Restoring Land
Transforming Our Relationship
with the Land
We acknowledge that Restore Forward is located on unceded lands that are the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee and we honor the sacrifices and invaluable contributions made by the Indigenous culture bearers who came before us. We acknowledge the enforced enslavement and exploitation of Black bodies, their physical, sexual and reproductive labor on U.S. land.
We’re creating space for what is possible for our climate and communities by enabling people to have access to land and to be in mutuality with the land. From land back with Indigenous communities to giving Black farmers access to land, from building cooperatives in a solidarity economy to sustaining ecological systems, we are shifting our relationship to the earth and the living, natural environment.
Repairing Harm and Reconnecting Humans to the Earth
We’re creating space for what is possible for our climate and communities by enabling people to have access to land and to be in mutuality with the land. We are practicing principles that increase biodiversity, build and enrich soil, improve watersheds, and enhance ecosystems, cultivating interdependency with the earth. We’re inspiring a change of heart and a sense of wonder and reverence for the genius of nature and the human spirit.
Landback With Indigenous Communities
We transfer land to Indigenous women mitigating the impact of land injustice and sovereignty through liberatory education, teaching farming, food, and natural health to ensure our children’s futures.
Giving Black Farmers and Black Women Access to Land
We work with allied women land-owners to create a scalable racial equity strategy for reparative justice resulting in the sustainable transfer of land to Black women. We’re co-create a Holistic Living Lab where Black families can design and inform strategies for economic security, education, and health access, using the land to eliminate the mechanisms that perpetuate inequality, and to address the consequences of what happens when we are ripped away from land, nature, and when we are disembodied from primordial mother.
Transformative Learning
The Institute engages with transformative learning theory, and focuses on perspective transformation: psychological (changes in understanding of the self), convictional (revision of belief systems), and behavioral (changes in ways of being).
Building Cooperatives and Solidarity Economy
We’re using a model of democratic governance that distributes ownership and access to members of a cooperative at Restore Forward. We organize a cooperative retreat center where in a single space, several collaborators contribute and offer services, teachings and frameworks for hands-on learning, healing and reconciliation, while exploring ancestral and traditional methods to rebalance and restore connection with self, other beings, ancestors, and the broader environment
Our Impact
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acres of land restored back to health, through remediation, regenerating forestry and sustainable farming practices
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acres to be transferred to Black and Indigenous people.
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provided access to land, farm and waterways each year