Model and Strategy
The Cultural Conservancy (TCC) protects and revitalizes Indigenous cultures through the direct application of traditional knowledge and practices on ancestral lands. Native-led and based in the San Francisco Bay Area, TCC works with Native/Indigenous peoples locally and globally on projects that are shaped by community requests and guided by its Native Advisory Council of Traditional Knowledge Holders, land-care practitioners, and community leaders.
TCC’s focus on eco-cultural revitalization, deeply rooted in biocultural diversity, aims to renew and restore the health of traditional knowledge, foodways, landscapes, and practices of Indigenous cultures that were substantially damaged by colonialism in the Americas and the Pacific. Critical to its work is the acknowledgement of the sacred relationship that Native peoples have to their lands and waters and the importance of this relationship to their physical, mental, spiritual, and community health.
Through its flagship Native Foodways Program, TCC strengthens the resilience of Native food systems, promotes Native food sovereignty, and protects the rich cultural knowledge of stories, songs, recipes, and practices that sustain these traditional foodways. The program provides intertribal and intergenerational knowledge exchange and access to traditional knowledge systems, Indigenous agricultural sciences, and resources for growing healthy culturally appropriate foods including planting, harvesting, processing, distributing, cooking and seed keeping.
After 36 years of implementing its mission to protect and revitalize the sacred relationship Native peoples have with ancestral lands, TCC now has become a steward of its own land – a 7.6- acre parcel in Sonoma County on the ancestral territories of the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Peoples including the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. This arable land is being transformed into Heron Shadow, a mission-driven production farm and educational space that will serve aspiring Native farmers, food producers, and land stewards of the Bay Area and beyond. Heron Shadow will provide a safe, culturally-rooted space for community engagement, connection to the land, growing Indigenous foods, and nourishing Indigenous and intercultural relations.
Impact
In its 37-year history, TCC has built a string of accomplishments in cultural preservation and revitalization. It has helped Indigenous communities protect sacred sites and ancestral lands from California to Columbia. It has assisted with the preservation and restoration of endangered languages, songs, dances, and midwifery knowledge, and trained communities on native resource management and land trusts. In the realm of foodways, TCC developed a strategic network of the growing Native foods movement, and served as a regional leader helping to establish Slow Food USA’s Restoring America’s Food Traditions project.
For over a decade the Native Foodways program has offered traditional foodways learning opportunities and distributed local, organic produce and Native-grown traditional foods, seeds, and recipes through Native community partners. In 2021 the program grew, sourced, distributed and donated over 10,200 pounds of heirloom foods and seeds to Indigenous communities throughout the region. With Heron Shadow, TCC has the opportunity to grow the length of its food distribution season, increase the amount of healthy, culturally significant food distributed, and extend the reach of its food resiliency network.
Heron Shadow will be a model for sustainable Native food production, access to social capital, technical farming support, agricultural practices, farm design, and financial planning resiliency for future farmers. It will promote Indigenous economic opportunities that support tribal sovereignty, reciprocal exchange and trade, and Native food systems. It also will be a meeting space for in-depth agricultural, environmental, and cultural education for Native land stewards, and a site of hands-on skills building for Native youth interns.
By employing the wisdom of adaptive Indigenous farming systems, Heron Shadow will promote the biodiversity and climate resilience of the local ecosystem; support the health of native animals, plants, and pollinators; and prioritize the health of local soils and waterways that sequester carbon and conserve water. It will increase the distribution of Native heirloom and California native seeds, foods, plant starts, and material sources to support ethnobotanical land revitalization projects, family plots, traditional materials tending, and medicine making.
Leadership
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Sara Moncada
CEO
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Melissa Nelson
President Emerita & Board Chair
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Maya Harjo
Farm Manager
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Edward “Redbird” Willie
Land Manager