There's an unseen harm hidden within the crisis of land access: fewer people have a relationship with the earth. Hear Danielle Peláez (Soul Fire Farm) and Rev Dele (Soil & Souls, Indigenous Mothers Community Land Trust) discuss how to forge a healing connection with the land and help others do the same.
La entrevista completa con Rev Dele está disponible con subtítulos en español en la página de Cultivemos en YouTube.
The full interview with Rev Dele is available with Spanish subtitles on the Cultivemos YouTube channel.
Description:
We have to reimagine our relationship with the land.
Farmers are experiencing a crisis of land access. The number of farms is decreasing and the cost of farm real estate has nearly doubled in the past decade, shutting out many prospective farmers. That’s especially true for BIPOC farmers: 98% of farmland is owned by white landowners. With better land access, farming would be more sustainable, achievable and diverse. Without it, farmers can’t farm.
But there’s another harm that’s hidden within the crisis of land access. It’s harder to measure, but no less important. With land out of reach, fewer and fewer people have a relationship with the earth. That means, fewer and fewer people are getting the healing benefits of land: wonder, refuge, calm, even wealth and liberation. To move forward, we have to reimagine our relationship with the land.
So on today’s episode, we speak with two people who are committed to creating relationships with the land. Danielle Peláez is the Education Coordinator at Soul Fire Farm. Through their programming, they create opportunities for Afro-Indigenous people to forge lasting relationships with the earth. Rev Dele is a Black, Indigenous minister, who is teaching the church how to model sustainability. Through her initiatives, Soil & Souls and the Indigenous Mothers Community Land Trust, she’s sharing the Earth’s healing and pursuing land sovereignty for her community.
A better future starts with our imagination. So join us, as we reimagine our relationship with the land, and find strategies for sharing its bounty with others.
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If you have questions about the show or topics you'd like discussed in future episodes, email us at cultivemos@youngfarmers.org
This work is supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) project 2020-70028-32729.
Descripción:
Tenemos que reimaginar nuestra relación con la tierra.
Los agricultores sufren una crisis de acceso a la tierra. El número de explotaciones está disminuyendo y el coste de la propiedad agrícola casi se ha duplicado en la última década, dejando fuera a muchos posibles agricultores. Esto es especialmente cierto para los agricultores BIPOC: el 98% de las tierras agrícolas son propiedad de terratenientes blancos. Con un mejor acceso a la tierra, la agricultura sería más sostenible, asequible y diversa. Sin él, los agricultores no pueden cultivar.
Pero hay otro perjuicio oculto en la crisis del acceso a la tierra. Es más difícil de medir, pero no por ello menos importante. Con la tierra fuera de su alcance, cada vez menos personas tienen una relación con la tierra. Eso significa que cada vez menos personas obtienen los beneficios curativos de la tierra: asombro, refugio, calma, incluso riqueza y liberación. Para avanzar, tenemos que reimaginar nuestra relación con la tierra.
En el episodio de hoy, hablamos con dos personas comprometidas con la creación de relaciones con la tierra. Danielle Peláez es la Coordinadora de Educación de Soul Fire Farm. A través de su programación, crean oportunidades para que los afroindígenas forjen relaciones duraderas con la tierra. Rev Dele es una ministra indígena negra que está enseñando a la iglesia cómo modelar la sostenibilidad. A través de sus iniciativas, Soil & Souls y Indigenous Mothers Community Land Trust, comparte la sanación de la Tierra y persigue la soberanía de la tierra para su comunidad.
Un futuro mejor empieza con nuestra imaginación. Acompáñanos a reimaginar nuestra relación con la tierra y a encontrar estrategias para compartir su generosidad con los demás.
Reflejos:
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Si tienes preguntas sobre el programa o sobre temas que te gustaría que se trataran en futuros episodios, envíanos un correo electrónico a cultivemos@youngfarmers.org
Este trabajo cuenta con el proyecto 2020-70028-32729 Instituto nacional de alimentos y agricultura (NIFA, por sus siglas en inglés) del Departamento de agricultura de los Estados Unidos (USDA, por sus siglas en inglés) y la Red de asistencia para el estrés en fincas y ranchos del noreste (FRSAN, por sus siglas en inglés).
