Black Mesa and Catskills Exchange

In 2024, we hosted 4 young women for the Black Mesa to Catskills Exchange Program, where they spent five week on Gael Roots Community Farm, and our neighboring Wild Roots Farm. Then we spent a week on Two Strikes Ranch on Black Mesa in AZ. This is the story of how this cultural and lifestyle exchange was created.

In 2013, a Diné-led nonprofit organization called Tó Nizhóní Ání (TNA) which translates to “Sacred Water Speaks” supported and hosted the first Our Power Camp organized by the Climate Justice Alliance. Wes Gillingham was invited due to his involvement in the fracking fight. He brought his two kids, Iris and Roan, who were 13 and 11 at the time. While there they met the children of organizers and activists from Dził Yijiin (Black Mesa). One of those kids was 12 year old Annie Johnson, who is Diné (Navajo) belonging to the Chíshí (Chiricahua) Dine'é clan and born for the ‘Ashííhí (Salt) clan. You may wonder what the daughter of a white farmer from the Catskill Mountains and a Dine girl from the rural desert have in common. They had a lot of shared land-based values. While they were only in middle school at the time, they stayed pen pals and established a strong friendship. This led to Annie, at the age of 21, to intern at Wild Roots Farm in the summer of 2022. Through this exchange of knowledge and place, Annie gained valuable skills to apply to her work on Black Mesa.

With the start of Gael Roots Community Farm, we have created an exchange program. Annie and several young women from different communities spent time in the Catskill Mountains living and learning on Gael Roots. Then, the cohort went to Annie’s family ranch, Two Strikes Ranch, on Black Mesa, fostering environmental stewards in both places. This program’s tagline is “Iina Atx’iin Bik’eh’áhálnééh”, meaning “Mapping the Road of Life'', offers a space for young people to develop their values in relation to land and community. Aspects of learning include practices of Catskills and Navajo agriculture, lifeways, and foodways. This opportunity strengthens skills for living and working with people across different cultures, backgrounds, and ecosystems. It includes working with wild, cultivated, and herbal plants, sheep, cows, horses, wool processing, and fiber arts. This exchange will also foster conversations of commonalities dealing with fossil fuel impacts from home communities. This is an incredible life skills experience that allows youth from different cultures to incorporate new ideas and concepts into their work and lives. These farming and land stewardship lessons will aid us in mitigating and adapting to the ongoing and growing climate impacts. With the Black Mesa and Catskills exchange, we hope to instill skills and knowledge in students that will support future environmental leaders, farmers, healers, and more. Annie also works with Tó Nizhóní Ání as a lead on their plant project to ensure proper land reclamation after coal mining.

Photo with members of the first Our Power Camp in 2013