Dear friends,

Give STL Day is on May 5th this year, and the donations we receive through this fundraising effort help us continue to share our 25 years of sustainable living experience with others. If you’ve been inspired by our mission throughout the years, please consider giving to our Give STL campaign!

Recently I was reminded of how special the DR community here is, and about how important our collective actions are to the wider world. As some of you may know, a group of Rabbits and Red Earth Farmers traveled to Alabama in March to visit Ekvn-Yefolecv, an intentional ecovillage community of Indigenous Maskoke persons. My daughter and I went on this trip, and it was one of the most memorable and impactful experiences of our lives!

As females of color who live in a predominantly white community, it was incredibly inspiring for my daughter and me to see an entire community of Indigenous people working together to preserve their language and culture, and sustainably steward the land that their people have called home for thousands of years. It was a complete honor to garden alongside them before sunrise, cook a homemade Mexican meal for them (along with a spicy salsa that my grandma taught me to make as a young girl!), help plaster one of their buildings, and assist with the construction of their new biodigester. There were memorable moments of my daughter and I learning how to speak Maskoke, and where we in turn taught them Spanish. Most nights, after a long day of work, our communities shared stories of the triumphs and tribulations we have faced in establishing communities that align with our visions for a more sustainable and ethical future.

The time we spent together was especially important to me because it allowed me to recognize the particular experiences people of color in the west face in returning to a low-carbon lifestyle that is reminiscent of the ones our ancestors lived. At Ekvn-Yefolecv, they are reintroducing bison and sturgeon to their historic habitat, growing heirloom crops to decolonize their diets, and re-establishing traditions that generations of their ancestors practiced before being forcibly removed from their traditional homelands. Almost two centuries after the near obliteration of their people, language, and culture, they are fighting to revitalize their ancestral way of life.

As someone whose family comes from an agrarian background, and who in many ways is re-learning how to engage with the natural world in an ecologically sustainable manner, their struggle resonates with me very deeply and personally. My ancestors stewarded their lands in rural Mexico for generations, but migrated to the United States at the onset of a globalized industrial agricultural system, making it harder for them to maintain their agrarian way of life. Though my grandparents grew up practicing traditional Mexican agricultural practices, they spent their entire adult lives laboring in the agricultural fields of California’s Central Valley, and my generation completely lost touch with our historic connection to the land. Like the Maskoke people at Ekvn-Yefolecv, I, too, am learning to reconnect with the ecologically sustainable traditions of my ancestors. Though it is not easy to return to this way of life after several generations of disconnection, I left Ekvn-Yefolecv empowered to continue my own journey to live a purpose-driven life that is in line with my hope for a greener and more humane world.

The trip to Ekvn-Yefolecv was life-changing for me on many levels, but it was also an important reminder that we in the tri-communities are part of a larger movement of people who are trying to create a sustainable alternative for humanity. The folks at Ekvn-Yefolecv visited Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in 2014, and they were emboldened and energized by our eco vision to move forward with creating their own intentional community in order to preserve their language and culture. And here we were, eight years later, visiting them in their ancestral homeland, and learning from them what it means to truly practice linguistic, cultural, and ecological sustainability. Though we are separated by 750 miles and a 13-hour drive, we are both ecovillages bonded in our mission to expand the breadth of change in the wider world and to create a brighter future for all people.

As Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage embarks on its 25th anniversary, and another season of rigorous educational programs, we would love for you to join with us as we work with other communities to create a greener and more wholesome vision for humanity. Your support allows us to brighten this beacon of hope for the wider world. As the late, great Latin American writer Eduardo Galeano once stated: “Many small people, in small places, doing small things can change the world.”

Together, we can plant seeds of hope this spring and inspire a truly extraordinary era of sustainable living and human cooperation!

Early Giving for Give STL has now begun, so you can give as early as today to be part of our 25-year tradition of sustainable cooperative living!
In community,