#MentalHealthAwareness #MentalHealthMatters #FoodSystemResilience #FoodSovereignty #FoodJustice #cultivemos #foodfirst
Kay-Megan Washington:
You can't farm if you don't have land. It's like trying to paint without a canvas, and yet that's the case for so many farmers across this country. The number of farms in the US is decreasing, and the cost of farm real estate is nearly doubled, shutting out many prospective farmers.
Hans Hageman:
That's especially true for people of color. 98% of farmland is owned by white landowners. Land access is one of the most critical issues of agriculture today. With better land access, farming would be more sustainable, achievable, and diverse. Without it, farmers can't farm. It's the top reason that young people report leaving agriculture.
Kay-Megan Washington:
But there's another harm that's hidden within the crisis of land access. It's harder to measure, but no less important. With land out of reach, fewer and fewer people have a relationship with the earth. That means fewer and fewer people get the benefit that land has to offer. Wonder, refuge, calm, abundance, even liberation.
Hans Hageman:
Not to mention the land becomes more vulnerable to those who see it as a commodity,, something to pave over or ring dry. To protect the earth, we must create a relationship with it.
Kay-Megan Washington:
Fortunately, there are people out there who are committed to repairing our relationship with the land, and they're sharing what they know. So on today's episode, we get back to our roots and find out what can change when we reimagine and rekindle our relationship with the land.
Hans Hageman:
This is Cultivating Resilience, the show where farm care starts with self-care. I'm Hans Hageman.
Kay-Megan Washington:
And I'm Kay-Megan Washington.
Danielle Peláez:
Should I mute my mic when I know that he's barking, and if you're speaking?
Kay-Megan Washington:
That's Danielle Peláez, or her dog at least.
Danielle Peláez:
Can you? Uh-oh. Sorry.
Kay-Megan Washington:
That's okay. Danielle spoke to us from her home in upstate New York on a cold, winter morning.
Danielle Peláez:
That kind of like sharp, cold air. We just got some snow, and I feel like you could smell that in the air and in the pines.
Kay-Megan Washington:
Danielle is the education coordinator at Soul Fire Farm.
Hans Hageman:
You may have heard of Soul Fire before. It's an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm, focused on uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system.
Danielle Peláez:
So far, the farm itself is located on the ancestral land of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Nation, whose peoples were forcibly removed from those territories to a reservation that's in northern Wisconsin. We are now on what is present day known as Grafton, nestled in between these beautiful mountains. There's a small stream, and that's kind of woken up and is burdling its way along the banks.
Kay-Megan Washington:
Danielle has been on her own journey with the land.
Danielle Peláez:
My farming journey, like I'm realizing so many things, is very cyclical. My grandfather was a farmer, and some of my uncles were farmers in Guatemala. I was pretty disconnected from that as a career life way until I started community gardening at two different community gardens in my neighborhood in southwest Baltimore, and having a co-leadership role at those gardens. I just got super hooked. I loved just like the magic of the soil, building a relationship with the soil, and planting seeds. I actually had no idea. I had heard of Soul Fire before, but I had no idea that Soul Fire was this close, and it just so happened that after we purchased our land, I found out it was just 20 minutes away.
Hans Hageman:
For Danielle, a connection with the earth is built into being a farmer and a human.
Danielle Peláez:
I mean, also I do think that farmers are inherently in relationship with the land, just by the nature of our work. Our living depends on the land.
Kay-Megan Washington:
Has this always been the way that you've related to the land, or was this something that evolved over time?
Danielle Peláez:
I think it's something, again, going back to that cyclical nature that has come back to me. I think, as a weirdo, solitary child who spent a lot of time in nature, having kind of this constant communication with the plants and with the trees, viewing the trees as my friends, that felt like more of a dialogue that I lost.
Hans Hageman:
And Danielle's not the only one who feels that way.
Rev Dele:
Oh. I love my young people, because they love Mama earth, so it's a circular love affair.
Hans Hageman:
That's Rev Dele.
