Dear Sam, With Love - In Search of a Better Way to Live, Teach, and Parent on Stolen Lands

Oct 15, 2026

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Framed as a letter to the author’s daughter, this essay examines what it means to live, parent, and teach as a Settler Canadian on stolen Indigenous land. Drawing on personal reflection and Indigenous scholarship, it centers love, accountability, and relational learning as guides toward decolonial and reconciliatory futures. The text invites readers into ongoing (un)learning and imagining more just and joyful ways of being in relation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time22 min

AccessFree to download

Letter to Sam

Learning, unlearning, and transformation

Land acknowledgements and colonial memory

From awareness to relational responsibility

Dear Sam, With Love: In Search of a Better Way to Live, Teach, and Parent on Stolen Lands Melissa Daoust Abstract Framed as a letter to the author’s daughter, this essay explores what it means to live, parent, and teach as a Settler Canadian on stolen Indigenous Land. Through personal reflections and Indigenous scholarship, the author considers how love, accountability, and relational learning can guide us toward decolonial and reconciliatory futures. This essay invites readers into the ongoing work of (un)learning and imagining more just and joyful ways of being in relation. Dear Sam November 15, 2022 Dear bébé, You have been in our life for about 16 months now, excluding the whole 9 months you were kicking, turning, and burping in my belly. October 18, 2020, was the day that I found out I was going to be a mom, your mom. Since then, you have changed our world, our lives, our identities. You have made us selfless, loving, kind. I am a mother because of you, and I thank you for this. As I am looking at you, admiring your eyes and witnessing your smile, I know that I was meant to be your mom, and you were meant to be my daughter. Your eyes are filled with gentleness. Passion. Calmness. You have this thirst to learn. To be curious. To be adventurous. The gift of hearing your first words (it was mama, even if daddy will say it was papa), your first steps, and hopefully all of your “firsts” is such an honor. I am not sure what this letter will lead to nor how or if it will end; I only know that it must be written and that I am afraid to write it. As Chambers (1994) so beautifully wrote,“Writing will be a kind of healing and I am on the road to healing. Writing will be a tool, a spiritual tool, a political tool with which I will clear my path”(p. 23) . This letter is written for my daughter, Sam. However, the writing itself is rather a kind of quest, in search of a better way to live. In search of a better way to live in a “multiplicity of subjectivities that cannot be captured by any one single identity”(p. 25) . In search of a better way to live as a partner, teacher, daughter, sister, auntie, learner, and a newly becoming mother—to become a mother is a transformation of self. As Grumet (1988) shared with us more than 30 years ago: The child is mine. The child is me. The woman who bears a child first experiences its existence through the transformations of time and space in her own body…The pressure of labour and the wrenching expulsion of the infant (the term“delivery”must have been created by those who receive the child, not those who release it) physically recapitulate the terrors of coming apart, of losing a part of oneself. The symbiosis continues. (p. 10) LEARNing Landscapes | Spring 2025, Issue 29 | 63 Melissa Daoust This child, whose body is now separate from mine, somehow is still me. Writing this letter to my daughter Sam is also writing this letter to me, from me, in search of a better way to live. In the following pages, I weave together the wisdom of scholars whose work has been and continues tobe instrumental in my unlearning journey—navigating the complexities of my many roles and, as the call of this issue highlights, the messiness of simply being human. This letter acts as an invitation to other parents, sisters, aunties, teachers, scholars, and students alike, to join me as I navigate spaces between mothering, teaching and being in relation. Sam, you were born on the stolen, unceded, and unsurrendered Land of the Anishinaabe peoples. An Elder from Kahnawá:ke Mohawk territory once told me that we should always know where the closest First Nations, Métis, or Inuit communities are from where we ground ourselves. Hence, Sam, the closest community from the place you were born is Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation. It is situated near the confluence of the Désert and Gatineau Rivers, and borders south-west on the Town of Maniwaki in the Outaouais region of what is known as the province o

FAQs

What is the essay framed as, and who is it addressed to?

The essay is framed as a letter addressed to the author’s daughter, Sam. It uses the letter form to explore lived experiences of parenting and teaching.

How does the author connect love and accountability to change?

The author argues that love and accountability, alongside relational learning, can help guide readers toward decolonial and reconciliatory futures. The letter treats writing itself as a form of healing and a political/spiritual tool.

What role do territorial acknowledgements play in the essay?

Territorial acknowledgements are presented as political and cultural acts grounded in relationships to land, language, and clans. The author also critiques how some acknowledgements become ritualistic and can reinforce colonial narratives.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Riley