CULTURAL CONSERVANCY SACRED LAND FOUNDATION
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Mission Statement
To protect and restore Indigenous cultures, empowering them in the direct application of their traditional knowledge and practices on their ancestral lands.
About This Cause
The Cultural Conservancy (TCC) is a Native-led nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, CA, founded in 1985. Our mission is to protect and restore Indigenous cultures, empowering them in the direct application of their traditional knowledge and practices on their ancestral lands. Over the past 40 years, we have worked with Indigenous communities locally, nationally and globally on a wide variety of community-based projects; from sacred site protection to the revitalization of endangered languages and song traditions. At the root of this initiative are our guiding principles, which acknowledge the sacred relationship of Native peoples to their land, waters, and skies and the critical role that these relationships play in the physical, mental and spiritual health and healing of the individuals and communities. Our Foodways Program and land stewardship work provides the base from which we distribute food, save seed, harvest medicines and materials, and provide land access and educational resources for our community. To protect the sanctity of Native foods, we work to improve the physical, cultural, and spiritual health of Native community members living in the Bay Area, Northern California, and beyond; cultivate fertile soil and increase community access to nourishing foods and cultural medicines; revitalize Native plant species and endangered heirloom seeds and protect the rich cultural knowledge of stories, songs, recipes, and practices that sustain these traditional foodways; and reconnect biological and cultural diversity to nurture environmental health of our lands and waters and promote biodiverse, climate-resilient ecosystems. After 37 years of growing our organization and implementing our mission to protect and revitalize the sacred relationship Native peoples have with ancestral lands, we now have become stewards of our own land – a 7.6-acre parcel in Sonoma County, California on the ancestral territories of the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Peoples of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (FIGR). The prior owner, an elder woman who searched for a Native organization to take over the land, generously offered us the parcel at a discount. With the help of funding partners and with the permission of FIGR, we were able to purchase the land for half its market value in the Spring of 2019. This arable land is being transformed into Heron Shadow: An Indigenous Biocultural Heritage Oasis. It will be a place and home for the dreaming, building, growing, and transmission of The Cultural Conservancy’s mission and vision. We are transforming this gift of land into an innovative haven that will focus on the protection and regeneration of Indigenous agriculture, Native sciences, and healthy lifeways. Heron Shadow will provide a Native place of refuge and learning for community engagement, connection to the land, growing Indigenous foods, and nourishing Indigenous and intercultural relations. Through Heron Shadow, we are creating and increasing access to healthy foods on a regular basis and providing knowledge bundles of stories, recipes, seeds, nutritional facts, and ethnobotanical information. This helps communities to be better equipped to take control of their diets, foods, and health. Through our hands-on workshops and trainings, community members will learn and share how to process and cook rare, unusual, and ancestral vegetables and foods and how to shop on a budget. Urban Indian communities and youth will be able to engage in direct hands-on farming workshops to gain practical skills for growing native foods in their own backyards, on rooftops, or in neighborhood community gardens. We have the opportunity to demonstrate positive examples of Indigenous resilience and sustainability, in particular, a place of Native learning, research and training for food security and climate adaptation. This Oasis will allow us to further our mission to be a land-based organization that protects and restores Indigenous cultures. In this case, we are being empowered, as an intertribal organization, to directly apply our own traditional knowledge and practices and those of our extended Indigenous communities, on ancestral lands, while honoring our guiding principles and core values.