Land and Water Conservation Is Our Hispanic Heritage

Appalachians who love their land and their mountain homes. But history reveals some unsettling stories about some Appalachians who were forced off their land in the 1930s to make room for the Shenandoah National Park.

Like many before us, my Indian parents valued land as a form of inheritance. They also fell in love with the gentle rolling hills of East Texas. In late 2020, my parents started searching for freedom from COVID-19 by looking for land to purchase.

An expanded concept of the “black commons” – based on shared economic, cultural and digital resources as well as land – could be a part of undoing the racist legacy of chattel slavery by encouraging economic development and creating communal wealth.

This is how one Native American presents her interpretation of the indigenous understanding of nature. Increasingly there has been debate over the nature of the Native American’s relationship to the land, both past and present.

"An increasing number of nonprofits are working to change that. They’re listening to the people they serve to shift more power to them. And their self-reflections on how listening is transforming their relationships with the people they serve."