We work to re-integrate human livelihood with the land and waters that sustain us all.

We don’t just conserve places to visit, we protect and care for places that are home.

So much well-intentioned conservation work ends up reinforcing a separation that began in the violent throes of the 19th century industrial revolution: the division between land and livelihood. It is not a universal human experience to think of “nature” as something we visit. This was forcibly produced by removing people from the land and constructing widespread dependency on capitalist markets for our sustenance. When we focus conservation efforts entirely on creating parks and preserves, we actually reinforce this division and we don’t challenge the ways that our livelihoods still rely on destroying land in places we don’t see.

By maintaining this separation of land and livelihood, we risk forgetting that the land is a core relationship that grows us, that makes us who we are. We need to re-learn how to live well here, on this land. And we need to do this in accountable relationships with the Wabanaki Nations who have been here for thousands of years.

Instead of conserving land by separating us from it, our work focuses on commoning the land. This means re-welcoming land into a community of active care and reciprocity—a commons in which we work to rebuild connection and interdependence with the land in ways that honor its more-than-human wild communities while also sustaining human livelihoods.

Practices of Commoning How do we care for the land?

  • The Land Commitment. Our land stewards affirm their long-term relationships with the land by entering into a 99-year renewable Land Commitment agreement. Most community land trusts call this a “ground lease,” but for us this language doesn’t reflect our values or intentions. There are no landlords here, and while this is a legally-binding agreement, our focus is on the ethical relationships it affirms between people and the land, and among our community of “commoners” caring for the land. Learn more about the Land Commitment here.

  • Learning from the land through many ways of knowing. The land has so much to teach, and the questions we ask matter. We believe in drawing on multiple forms of knowledge to understand the needs of the land, with an emphasis on centering traditional Wabanaki ways of knowing. We are currently working with Wabanaki foresters Tyler Everett (Mi’kmaq) and Tom Newell (Passamaquoddy), who bring together traditional knowledge with scientific forestry, to survey the lands we hold and develop plans for land care. We’re also excited to be working with Geo Soctomah Neptune as a cultural consultant for exploring Wabanaki cultural relationships with the land.

  • Growing community on and with the land. We believe that the land is best cared for when it is home to communities who care for each other and are rooted in their collective relationships with the land. This is a lesson we learn from Wabanaki people, and from Indigenous people everywhere. No legal document will ever be as powerful as multi-generational, land-rooted, liberation-centered culture and community. That is what we’re trying to build, bringing people to the land, and bringing land stewards together across the various commons to support each other, learn together, and build mutual accountability and support for people and the land.

  • Experimenting with new and old forms of life. Our land stewards are all, in their own ways, exploring practices for living with the land that reduce harmful impacts and enact reciprocity and regeneration. From Presente’s transition to dedicated no-till farming, Full Circle Willow’s no-plastic perrenial agroforestry practices, Wild Mountain Nursery’s replacement of imported rootstocks with homegrown stock, Celebration Tree Farm’s innovative coppicing for regenerative tree farming, and the many subsistence practices that sustain people on the land with food and medicine, we are continually seeking to learn and change in the direction of more responsible and reciprocal land care.

  • Asking hard questions & building movements. Transforming how we relate to the land is ultimately a challenge that goes well beyond individual or small-group choices. We are all trapped, in multiple ways, in systems of livelihood that harm to land and people. Changing this requires changing the larger systems that force us into dependency and into relations of harm. We do this by strengthening our collective visions for another world and by organizing collective power capable of revolutionary change. Roots in the land form a base of strength from which this organizing can and must be built.