Rev Dele:
I am Rev Dele. I'm grandmother mystic and earth keeper. I am a minister. I'm sixth-generation minister, an activist minister at that, and I'm responding to a spiritual call from my Mi'kmaq ancestors to lead the resilience.
Hans Hageman:
Rev doesn't have to wonder if she's connected to the earth. She knows.
Rev Dele:
I remember my first oneness experience with the creator when I was about nine years old, and we were in a tent. Back in those days, the tent was actually on the ground, right? I would put my face on the earth, and I could hear the wind rustling in the leaves of the trees, and it just felt like my consciousness was being bathed. The work that I'm doing now came about, really, through a spiritual call that I received while I was in the forest. It was very dramatic. I was driven out of the forest with a swarm of ticks, and this big booming voice said, "Teach the church how to model sustainability." Well honey, I was not thinking about doing that.
Hans Hageman:
For most of us, the signal isn't as strong, and there are well documented reasons for that.
Rev Dele:
We know that colonialism is what disrupted the spiritual connection with nature, and so it's not natural for Christians to believe the things that we believe and to reject the things that we reject. I poke at my Christian brothers and sisters. I say, "Well, you know when God started a garden, the first thing God did was plant a tree, so why are you guys taking the trees out?" So just a little jab. I'll be nice, but anyway.
Kay-Megan Washington:
The story of land in America is dark. There's a long and violent history of dispossession and expulsion.
Danielle Peláez:
There has been this intense disconnect from the land, disconnect that was done intentionally. Many of us, many of the folks who come to Soul Fire interact with Soul Fire. We come from different people's whose specific lineages were very forcibly disconnected from the land, whether that was through genocide of first people, transatlantic slave trade, through forced migration, from trade policies, from climate change, refugees, war refugees. Many of us carry a lot of trauma with regards to the land, and it's a process of rebuilding that relationship.
Hans Hageman:
And that's hardly ancient history.
Danielle Peláez:
The effects of redlining, like these things were not that long ago and are still present day in the way that cities and municipal governments decide to distribute loans or tax exemptions. To me, what it still comes down to is these larger structural issues in terms of climate change, land loss, things like pipeline spills that pollute land, including farmland and the intersecting nature of all the isms that exist, and a lack of support. A lot of the support that's given to these conventional commodity farms growing corn and soybeans, we're not seeing that level of support for small scale farms, for diversified farms. To me, it's very understandable and makes a lot of sense that farmers are dealing with such really, really, really high levels of stress, of mental illness, of self-harm, and that's also something that you see globally too.
Kay-Megan Washington:
That disconnect is serious, because the relationship with the land can be incredibly healing, both physically and mentally.
Danielle Peláez:
Thinking about how the land has been healing for me as a source of companionship and as a source of processing my life, the mental health benefits it's served, as well as the very tangible physical health benefits. There are so many studies that have come out now talking about how spending time in nature under trees has really positive effects on blood pressure levels, on health outcomes, on stress management.
Rev Dele:
Like anything else, you start where people are, and you just invite them to put their hands in the soil. As you're working next to them, you make them aware of what's happening. Make them aware of the chemicals that they are receiving into their body as their hands are in the soil. You take them into the forest, and you invite them to breathe with the tree. Touch the tree. Feel what happens when you sit against the tree for X amount of time. See what happens. Even in our stuffy permaculture classes, they will tell you, "Go sit somewhere for two hours, and don't move. As you sit there, your awareness will shift. You will shift into a whole nother zone. You will hear things you did not hear at the beginning. You will see things you did not see at the beginning." So nature has a way of drawing you in if and when you allow that to happen.
Kay-Megan Washington:
What are some ways that you might suggest that other farmers, who this might not be a practice or a mindset that they are as familiar with or as comfortable with, what are some ways that they might deepen their relationship to the land?
Danielle Peláez:
First of all, if they are not the original stewards of those lands, learning more about those original stewards, beyond just looking up land on the native land website, taking the additional step of making connections, of reaching out, learning how to support those people's, learning about their history, and the present day struggles, and trying to educate yourself on your own history, your own role, and letting that kind of propel you forward into positive action and positive connections with your immediate community, and then rippling out.
