and the squirrels and birds. This layer humbles us with the honor and invitation to be a part of it all. Why would I know better than a tree where she should be? Meet the tree who planted herself. Undo the habituation in us to suppress nature and all of our relations will return. We are healing the land and our relationship with the land. Lay a wood chip path and invite everyone into this reunion.
There is a very simple way to connect intimately with the land. Pick up a piece of trash, or clear 60 yards of it from a vacant lot near you. See how you feel. Tell someone, “happy garbage night.” Picking up litter short-circuits the capitalist system. Remember that there was a time before garbage. Garbage is an import. Garbage is sold in stores; we buy it. As a white settler descendant I cherish moments when I can make a tiny gesture of repair, and in that moment be harming none with my existence. Picking up a piece of trash when nobody’s looking and removing it from the landscape is an act of pure love to the Earth. We are rich when we can relieve land of this burden. It is beautifully private; our neighbors don’t even know what they’re not seeing. We alone know that this trash is removed and, along with the land, we feel the liberation. This is truer than it used to be when we were just sending garbage bags down the street to the incinerator where it was burned and blown back at us vaporized. And while we know that this is not as liberating as we would like, and know that we must collectively deal with the larger burden of what happens to trash once it is removed from sight, there remains something beautiful and hopeful in knowing that every person who comes down this street or this sidewalk after us does not have to see this insult to the land. And we do know what landfills are in Detroit, because many of us live next door to a thinly veiled one.
Together Detroiters have purged the surface of hundreds of thousands of yards of trash, but what about the layer below the surface? We love Detroit, so we don’t like to talk about the fact that so much of our city is a landfill, houses crunched into basements and capped with backfill. Here lie so many substances that should never have been extracted in the first place, turned into plastics and other synthetic materials, now toxic trash integrated into our living environment as the mowers shred and reshred them all summer. These include the lead in the paint, the asbestos in the siding and insulation, the synthetic fibers of carpeting, clothing, toys, and stuffed animals, the tar in the roofing, toxins imported with the backfill, and anything that someone would have left in the house when they abandoned it. These materials surround us. How do we bring healing to such mistreated land? How long will it take the soil to remediate this? How long does it take the roots of trees and meadow to subsume trash? Is this possible? Do we give up, or do we go to work with our plant relations? This is an experiment in hope.
There is a still deeper layer beneath the material mess we settlers have made. So many of our Poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous neighbors have been disconnected from this same land. We must recognize the massive trauma and erasure of the original people from this land. Now that we have nearly destroyed their home, what are the ways to honor these people? How do we recognize the Odawa, the Ojibwa, the Bodewadmi, and the Wyandotte? Exploitative treaties and modern injustices have removed these people from their homes. Can we visitors push enough of this mess out of the way to make room for them? Can we remix the Treaty of Detroit from 1807 and “quit claim” as our government forced the Anishinaabeg to do? There is no way to restore what was, but we can do better than what has been. Why are we holding land in a bank when we can be giving land back? Until there is a Detroit Land Back Authority perhaps it is up to us. This is Detroit; If we want to see it, we have to do it ourselves. We witness, support, and are inspired by those doing this great work like the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund, and The Black to the Land Coalition.
We do what we can with what we have. Maybe that means purchasing a neighborhood lot, cleaning it up, and donating it. Maybe it means a donation to those who are making it happen. We can get stuck on the fact that there is still garbage under the soil, or we can plant the trees and the medicinal plants and live with them here at the surface. We can get stuck on the fact that we cannot give land back that is so violently changed or we can realize that this is what we have to give and give it. Do we not pick up one piece of trash because we cannot pick up every piece of trash? There is so much joy in sitting in a meadow that we helped to be here, and in watching trees that we planted grow through the seasons and the decades. Everybody deserves this joy. By stewarding these spaces we prevent further abuse and degradation from development and mowing. Meadows and forests are the answer.
We can try to run from the mess here at the tailpipe of the capitalist waste stream, or we can put our roots down with the trees and the plants and respond to it. It is said that when we heal the Earth we heal ourselves. There is so much land that needs love and so many people who need healing. We plant trees here, because then we are at home, surrounded by our family. We are creating the Detroit we want to see in this world, investing in a deep future that looks more like the deep past. When we plant a tree we plant ourselves. We are here for this.
Birch Kemp plants trees and co-directs Arboretum Detroit. He spent 25 years teaching and planting trees with Detroit students at Catherine Ferguson Academy and Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School. He is living 7 blocks from the street that his great-great grandfather moved to from Poland.
Participate in a workday to plant a tree or help maintain the green spaces we’ve created in our community. Come process ecological grief with others who share your love of the Earth and are disgusted by capitalism’s mess. Visit www.arbdetroit.org to learn more, find volunteer dates, and see our events calendar. Or follow @arbdetroit on IG. You can help reconnect your BIPOC neighbors with the land by supporting the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund. Please visit Detroitblackfarmer.com and be inspired, be a part of this change. Maybe you have figured out how to navigate the DLBA and can actually purchase land to donate. This is a thing. To support a local indigenous organization with their Land Back projects go to Thechihila Collective’s gofundme at https://gofund.me/9949d729 and visit their IG @thethechihilacollective.
