Despite policies which have sought to dispossess Indigenous people of their homelands and foreclose the possibilities of Black ecologies from flourishing, community members and tribal citizens have developed structures to maintain caretaking relationships with the places that they call home. One key strategy has been the development of community land trusts, a model which emerged in tandem with the liberation movements of the long 1960s. Join our panelists as they share a bit about their visions of what land stewardship entails.

About The Rez & The Hood series:

This season, we are collaborating with Mary Amanda McNeil (she/her), Assistant Professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University, to bring you “The Rez and The Hood,” a DS4SI Design Gym speaker series, that celebrates local practices of Black and Indigenous placekeeping, stewardship, and institution-building. Across four events, panelists from the Commonwealth will reflect upon their lives’ work while attending to broader thematic questions such as: What has happened to us spatially? How have we created life-affirming geographies in the midst of settler colonial and anti-Black dispossession and displacement? What are our visions for the future?

The places we call home have been spatially transformed by settler colonialism, anti-Blackness, and other forms of domination; this shapes the conditions of life and death for Black and Indigenous families, communities, and nations in the lands that are commonly referred to as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And yet, BIPOC political organizers, community members, and tribal citizens have fought against colonial, national, and local policies of dispossession and displacement for the past four centuries—insisting upon their responsibility to remain in place and critically shaping their environments in the process.

Register to join us and be a part of this rich dialogue.

About the Moderator:

Mary Amanda McNeil (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University. Her research, teaching, and public history work sit at the intersections of Black studies; Native American and Indigenous studies; social history; and geography, with especial attention to the Northeast. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, McNeil is a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and lives in Dorchester.