Hans Hageman:
Learning about Indigenous practices and her own Mi'kmaq roots expanded Rev's understanding of the earth.
Rev Dele:
Well, we begin with the idea that all life has consciousness, and if it has consciousness, we can communicate. If it has consciousness, then what we do impacts them. What they do, impacts us. I talk about, and I teach how human beings are a mirror imprint of nature. And so when you are growing Indigenously, you're just honoring who's there as if they matter, as if they are a family member. We talk about all our relations, and we learn what lesson do they have for us.
Danielle Peláez:
And I think that by doing that, it will kind of help put your relationship with the land that you are tending in a different lens, kind of really viewing ourselves as farmers, as stewards of the land as well.
Kay-Megan Washington:
That's a wonderful way to think about that, the difference between owning land versus being a caretaker for it for now, and also taking care of it for whoever comes after you when you're gone. But you can't have a relationship with the land if you don't have access to land.
Danielle Peláez:
Also, land access. Land access is huge. I've talked to so many young farmers who want to farm, but they just cannot afford land. And so without having access to land, we're going to lose this whole other generation of farmers to these larger corporate farms, and all of those things impact BIPOC farmers the most. It impacts marginalized farmers the most.
Hans Hageman:
But access has its limits.
Rev Dele:
I've had several pieces of land. We had a lease with someone who refused to let us come onto the lands when it was planting time, and this was a farming lease. Now, I was able to go onto the property to do our educational work, but they said, "No, you're going to disturb the other people with all that farming stuff." I've had land where people would spray GMO roundup and everything on my plants. They would cut things off, because they thought they were too tall. Actually, I was living on family land in Virginia and, because I was doing this "nonsensical work," the house was sold out from under me. I came home from our Cuba delegation, and my items were in storage
Hans Hageman:
For Indigenous communities, this story is far from new, but it's still happening today.
Rev Dele:
When I first moved to New York in 2019, it was all in the papers with the Ramapo Lunaape tribe. They had been donated 13 acres of land in New Jersey, and their neighbors were suing them because they put up prayer flags, were suing them because they had statues on their own land, and this is 2019, okay? So I'm not talking about ancient history. I'm talking about right now. We need legal protection to do the Indigenous work that we need to do
Hans Hageman:
Because of her experiences, Rev approaches land access differently. She sets her sights even further on land sovereignty.
Rev Dele:
So I've had quite a few experiences with land access. I'm not interested in land access at all. It doesn't matter what kind of leases you have, it doesn't matter about your access. You must be able to control your land. And so we formed Indigenous Mothers Community Land Trust.
Hans Hageman:
The community land trust model is a creative way to increase access and protect land. CLTs are nonprofits that purchase land and then lease it to residents at a much lower cost. Residents can own houses on the land, and the CLT retains ownership of the land. The decreased cost allows farmers to put down roots while the trust keeps the land sovereign and collectively held.
Rev Dele:
This is a land trust to protect Indigenous people in the diaspora, and so we come from a variety of lineages. We have quite a lot in common in terms of how we manage land, but those things need to be protected.
Hans Hageman:
The Indigenous mothers community land trust aims to purchase a plot about 100 miles from Soul Fire Farm, and they're close to making it happen.
Rev Dele:
We've identified 102 acres in Middletown, New York. It's beautiful, gentle rolling hills. There's a wetlands in the middle. There are five different pastures. It's an old, old dairy farm, 1800s, that everything is all dilapidated, but the land is beautiful. It's gorgeous. The deer run freely. You can see the [inaudible 00:15:50] mountain ridge from almost any hill on the property, and so it's a beautiful place to be.
Hans Hageman:
Rev's dreams of a sovereign Indigenous community are one way that imagination can steer our success, and when we reimagine our relationship with the land, we can reimagine other systems too. Could you explain to us a little bit more about the circular economy that you talked about?
