Our Programs
Through our four core programs, we protect ancestral lands, preserve cultural heritage, and empower Wabanaki communities.
🏔️ Land Return
Our Land Return program is at the heart of our mission. We work to rematriate Wabanaki land, ensuring that ancestral homelands are protected, preserved, and returned to their rightful stewards.
Key Activities:
- Acquiring land through purchase, donation, and conservation easements
- Working with willing sellers to transfer land back to Wabanaki stewardship
- Collaborating with government agencies on land return initiatives
- Creating land access agreements for cultural and ceremonial use
- Developing land management plans based on traditional ecological knowledge
Every acre returned to Wabanaki stewardship represents a step toward healing from centuries of dispossession and a foundation for cultural revival.
📚 Cultural Education
Our Cultural Education program preserves and shares Wabanaki knowledge, traditions, and practices with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.
Educational Offerings:
- Wabanaki History: Sharing the 12,000+ year history of the Wabanaki Confederacy
- Traditional Agriculture: Teaching the Three Sisters (corn, beans, squash) and sustainable farming
- Medicinal Practices: Preserving knowledge of traditional healing plants and remedies
- Language Revitalization: Supporting Wolastoqey and Mi'kmaq language learning
- Arts & Crafts: Basket weaving, beadwork, and traditional art forms
Through education, we build bridges of understanding and ensure that traditional knowledge is passed to future generations.
🤝 Community Empowerment
We empower Wabanaki leaders and communities through land access, capacity building, and support for cultural use of traditional territories.
Empowerment Initiatives:
- Creating cultural use agreements for ceremonial and spiritual practices
- Supporting Wabanaki-led land stewardship initiatives
- Building capacity for community land management
- Facilitating inter-generational knowledge transfer
- Connecting BIPOC communities across New England to ancestral lands
True empowerment comes from reconnecting people with their land, their culture, and their community.
🌿 Environmental Defense
We protect Wabanaki spaces from pollution, extraction, and environmental degradation, ensuring a healthy ecosystem for current and future generations.
Defense Strategies:
- Monitoring and protecting sacred waterways and watersheds
- Advocating against harmful extraction and development projects
- Applying traditional ecological knowledge to land stewardship
- Restoring degraded ecosystems using Indigenous practices
- Building alliances with environmental justice organizations
Environmental justice and Indigenous rights are inseparable. Protecting the land protects our culture, our health, and our future.
Our Commitment
Every program is guided by our commitment to the next seven generations.
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Generations Forward
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Core Programs
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Wabanaki Nations
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Unified Mission
Support Our Programs
Your support helps us protect ancestral lands and preserve Wabanaki culture for generations to come.