Since the spring of 2022 Hawk Mountain Earth Center provides support and advocacy to communities of the global majority currently asserting land rematriation. In the fall of 2021 Rev Dele of Soil and Souls organization convened the Indigenous Mothers Community Land Trust to bring together three community organizations to support each other in fulfilling land sovereignty because we have found that land access has not been sufficient to allow us full authority over how we tend to our land, crops, and community relations. These organizations are Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lenape Nation, Hawk Mountain Earth Center, and Soil & Souls. Together we will collaborate on Indigenous land management projects that span the growing cycle from seed saving to market distribution of produce, native plants and herbal medicines. We offer a continuum of care for the land and the people engaged in caring for it.
Indigenous Mothers Community Land Trust will provide a protected space for Indigenous practices. We envision families learning to grow food and medicine together, earth/land workers being paid fairly for their labor, and young adults developing resilience leadership skills as they implement in their own food sovereignty projects. IMCLT will provide holistic support through the rematriation and ceremonial components of the nursery and mutual aid gardens.
With the land we aquire, we will make space for the autonomous recuperation and regeneration of our social, cultural and spiritual ways of life. We aim to guarantee our own protection and safety by self-determining our spiritual practices and customs in spite of previous criminalization within local jurisdictions. We will provide a protected space for the Global Majority to gather and share cultural celebrations autonomously.
We will offer a continuum of care for the land, the people engaged in caring for it, and those receiving the fruits of our labor. Land acquisition is central to our work because it provides a stable place to live and implement Indigenous land management in all seasons.
This is Community Supported Land Sovereignty.
At the moment Indigenous Mothers Community Land Trust is comprised of powerful matriarchal farmers who have contributed decades of work to uplifting indigenous voices and facilitating BIPOC visibility, presence and autonomy within the environmental justice, conservation, agricultural and religious sectors. Because a variety of systems converge to create food shortages, a variety of systems must converge so we may embody full sovereignty in our food systems. You can support this vison by making a one time or recurring contribution to Indigeouns Mothers Community Land Trust. All contributions made through this link go directly to IMCLT’s land acquisition fund.