Rev Dele:
Circular economy means that we, first of all, shift from being only consumers to being producers, okay? As we become producers, now we must create networks to fulfill each other's needs. So what's planned for this land is that this will be a place where farmers from New Jersey and farmers from New York City can come to create their own markets, okay? So not only are we sovereign on our land. We are sovereign on with the food that we grow, but we are also sovereign with who we sell to and who do we buy from?
Kay-Megan Washington:
Soul Fire pursues land access through their advocacy work, but they also provide valuable opportunities for people to create connections with the land through their programming. In fact, that's Danielle's job as education coordinator.
Danielle Peláez:
We have day-long volunteer days, where we invite community members to come to the farm, and half-day or day-long, more educational workshops. We had a kimchi making workshop, a mycology workshop last year, and we have week-long farming immersion programs. I think there's a lot of joy in that period. We talk about our histories of resilience and dreaming for the future.
Kay-Megan Washington:
Soul Fire programming reaches thousands of people a year, and they even create relationships for land is scarce.
Danielle Peláez:
The Soul Fire in the City program, which is very near and dear to my heart as someone who previously had always lived in city, urban spaces, and that is a program where we go and we build raised beds to community members and groups in the 518 area code. Not just building the beds, but we start the seedlings in our greenhouses at Soul Fire. We offer seeds, and it's a very educational process where we are just doing a lot of the handholding of, "This is how you read a seed packet. This is how you plant the seeds. This is how you transplant," and then doing ongoing check-ins and partnering up with mentors.
Kay-Megan Washington:
The effects of these programs are powerful, and they don't take long to emerge. Can you give me an example of just seeing someone in one of your community programs sort of get it, connect with the land in a different way than they had been previously?
Danielle Peláez:
Oh, yeah. So many, but I think one woman that sticks out to me is, she's a younger black woman who had never visited Soul Fire before, and she approached with such caution, and was very kind of timid and made all these apologies for her shoes. She didn't know what were the right shoes. She read that she should bring boots, but she only had these really cute velvet boots, and she was just so nervous about the whole experience.
It was just a really beautiful opportunity to being able to be like, "Actually, we have a whole boot lending library and layers lending library, and there's a centering process that we do," a moment that we begin all of our programs of giving gratitude to the land, and then being able to work with my colleagues of making sure that this person felt safe and taken care of. It was just really cool to see her, throughout the day, just get empowered and ask a lot of questions. Then, eventually by the end, asked if she could take things home. She had never picked a berry before, and so had a blast, picking raspberries.
Kay-Megan Washington:
Programming like this can help people establish a relationship with the land, even without access. As Danielle found, it can be restorative to you too.
Danielle Peláez:
Such a beautiful thing to witness over the course of the day, and it felt like such an immense honor to be able to be in that role of facilitating that experience, and to really see someone blossom on the land, develop confidence, laughing alongside people, and building those connections with other people and with all the plants that she was interacting with. I just think about her a lot, and I'm just really happy that it felt like a day that brought healing and brought empowerment to this person.
Hans Hageman:
The land offers so many things: refuge, inspiration, sustenance, even freedom. All these things are both political and deeply personal, and the personal can help achieve the political. In fact, it might be necessary.
Rev Dele:
My parents continued to take us into nature, but when I became a teenager, they made it clear that they were going into nature as a refuge from the civil rights work that they were doing. They were frontline civil rights activists, and it did take its emotional toll on all of us. And so I remember in high school, my mother would say, after a really bad week, "We're going to the mountains."
What people also don't know is that many of our liberators, in the past, had special relationships with nature: George, Washington Carver, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman. All of them were mystics, and they had very special relationships with nature that enabled them to do the work that they are known for. Even today, I teach that justice begins as inner balance, and then it spreads throughout our social, political, and economic systems. In that way, we have our healing embedded in our day-to-day existence, and we don't have to do this yo-yo activity that we're doing now between working real hard and then falling out with trauma.
Kay-Megan Washington:
So as we work to increase land access, we must also reimagine our relationship with the land, something Soul Fire has been doing from the very beginning.
