The Sand Where We Stand

[A Land Acknowledgement – Originally delivered at the University of Alaska Anchorage 8/14/2025]

By Don Rearden (Alaskan Author and University of Alaska Professor of Writing)

[The poem below, I wrote to be delivered on August 14^th ---the day before the world’s eyes focused on Alaska for the meeting between President Trump and Russia’s President Putin -- and I originally intended this to be shared solely for the faculty within my college at the University of Alaska Anchorage, as I was asked to give the opening Land Acknowledgement for our college’s in-service. Before I shared the poem, I said I wrote this for those faculty in attendance, but also for my nephews and nieces who are Dena’ina and may very well attend one of their UAA classes in the coming years.]

I also would like to note that sometimes these land acknowledgments sound or seem performative, or perfunctory, void of emotion or meaning, all intentions lost in the same hastily written out or copied online text about “ancestral and unceded land”— here, with this poem, I will try my best to honor the Eklutna and Dena’ Ina people,  the current and future keepers of this land and her animals.

Ułchena huch’ilyut / Kincaid Beach

“The Sand Where We Stand”

It would do us all a little good

to stand on the sandy shore at Ułchena huch’ilyut what we now call Kincaid beach

barefoot, the incoming tide running over our toes

the cool water a reminder

of how little we know of this place and her people.

To point out and say—

That is not Fire Island

That is not Cook Inlet

Or Turnagain Arm.

A village of souls lived and died of disease on this island before a Captain’s crew built a fire

there, before or after they “turned again.”

And what if we could stand on this beach and turn again— and point to each peak and landmark and know the true name, the real name, and be present long enough

to be our own anchor

to allow our bare soles to connect with this place

To feel the torment the Russians wrought here,

brought here, what America bought and sought and sold here.

How would it feel for outsiders to swoop in

bringing a bore tide of

unimaginable and insatiable change

to us, now

today, or tomorrow

would we be strong enough to persist

resist, exist

against this current

forces ripping us apart from within?

The answer is yes.

We would. We will.

Turn again. Turn again.

Turn on that beach in your mind, again.

beside you stand smiling children

young girls, young boys,

young strong minds and hearts

 they have Dena’ina names

their ancestors and their relatives walked and walk these shores, knew and know these waters like their own blood

they are the future

are re-learning their language, their stories

they are still here, and forever will remain

acknowledge not just their land, where we stand,

but learn their names

learn what they survived

and how—

and rise with them

together

we can become our own tide of change

to acknowledge is to know, to learn

acknowledge not just the land itself

but see the people

if we seek to recognize and land

at a place within ourselves individually and collectively

 we can channel

the strength and the wisdom set before us

by those who first set their bare feet into the sands of Ułchena huch’ilyut 

Finally;  we can turn again—

Point to ourselves

and belong as one

feeling anchored along the shore, beneath the mountain peaks, amongst the salmon and the bears, the birds and berries and the  very real human beings in apartments and homes, and in tents, and under tarps along the streams and trails 

the arteries

connecting and sustaining us all— from today and for the next thousand midnight summers.