Land & Labor

We ground our work in the true history of the lands we steward and the long-standing cultural relationships between native peoples and our bio-region.

Many rivers in the arid Southwest flowed year-round just two centuries ago. Colonization, land theft, overuse, and disconnection from ancestral knowledge contribute to the droughts we experience today. Indigenous stewardship protected these waters for millennia, but genocide, forced assimilation, and systemic erasure disrupted that relationship.

We benefit from the history and knowledge held by the Apache, O’odham, Yaqui, Pee Posh, Hopi, Diné, and many other recognized and unrecognized peoples.

We name the legacies of slavery, systemic oppression, and genocide not to assign blame, but to tell the truth: these are the roots of today’s climate crisis and social division. Grounding in truth is how we imagine what’s possible.