Danielle Peláez:
The soils of the land were so degraded when they passed into the hands of the founding family in 2006, due to the most recent history of heavy logging, logging that was done in a really unsustainable way. And so we, at Soul Fire, are committed to this very, what feels like a very sacred work of rebuilding the relationship to the land as a relative, which means what it sounds like, of treating this land as a relative, how you would treat an elder or someone important to your family. This means asking permission. It means giving thanks, showing gratitude, paying close attention, noticing details, using regenerative practices, and closely examining our own mindsets, perceptions, and actions concerning to land.
We, very much, come from this mindset that we are the younger siblings of the land and of the beings of the land that we share the space with: the rocks, the eagles, the pond, the trees. Then, as such, we don't have the right then to treat the land like a commodity. We treat the land like we would treat our family members, and with the same love, dignity, honor, and respect. I do think there is a growing movement of people who are trying to pay more attention to that. I'm also very much involved in foraging and the foraging community, and I think that's also a conversation that's being had more often, about being respectful about taking, how much you take, and asking permission first.
There's a really wonderful forager, Alexis, who's a Black forager on Instagram, and she describes kind of more subtle ways of gauging whether permission is granted. For instance, if she sees a mushroom that looks appealing, but it's like surrounded by poison ivy, to her, that is a boundary that says, "No, I'm not giving you permission," so just taking that moment, that's something that I think everybody can and should integrate into their relationships and dynamics with nature. Again, not treating the land as a commodity that you can just like, "Oh. This is a pretty flower. Let me take this," or like, "Oh. I want to dig this up," and just taking that moment to pause, to introduce yourself, your intentions, and ask permission before taking an action.
Then, also that very key step of listening, paying attention, and honoring the response, even if it's not a response that you would like to hear, but not losing sight of land as a relative, because I do think that once you have that in your mind, it becomes more difficult. It takes more of a cognitive dissonance to make the choice to harm the land, to exhaust the land, to extract every last drop that we can, and remembering that this lens will need to sustain us, not just for this generation, and there's not this endless access, but for the next seven generations to follow. And keeping that at the forefront, of thinking about families and descendants, and how really wanting to leave a better world for them. That is not possible with the relationship that most people have with the land as it is right now,
Kay-Megan Washington:
Both Danielle and Rev are generous with the land. They want to share it. It becomes a place of community, and so maybe a relationship with the land can be a template to help us heal our relationships with each other.
Hans Hageman:
What role do non-indigenous or non-Black and brown people, what role is there for them in this kind of a movement?
Rev Dele:
Well, of course, as allies, that means that you're supportive. If you have money, give it. If you have political power, share it. Also, in terms of healing yourself from the attitudes and from the presumptions and beliefs that you have. So I think that's the role, is to agree that maybe there is another way, and maybe I can support a way that actually sustains everyone. And so it's being willing to shed maybe a little bit of privilege or to share some power, but yes, there's a role because we all want to thrive together. This is not really a separatist movement.
This is a movement to include Black and brown people, because right now we're sometimes invisible and very much on the bottom. It's just to allow people to have their own sovereignty over things that impact their lives, and not being afraid. Maybe that's the first step, in people who are not Black and brown, is to realize that you do not have to be afraid of us. We want you to be part of the human community. We want you to be productive, kind, and cooperative with all of the rest of us. And so just allowing your own heart to open and let that happen. Welcome. We welcome you.
Hans Hageman:
And it's not just about righting past wrongs. It's creating collective futures and joyful presence.
Danielle Peláez:
Also, on that theme of joy, one of my favorite events is our annual solstice event, which is basically just this festival. It's a very joyful celebration of our community, of the farm, with live music, performances, food, and trying to really center the joy in this work. I also, personally, really love farming alongside other people: my coworkers, colleagues, and volunteers.
So there's also that really beautiful social component, where we can be talking about the farming that we're doing, problem solving, or singing along to Queen or whoever, or just working together in silence, but in a comfortable partnership silence. Hearing the [inaudible 00:28:12], and the woodpeckers are starting to wake up. The bumblebees pollinating, the marigolds next to me. The goats are making their goat sounds, and the farm dogs are chasing each other and barking. So you see them out at the corner of your eye, coming up to greet you. If you're lucky, you can hear the giggling of some of the youngest residents on the land, who are toddlers and infants.
