There is no greater endeavor than to work collectively as a community to strive for healing, land restoration, and a thriving economy. Native California Tribes have historically maintained sustainable economies and ways of living based off the outcomes of ecosystem stewardship and large-scale ecological land management. Our Tribal Nations have traditional knowledge and the ability to work together for the greater good of local communities, which is the saving grace we especially need today. Native and non-native communities in California affected by the impacts of climate change are in a position to protect our land, water, native plants and wildlife, and work together as a whole to expand our capacity to manage our ecosystems.
Together we aim to restore the communities’ relationship with the environment with shared knowledge from Tribes and local community members. The people of this land for generations have received prosperity, peace, health and love from their connection to this place and that will never change. Every single soul in California is part of this truth today, and we must recognize our ability to rise to the occasion and restore resilient ecosystems and thriving communities based on our collective efforts.
Wassa Honi Mep! (Keep your heart's intentions good!)
Ali Meders-Knight
Mechoopda Tribal Member, Master TEK practitioner, and
Executive Director of California Open Lands
Ali Meders-Knight, California Open Lands Executive Director, basketweaver, and ITEK practitioner
We hold and manage easements for the purpose of protecting wetlands, sensitive resources and endangered species habitat, and specialize in the stewardship of habitats in close proximity to urban centers. We utilize a strategic approach to land acquisition via landscape-scale resilience planning and consultation with Tribal communities and conservation agencies, with an emphasis on: climate change adaptation; ecosystem restoration to support cultural keystone species for food, fiber and medicine; forest and watershed health; and wildfire mitigation.
Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) refers to the place-based science developed by Indigenous peoples over thousands of years of observation, experimentation, and maintenance of native plants for food, fiber, and medicine on ancestral lands. Human stewardship is an essential part of California ecosystems, and re-introducing this element via an ITEK-certified workforce is the key to social, cultural, and ecological resilience. We work with Tribal practitioners and Indigenous-led community initiatives for cultural stewardship of our reserves using ITEK.
Nature therapy and community trauma recovery is mutually supportive with ITEK. A new way of embodying how we tend the land requires a new paradigm in how we attend to our own inner life and soul processes. Community trauma is tied to how we treat the land, and learning to heal internally as individuals and a community is integral to envisioning ways that we caretake the earth, learning how to tend instead of neglect and abuse our open spaces. We explore ways to utilize outdoor spaces for somatic-based trauma recovery and public health through community partnerships.