Join us and guests Dr. Ted Jojola and Kahstoserakwathe Paulette Moore for a presentation and conversation to discuss how place-knowing concepts connect with land restoration concerns in current-day North Central Troy, informed by a series of case studies with Indigenous communities, and having walked the Sanctuary campus with local land stewards. They will talk about how changemakers can engage Indigenous planning methods as they remediate contaminated and neglected land and make way for healthy communities.

“Place-knowing” (rather than “place-making”) acknowledges that a place may already be made. One must “walk the land” to learn about it and about the world-views of the communities that inhabit it. Place-knowing as a framework in the context of brownfield remediation on Indigenous lands is explored in depth on the PlaceKnowing podcast. Hosted by Dr. Ted Jojola, the series supports “social changemakers to engage Indigenous planning methods as they remediate contaminated and neglected land and make way for healthy communities.” Kahstoserakwathe Paulette Moore’s approach to media-making is explored in a Hudson Mohawk Magazine interview: Indigenous Media-Making: Land, Language, Relationship.

“Ruderal,” from the Latin rudus (rubble), refers to plant species that are first to repopulate disturbed habitats. “Ruderal ecologies” are formed by hardy, adaptive communities of human and more-than-human life who begin the healing process in the wake of damaging processes like colonization, urbanization, and industrialization. 

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Presenters

Kahstoserakwathe Paulette Moore is an independent filmmaker, podcaster, and educator. Moore is Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk) and an enrolled member of Six Nations of the Grand River territory where she is based. She is a founding member and co-owner of The Aunties Dandelion (TAD): a media organization informed by traditional Onkwehon:we (Indigenous) teachings and focused on revitalizing communities through stories of land, language, and relationships. TAD recently completed their short film titled VESS, featuring Mi’kmaq actor Glen Gould and Six Nations community members. The film is about love, listening and returning to the Rez.

TAD projects include The Aunties Dandelion’s monthly podcast which in its third year. Moore completed a trilogy of films with Free Speech TV about the 2016/17 Standing Rock water protection actions and from 2017 – 2019 was an affiliated professor of Indigenous media and philosophy at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin.

Theodore (Ted) Jojola, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor and Regents’ Professor Emeritus in the Community & Regional Planning Program, School of Architecture + Planning, University of New Mexico (UNM). He holds a PhD in Political Science from University of Hawaii at Manoa where he attended the EastWest Center. He has a Masters in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BFA in Architecture from the UNM. 

He is an enrolled tribal member of the Pueblo of Isleta. From 2008-2010, he was Visiting Distinguished Professor at Arizona State University where he was a member of the faculty of the School Geographic Sciences and Planning. He was Director of Native American Studies at UNM from 1980-1996, and established the interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Native Studies. He is the founder of the Indigenous Design + Planning Institute and a cofounder of the Indigenous Planning Division of the American Planning Association. He is President of a non-profit foundation, The Society for the Preservation of American Indian Culture, as well as board member of other foundations including the Chamiza Foundation, Tricklock Theatre Company, and the BataanCorregidor Foundation of New Mexico. 

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Respondents

These invited guests have unique perspectives on connecting with land in North Central Troy.

A’Livija Mullins-Richard, affectionately known as Livi or Olive, is the new kid on the block at the Sanctuary for Independent Media. Her multifaceted roles as the Air Justice Lab (AJL) Project Lead at NATURE Lab and Outreach and Volunteer Coordinator for The Sanctuary reflect her dedication to fostering collective action and  filling data gaps in underserved communities. A first-generation college graduate, she holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Environmental Justice from Siena College.  As the Outreach & Volunteer Coordinator, she is determined to forge stronger connections with organizations, schools, and individuals throughout Troy. Through her work with AJL, a community air monitoring initiative, A’Livija aims to gather data that validates the lived experiences of individuals residing in sacrifice zones, commonly known as environmentally unjust areas. By collecting this data, she seeks to cultivate awareness and encourage participatory action concerning air quality issues.  In addition to her primary roles, A’Livija is involved in various projects at The Sanctuary, including tending to the Collard City Garden and contributing to radio production via Hudson Mohawk Magazine. A’Livija’s areas of focus include racial health disparities, urban ecology, cartography, and New York State History. Her unwavering dedication is focused on cultivating a culture of care in spaces where complacency often prevails. She firmly believes that this transformative journey begins with her—and with you.