Rev Dele:
Fun is sustainable. Mother Earth requires joyful encounter. We've put a lot of just insensible barriers in our own way to being resilient. Being resilient is actually easy. That's the way we were designed. That's the way the earth was designed, and so all we have to do is remove the roadblocks. These are cultural, emotional roadblocks, and nature is right there. I think the pandemic proved to us that, once we gain our senses, nature responds immediately. Do you remember within 60 days, that smog had moved away from mountains? People had not seen mountains in generations, so it will not take 10 generations for these changes to happen. I have changed soil in four years, so it's well within a lifetime that you can change your environment to support you.
Danielle Peláez:
I like what you said about asking if this was a reciprocal relationship, because that is always the goal. I think that's the reason why it's not just asking permission. It's also giving gratitude of holding up our end of the deal, because we do really view it as a partnership, as a relationship, that we are part of nature, and therefore the land also wants us back.
The land also rejoices when we spend time on the land, when we practice mindfulness, and spend time with the soil and the forest. I do think that I'm very anti the nihilistic position that humans are the virus or all of that. I feel very much that we have, as being part of nature, we do have a role to play in our responsibility, and it's just such a important calling to hold up our end of the bargain, and to rebuild that relationship in a way that is mutually healing and mutually loving.
Kay-Megan Washington:
This episode is focused on how to reimagine your relationship with the land. This isn't a solution to the inequities of land, but it can help us get there by sustaining us and healing us even more. It can help us imagine a more equitable way of living, one where land isn't commodified and access isn't restricted.
Hans Hageman:
Imagination is a key part of a better future. Activists like Angela Davis and Mariame Kaba describe imagination as a fundamental tool of their work, but it's not the only tool. And so, to end the episode, we wanted to share this thought from Danielle.
Danielle Peláez:
I think we can be in right relationship with the land, and still be experiencing a lot of the benefits that come from working with the land, but I think until there's more solidarity and collaboration amongst other farmers to organize for our rights and push through change, and support each other and mutual aid, that to me is towards the direction of a solution, as opposed to me saying, "Oh. You just need to go meditate under your tree every day, and think about the land as a relative."
Because you can, and you should, but then it kind of feels like it stops there. And I think that's something at Soulfire, one arm of what we do is policy work, is advocacy, is rabble-rousing, because we realize that, "Sure, we can train and equip the next generation of BIPOC farmers, but then what?" We're sending them off into this world, where there is no support, a broken healthcare system, no labor protections, like all these things that don't support mental health. And so that's also a responsibility that we have, as well of collaborating with other farms and farming advocacy groups.
Kay-Megan Washington:
There are plenty of issues that can't be repaired from inside our heads. The imagination must be paired with action, advocacy, organizing, mutual aid.
Hans Hageman:
And so, on the next episode of Cultivating Resilience, strategies to change the world.
Kay-Megan Washington:
Thank you to Danielle Peláez of Soul Fire Farm, and Rev Dele, for sharing their time and stories with us.
Hans Hageman:
And before we go, the Indigenous Mothers Community Land Trust is currently raising money to complete their purchase of the land in Middletown, New York.
Rev Dele:
If anyone resonates with that mission, I would just invite them to be in touch with us, Indigenous Mothers Community Land Trust. Look us up online. We have a YouTube channel, where we show the property and speak about the work that will be done there. You can email me at rev@revdele.com, R-E-V, as in victory, D as in David, ele.com. You can call me. I actually take phone calls. (804) 389-5150. I'd be happy to talk to you.
Hans Hageman:
Cultivating Resilience is a podcast from Cultivemos. Your hosts are me, Hans Hagerman, and Kay-Megan Washington. Writing and production for this show is by Andrew [inaudible 00:33:48], with sound mixing and editing by Alex Bennett at Lower Street Media. Until next time, stay grounded.
Rev Dele:
Our African ancestors created dances, whereby your body parts were, I don't have a very good explanation without showing you. I didn't come prepared to teach a dance class.
Hans Hageman:
That'll be next season. That'll be next season.