The Inaugural Year of the Healing Landscapes Program at Vesper Meadow
by Stasie Maxwell, VM Indigenous Partnership Programs Manager
“Imagine how our world would be different if we viewed the land, trees, water, plants, animals, insects as relatives instead of commodities or living beings separate from ourselves?”
Indigenous youth position conifer branches by Latgawa Creek to support beaver-based restoration work at Vesper Meadow, summer 2023. Photo by Ellie Cosgrove (Southern Oregon Climate Action Now)
When we invite youth participants from our Healing Landscapes program to share in Indigenous worldview, we have the joy of watching their gaze turn to look out on the meadow, creeks, and forest at Vesper Meadow, and witness wonder on their faces as they look at the world with new eyes. As the day progresses, and Indigenous youth connect to the land through mindfulness and restoration activities like seed-collecting and riparian restoration, there are smiles and conversation and laughter. Youth and adults alike share in our closing circles and speak to the connection they felt, to land and to each other. This is the healing power of connection.
The Healing Landscape Program
Restoring the human-land connection to mutually benefits ecosystems and human communities.
The Healing Landscapes Program centers local Indigenous youth in culturally specific frameworks, incorporating perspectives of Indigenous worldview where plants, animals, and humans are interdependent relatives. We build connections within the hearts of minds of people engaging in land stewardship, biocultural restoration, and mindfulness practices. By going inward, participants gain experience in centering themselves in their Indigenous value systems, building resilience through connection to themselves, their family, their community, and the more-than-human world. By engaging in long-term, hands-on restoration activities at the Vesper Meadow Restoration Preserve, participants gain life and career skills in community programming, cultural practices, social-emotional-spiritual learning, and ecological restoration.
2023, the first year of Healing Landscapes
Our first year of bringing our Healing Landscapes program to our community was many things. We built relationships with Indigenous-led organizations and deepened our relationships with local conservation organizations. We welcomed Native people onto the land known as Vesper Meadow, where we stretched in the sun in a circle, and saw youth and elders smiling and laughing together in the shared experience of land and place. We introduced youth to learning about the identification and importance of cultural and biological use of Native plants and importantly, how to build a relationship with the plants. We shared about Indigenous worldview, and how the land, plants, trees, water and insets are our relatives. We inspired curiosity with the question, “how would our world look different if we viewed the world around us as our relatives?”
Attendees share their favorite parts about the Healing Landscape Program:
Indigenous Partnerships Program Manger Stasie Maxwell discusses the benefit from riparian restoration for upper wetland meadows with a Climate Action Youth Group. Photo credit: Ellie Cosgrove with Southern Oregon Climate Action Now.
Youth:
“Building the dam and working in the creek was absolutely awesome!”
“My favorite part was getting to know my community.”
“My favorite part was spending time in nature and helping restore the land.”
“I really enjoyed being able to help heal the land in the form of small amounts of progress that will lead to a greater goal.”
“Doing the mindfulness activity, the 5 minutes of quiet time, it felt very calming and made me feel very present.”
“Just having the time to decompress and be in touch with the land was really meaningful.”
“The mindfulness activity let me release so much stress.”
“I felt present, calm, happy, and stress-free after I left. I also helped the earth while gaining all those things.”
Adults:
“Vesper Meadow is a place where we can go, where it is safe, and where we can engage in our connection to culture and the land. It revitalizes my spirit”
“I’ve walked through this area (Native seed plots by the driveway) numerous times on my way out to the Meadow, but this was the first time I had an opportunity to slow down and observe, really feel this place [one of the native garden plots], and build a relationship with the land and plants here. I’m really grateful for that. This is a good reminder to take the time to build relationships instead of just rushing through”
“This volunteer day felt distinctly different from most volunteer days I’ve experienced. There’s always this haste, like we have to repair a broken planet or save it from impending destruction…which we do…but the energy today was so different. We got a lot done, we achieved our goal, but I don’t feel tired like I usually do. If anything, I feel restored!”
Program Director Jeanine Moy points out Native plants to youth from the Southern Oregon Education Service District’s Indian Education Program during their Wellness Retreat.
How did the Healing Landscapes program serve the local Indigenous community in the first year (2023)?
-Healing Landscapes gave opportunities for Indigenous youth and families to engage in beaver-based restoration, connect to place, and engage in the worldview and practices that deepen and heal the human-land relationship
-We did movement in the sun, standing in a circle, and engaged in guided meditation together. Having people of all ages from young children to elders meant experiencing things across generations
-Youth learned by doing and witnessing to consider the ability of their elders and other community members and an opportunity to listen to their wisdom
-Youth were invited to share what they feel and learn with each other and with the community, and engaged within a safe place for their voices to be heard and centered
-Intertribal opportunity to experience the connection to land through different Tribal backgrounds and ages
-Gave youth the opportunity to expend energy, not just sit in a classroom or be on a computer - destress, breathe deep, relax
-A safe place to be ourselves - where we don’t have to educate anyone or explain ourselves. A day of community where we can speak our mind, speak our hearts and people know and understand because they have experienced that as well
-Identifying plants and discussing their cultural use, their relationship to land and animals
-Build relationships across local Indian country
-Meditation hike program materials
How has Healing Landscapes served non-Native community?
Photo credit: Anton Brilts, Healing Landscapes youth attendee
Throughout our first year of Healing Landscapes, we shared Indigenous Worldview with school groups and during introductions on our community volunteer days. Especially sharing with youth, seeing the wonder in their eyes, as they are invited to see the life around them as a relative is special every time we introduce land as a relative. It is such a shift from the Western Worldview, to see life around us as relative, and it is such an important shift, that sharing this one point became a constant.
Another natural point to flow to after introducing the world around us as relatives is the importance of language and place. Indigenous people and their cultures and languages are place-based. Indigenous languages are imbued with connection to place and to each other, so having discussions around ancestral languages and how other languages phrase things was always eye-opening as people shared words or phrases they knew in other languages.
Colonization has disconnected people from land, from languages, and from place. That disconnection occurred in Europe first, and then was brought to what is now known as the Americas. Reconnecting to ancestral lineages and languages moves us towards healing from the wounds of colonization and gives our whole local community an opportunity to reconnect to land and to each other.
We also recognize that connection deepens over time. We welcome volunteers who keep coming back and we enjoy seeing their relationship deepen to place and to each other. It is also an opportunity to disconnect from other Western worldviews that are damaging, such as urgency.
We invite volunteers to have the time to connect to land, to develop a relationship with the place they are bringing restoration to. In this way, the land heals us as well.
Thanks to the Vesper Meadow individual donors and supporters who helped launch this program in 2023! We are looking forward to growing it together in the years to come.
