Know the land you occupy?

Our work currently takes place on the traditional, unceded territory of the Ramaytush Ohlone people & Chochenyo Ohlone people known today as the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. We recognize their sovereignty, as there are no treaties on these lands, and we are dedicated to building a new relationship between us based on respect and consent.

Paying the Shuumi (“a gift” in the language of the Chochenyo Ohlone) Land Tax is a small way to contribute to the healing of this history, the sovereignty of Ohlone people and the preservation of their culture. Learn about the local tribe(s) where you live and support their efforts for self determination financially or otherwise.

Develop the practice & importance of recognizing the land you are on at any given moment & offering “land tax” to the people who lived there pre contact & continue to live there today.

Listen to Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods of kanyon konsulting l.l.c.on queer spirit.

Coyote Woman is a two-spirit steward of Indian Canyon. Kanyon teaches truth in history and envisioning indigenous futures to diverse audiences.

Permaculture on the edge - Decolonizing any system, structure, and practice in our society must start with difficult yet hopeful conversations about returning the land to Indigenous people.

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 'read' the cultural landscape and become more educated about the 'invisible structures' that exclude people from the land and from the wider permaculture movement.

The permaculture alternative to the logic of capitalism is the ethic of limits to consumption and sharing of surplus. Where the pillar of slaveability objectifies people for production, permaculture acknowledges that all forms of energy are limited.

The second pillar of white supremacy, according to Smith, is the logic of genocide/colonialism…Physical and cultural genocide are used to extract resources through colonialism, whereas permaculture teaches an ethic of care for the earth.

The third pillar of white supremacy is the logic of orientalism/war. This logic sees foreign people as perpetual threats to the superior civilizations of the West. Care for people is the permaculture ethic that represents an antidote to the xenophobia exemplified in the logic of perpetual war.

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Without actively anchoring itself to the wisdom of indigenous science, permaculture is rudderless and vulnerable to invasion by the parasite that only feeds off its host, without giving anything back, ultimately destroying both.

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“Smell the smoke” Tending the Wild: Cultural Burning

Permaculture as a gringo movement - Permaculture desperately needs a new focus on the ethics of frugality, prudence and thrift. We in the so called “First World” need to learn to question certain things we take for granted about our lifestyle. A true permaculturist, as Wendell Berry says, would “achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do.” Instead of relying on expensive organic inputs at the local permaculture store, we would learn how to shovel our animal manure and turn it into the fertility our plants need. As Henry David Thoreau admonished us so many years ago, we need to learn to “cultivate poverty like a garden herb.”

And how to decolonize - Stop Appropriating Knowledge

The food system was built on the stolen land and stolen labor of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian and people of color.

We are claiming our sovereignty and calling for rematriation of land and reparations of resources so that we can grow nourishing food and distribute it in our communities and reconnect the original peoples back to our ancestral homelands. The specific projects and resource needs of BIPOC land-based projects are listed here. We are so excited about this powerful opportunity for people to people solidarity.

Please contact us at connect@nefoclandtrust.org with your reparations success stories so we can celebrate this healing work with you.

Regarding REPARATIONS:
Please note that there is a larger, national effort for reparations being coordinated by the National Black Food and Justice Alliance http://www.blackfoodjustice.org/, and the map is complementary to that effort and not a substitute for it.

Please visit SOUL FIRE FARMS for more info

The Inquiry

I am desiring/dreaming to "connect dots", if you will, of (rural) queer land projects. I want to learn more, find and visit, signal boost - if that is needed & wanted, and see what developing pathways to and between each other could look like. 

I have the privilege of being invited to live on some land somewhere between the so-called Santa Cruz mountains and southern Oregon - we are looking. I've been tending this dream for awhile and would love to find, co-create and play with others of similar hearts and minds. I wonder if there is a compilation of, or a map of what is "queer land projects, homesteads, farms" here in so-called U.S.? With the intention to do a broader search south and north later.

This map is an exploration into different expressions and organizational spatial patterns of queer folks on the West Coast. By Alisha Strater

I appreciate your time and listening. I understandably offer to give you more background of who I am etc. since you don't know me as a way to build relationship AND I hope you may have some info I am looking for or can direct me to someone who may know or have an interest in learning with me.

stream of consciousness….accountability out of isolation in community on {stolen} land, needing alternatives, great unschooling, skill building, rural, wild, adventure, travel, earth skills, gardening, food justice, building, being grounded, involving self with healing, priestess attending sacred flame, queer camp, outdoor school, rites of passage, creative, performative, costumes, parades, honor your trancestors, queer icons, need to improv (jazz), practice, the earth is crying, restore trust in world, ancestors, REVERENCE. Spiritual activism, deep ecology, ecopsychology, polyamory, sobriety, something of my own design, creative healer, sacred, clown healer, arts, play, storytelling, on land, on adventures as a means for psych healing, uniquely suited to reach people in their sense of isolation & bring them into community, intergenerational, sanctuary, mystery schools, laboratory for queer spiritual consciousness, late stage capitalism, great turning, great unravelling, cultural transmission of radical faeries, social witnessing, moving at the speed of trust

some findings

The house is on fire and our foundation is built on stolen land

Lineage & Elders

Evolve or die: the stark choice facing America's 'women's lands

“But these male-free rural idylls risk dying out with their founders, unable to attract a new generation of women who do not feel the same need to escape discrimination, and who believe transgender women and some other minorities should be included.”

Who's Killing the Women's Land Movement?

“Young queer people who want to get back to the land today have more options than women like Wiseheart, who decades ago relied on the women's land movement to provide safety in numbers and reclusion from a society once hostile to their sexuality.”

Rural Revolution: Documenting the Lesbian Land Communities of Southern Oregon

“The popularity of feminist political engagement may be losing ground to a commitment to a more dynamic queer ethic that embraces a continuum of gender and sexual identities.”

Mystical science in a matriarchal world : Oregon's lesbian separatist communities and female nature

“Although the women’s land movement perpetuated racist, colonialist, and essentialist ideas, it was particularly significant in shaping how one segment of countercultural women understood the intersections between gender and nature.”

OREGON WOMEN'S LAND TRUST

The Back to the Land Movement: why it failed and why we need to try again

There were many reasons people went back to the land. The value system of American society was repulsive to many. They abhorred the rat race, boring jobs, crowds, the corrupt establishment; consumerism, destruction of wilderness, and advertising to get people to buy things they didn’t need. Some also felt the need to “redeem their souls” because they’d done nothing to deserve the abundance they’d experienced. America has a long tradition of associating virtue with moderation, hard work, self-denial, and simple living. Many associated farming with the romantic notion of self-sufficient pioneers.

The oil crisis in 1973 led some to believe that the capitalist system was in imminent danger of collapse, so going back to the land would be a matter of survival.

Homesteaders wanted to invent a new and better civilization based on community, healthy food, a love of nature, and avoidance of toxic chemicals.

Sound familiar?….