Azuré Iversen-Keahi is a mixed Kanaka ‘Ōiwi, mother, grower, writer, and administrator based on Mohican soils of Upstate New York. Transitioning from the landscape of the Koʻolau Mountains to the Hudson Valley of the Northeast, she began to explore earthwork as healing for herself and the surrounding community centering her commitment to food sovereignty and intersectional justice. Her stories of diaspora, ʻāina-based healing and ancestral reunion have been published in The Greenhorns’: New Farmer’s Almanac, Tropic Magazine, GRIST, Atmos and The Daily Yonder. Having managed a food business in NYC, farmer’s markets for Denison Farm, holding worker-ownership at Capital Bookkeeping Cooperative, and having served as the Business Manager of Soul Fire Farm, she weaves indigenous ways of knowing into the design of administrative systems that cultivate care and support for teams centering collective liberation.

damaris miller (they / them) is a community organizer, facilitator, and grower committed to creating spaces of rest, discovery, and connection for Black, Indigenous and other People of Color, queer and trans folks, and activists. They have been creating & curating transformative spaces for over 10 years through practices of breath, Buddhist-based meditation, Ancestral Wisdom and Earth reverence. Damaris has over 10 years of experience working for and with nonprofits in the spheres of environmental action, food justice, healing justice and abolition. This experience includes (though is not limited to) working with WE ACT For Environmental Justice, Khoryug Environmental Network, Soul Fire Farm and Troy 4 Black Lives. In their work to unpack the nonprofit industrial complex, they created Rested Root’s framework to “T.R.A.N.S.F.O.R.M. the NPIC.” As a Queer and Trans survivor, they strive to live into personal healing as a practice of communal liberation and community healing as the root of personal liberation. Damaris has a B.A. in Anthropology and Environmental Studies from Princeton University. 

Ellie Irons (she/her) is an artist and educator living and working on Mohican land in current-day Troy, New York, USA. From foraged watercolor paintings to un-lawning experiments, her work combines socially engaged art, ecology fieldwork, and embodied learning. She is a co-founder of the Next Epoch Seed Library and the Environmental Performance Agency, collaborations investigating relationships between humans and spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds). Ellie received a BA from Scripps College in Los Angeles and an MFA from Hunter College in New York. In December 2021, She completed a PhD in arts practice at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, focused on socially engaged environmental art. She is currently a community science educator and lab manager at the Sanctuary for Independent Media’s NATURE Lab. One iteration of her ongoing Lawn (Re)Disturbance Laboratory project enlivens a lawn south of Collard City growers on the Sanctuary campus.

Kathy High is an artist / educator who collaborates with scientists and others, and considers living systems, animal sentience, and ethical dilemmas of biotechnology and medical industries. High is Professor of Video and New Media in the Arts department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is NATURE Lab coordinator at the Sanctuary for Independent Media.

Margaretha Haughwout works with humans, and the more-than-human, across technologies and ecologies, to cultivate a radical imagination that challenges proprietary regimes, colonial temporalities, and capitalist forms of labor. Her work manifests as speculative fabulation, intervention, participatory event, walking tour, experimental pedagogy, installation, and biological processes. Haughwout’s active collaborations include the Coven Intelligence Program, with efrén cruz cortés, the Guerrilla Grafters, and Ruderal Witchcraft with Oliver Kellhammer. She created and maintains the Food Forest Studio in Central New York, and is working with the Sanctuary to create the living installation De-Fence.

Wanonah Spencer is an Indigenous youth advocate visiting her Mohican homelands from current-day Wisconsin. She is Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican and Oneida. She received the Alliance for a Viable Future’s first ever Mohican Ancestral Healing Fellowship to deepen her relationship with her homelands and The Berkshires. In 2023 she visited the Sanctuary with her daughter Gracie who participated in Water Justice Lab. Wanonah’s long-term plan is to establish a sister organization dedicated to cultural revitalization and climate education on her reservation in Wisconsin.

We are committed to lowering the barriers to access for events at The Sanctuary for Independent Media. For people who are hard of hearing or deaf, blind or low-vision, or whose physical limitations can interfere with a satisfying experience, let us know two weeks in advance so we can make appropriate arrangements.