Join us for the next Indigenous Feminisms Speaker Series installment with Jessica Hernandez  (Binnizá-Zapotec & Ch’orti’), MS, MMA, Ph.C.!

Indigenous Lands Before Urban Parks: Indigenizing Restoration in Discovery Park

Climate change is resulting in food insecurity and environmental degradation that is being addressed through restoration and conservation paradigms and frameworks that may or may not work. Because climate change is impacting Indigenous peoples the most, it is important to indigenize these conservation paradigms and frameworks to make them more holistic and effective. In our community-based participatory research, we are indigenizing restoration in Seattle Urban Parks by focusing on land restoration and the significance of land to Urban Natives. We are focusing our project to the Bernie Whitebear Garden located in Discovery Park—in the 19 acres of land designated to Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center. We explore and examine the urban Native diaspora of Seattle and find ways in which Indigenous knowledge systems and contemporary diets have adapted to their new urban setting through our podcast Indigenizing Urban Seattle.