Conservation across the country
October 12, 2023 I By Katie Cox, Executive Director
Dear Friends of KLT,
The other day I was having a little internal conflict. I had a lot I wanted to share with you, I always do. But, when we sit down and design the content for our e-news we try to make it into digestible small pieces so we can keep you interested and make sure you read to the very end.
What happens when we do that is you miss out on some of our deeper work and that is starting to bother me.
Someone stopped me the other day and asked what we were going to do now that the Save the Sled Hill campaign was done. It made me realize that a lot of people may think that we tackle projects in a single order, or that we are now looking for the next big idea. This is not the case.
This is how the concept of Dry as Dirt (don’t you love that title!) came to be born. This is a letter from me (and maybe at times from someone else) and its intent is to tell you as Paul Harvey would say…the rest of the story. Because every day there are about 10-20 wheels spinning in the office and some of you may just want to sit down and read about each of these wheels. So here we go.
This summer was bookended by two amazing invitations that have expanded how we work and think about conservation. I had the opportunity to attend two very different but related retreats, one in Montana and the other in Vermont. Both sessions were focused on helping land trusts find ways to increase conservation opportunities for native communities.
As you can imagine, this work looks very different in our corner of the country when compared to Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire. I also had the opportunity to travel to Alaska with my family during the summer and marveled at how different conservation strategies are from east to west for native peoples.
Our work in Vermont focused on the challenges of the Abenaki people which I knew nothing about before I ventured east. For four days we dove into the stories and the most recent legal issues surrounding Indigenous identity fraud on tribal communities and its intersection with conservation. It was a lot to wrap my mind around and still required more reading when I returned home to gain deeper understanding.
In Montana, I was struck by the simplest request from one of the tribal culture committee representatives. Every spring their members have dug camas root at the same area in east Sanders County, but the plot has become tired and needs to rest. Can we help find another camas patch? Do we have land in conservation in Sanders County that has camas? Such simple questions and possible actions could lead to rich and symbolic opportunities for native tribes. These actions are such important parts of helping to preserve tribal culture and heritage. I hope we can help in this search.
Then to venture to the other side of the United States and see how deeply embedded native art, culture and people are on the shores of the Inside Passage of Alaska brought to light the complexities, differences and challenges that are wrapped into each place and history.
There is learning happening across the country and if you want to know more about this topic I suggest checking out the book Trust in the Land by Beth Rose Middleton to learn how impacts are being made for tribal communities in land conservation.
Here at KLT we are very inspired by the time we spend with tribal partners and with other land trusts doing this important work. We will continue our partner work with the Kalispel, the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana and will use the learning from these two retreats to continually push forward with special projects. We currently are working on projects that will help return water access to the Kalispel Tribe in support of their work to revive the canoe culture work, which we began with the 2021 Moose Mountain acquisition project (LINK ARTICLE).
Next time let’s talk about our exciting innovative work bringing a Community Housing Initiative to life and a big planning project we are helping coordinate with area partners in the Sand Creek basin.
There is always something happening behind the doors at 1215 Michigan Street, Suite A. We would encourage you to stop in and sit down for a visit if you want to dive deeper into any of our work. We are grateful for our friends, just like you.
Have a great week,
Katie
