A presentation I gave at the New York State Land Trust Conference about how land access relates to power and self-determination. Given that indigenous people and POC have systemically been removed from land in this country while conservation groups have amassed land, conservation organizations have a responsibility to repair these relationships and restore land sovereignty for native people. 

Making justice, equity, diversity and inclusion part of the DNA of a conservation organization.

Setting Strong Intention for Organizational Change On Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

The work of conserving places and communities is never-ending and ever-changing. It’s a bigger “project” than timelines and strategic plans can hope to convey. It’s longer than board terms, congressional cycles, and political careers. It is longer even then individual human lives.

When a mission lasts decades and decades, how does an organization evolve its definitions of what conservation means to be relevant to the present? How does an organization negotiate its meaning and values between generations? When does one generation’s strength and force of understanding the past make it hard for the next generation to look squarely and honestly at the present? How does one generation, on fire with purpose and vision, allow the next generation to see the world through their own eyes?

In the winter and spring of 2015, I had the honor of collaborating with the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC) to help them grapple with these questions and formulate a new theory of change that reflects a new generation’s approach and meaning.

In collaboration with Barry Lopez, with Center for Whole Communities, with the Native Land Trust Alliance, I had the honor of helping to create and sustain a dialogue that had not before existed before between Native and contemporary (non-Native) land trust leaders in the western United States. The purpose was to strengthen relationships between the two and to identify opportunities for more collaboration. I saw, too, the significant opportunity for this dialogue to further redefine and re-invent conservation as protecting human diversity alongside biological diversity.

What does it take for a leading, state-wide philanthropy to combine their separate grant-making in conservation and human wellbeing?  Why would they do this? What does it ask of their grantees? What do they hope success will look like?

The Sustainable Southeast Partnership is the most inspiring, well thought out and longterm commitments I've seen to bring conservation and community together to create something new and powerful for all.  It is a decade long commitment of partnership between Native corporations, rural Native communities, enviromental and community development groups who are learning the practice of longterm collaboration and partnership to create a different future for their home...