Our Work

Repair

We understand colonization not as a historical event, but an ongoing reality. As such, we are committed to addressing and repairing the harms it has caused, and is causing, to Indigenous Peoples, lands, and communities. 

Rematriate

Our vision  seeks to repair harm while co-creating futures for collective thriving, which is why we are also committed to rematriation. Crystal Cavalier-Keck describes rematriation as “a spiritual and political act of reconnection, one that reclaims Indigenous worldviews where land is not as property but as kin, where leadership emerges from responsibility, not hierarchy, and where women are the carriers of life, law, and legacy.”

Re-Member

To re-member is to take back what was broken. For settlers to Turtle Island, particularly those of European descent, re-membering is essential for coming into right relationship with the Living World and with the Original Peoples of Turtle Island. 

Indigenous Elders and leaders call on us to remember our ancestry and history with honesty and humility.  They ask us to re-member our connections with each other and with the Living World, to become good relatives to the land and all beings.  They encourage us to embrace the reality that we are deeply interdependent, as Patty Krawec says, “living in layers of relationships, among ancestors and descendants in a web that stretches far beyond our senses.” Re-membering helps us to interrupt the harms of colonization and commit to long-term repair.

  • We offer pathways to redistribute resources and wealth, accumulated (directly or indirectly) from privilege and power gained from colonization and genocidal policies, to Indigenous-led organizations for the purpose of rematriation. Learn more.

  • We are partners with an inter-cultural coalition to defend and heal the Sacred Peaks (the so-called San Francisco Peaks) from wastewater pollution and exploitation by commercialized recreation and development. To learn more about this issue and the work of the coalition, visit defendthepeaks.org.

  • We offer opportunities to learn about the history of European settlement and colonization on this land, Turtle Island (colonially known as North America). This history is not intended to shame us as individuals, but as an invitation to better understand how our the dominant systems emerged and continue to perpetuate harm, so that we can make informed choices to not participate in those systems.

    Each spring, we host an in-person two-hour workshop in partnership with Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples to explore the history of 500 years of colonization on Turtle Island, beginning with the Doctrine of Discovery. To learn about our next opportunity for learning honest and humble history of our nation and region, visit our Events page.

  • Cultural Programming for European-descended Settlers: many of our ancestors experienced centuries of violence across Europe, which disrupted their land-based connections and traditions, destroyed their communities and governance systems, and marginalized their local languages and ontologies. Unaddressed and unhealed, our forebears perpetrated similar violence against the Indigenous Peoples of this continent and Africa through settler colonialism, genocidal policies, kidnapping, enslavement, and other forms of dispossession.

    We offer gatherings and opportunities for descendants of European settlers and other non-Indigenous Peoples to learn about and engage with ancestral land-based knowledges and life-giving traditions that root us in relationship with each other and the Living World.

  • Settler colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy have wounded all of us in different ways and to varying degrees.  When European-descended settlers become sensitized to these legacies, we often experience difficult emotions.  We may feel culturally adrift, get stuck in guilt and shame, or doubt our capacity to relate to Indigenous lands, Peoples, and cultures in respectful ways. 

    Sacred Land Alliance coordinates supportive community gatherings to navigate and transmute these challenges.  Our Accompaniment Team is designed to support each other in this work. Together, we build our spiritual and emotional resilience, which increases our capacity for right relationship over time. 

To learn more about re-membering:

  • Patty Krawec from Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future. Broadleaf Books, 2022.

  • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 2014.

  • Robin Wall Kimmerer. The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. Illustrated by John Burgoyne. New York: Scribner, 2024.

  • Lyla June. "Reclaiming Our Indigenous European Roots." The MOON Magazine, January 2019.

  • David Dean. “Roots Deeper than Whiteness.” https://www.davidbfdean.com/roots-article

  • Resmaa Menakem. My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Las Vegas, NV: Central Recovery Press, 2017.

To learn more about rematriation: