Panel: Local and Indigenous Land Practices

Indigenous local land stewards will share stories on traditional ecological knowledge and practices for caring for the environment.  Presenters include Loa Niumeitolu, Corrina Gould, Kim Shuck and Isabella Zizi. 

Loa Niumeitolu is a Tongan poet, community organizer and farmer. Her work appears in Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English, Homelands: Women’s Journeys across Race, Place, and Time and Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought. She has been featured on BBC Radio Scotland.  As an educator and organizer, she has worked with(in) Mataliki: Tongan Writers Group in Tonga; Ex-Prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement in Worcester, Massashusetts; Pacific Islander women and male prisoners in Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and California State Prison, Solano. She co-founded the Two Spirit Takataapui LGBTQ indigenous support groups: One Love Oceania, Oyate Tupu‘anga and Spirit Root Medicine People. 

Corrina Gould (Lisjan Ohlone) is the chair and spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan—she was born and raised in Oakland, CA, the village of Huichin. A mother of three and grandmother of four, Corrina is the Co-Director for The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led organization within the urban setting of her ancestral territory of the Bay Area that works to return Indigenous land to Indigenous people, and the Co-Founder and Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a small Native run organization that works on Indigenous people issues and sponsored annual Shellmound Peace Walks from 2005 to 2009.  

Kim Shuck was San Francisco’s seventh Poet Laureate. Her poetry draws on her multiethnic background which includes Polish and Cherokee heritage, and her experiences as a lifelong resident of San Francisco. Her most recent book of poetry, Pick a Garnet to Sleep In, was published in 2024, and her book of essays, Noodle, Rant, Tangent, was published in 2022. In her term as Poet Laureate, she hosted scores of free poetry and art workshops for all ages at neighborhood libraries and schools and worked closely with San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Arts Commission to launch major citywide initiatives to honor Native American Indigenous Peoples' heritage. 

Isabella Zizi is a member of the Northern Cheyenne, Arikara and Muskogee Creek Nations. She is the youngest member of Idle No More SF Bay and signatory on the Indigenous Women of the Americas Defending Mother Earth Treaty. She was born in Richmond, California and grew up near the Chevron Refinery which exploded in 2012 and sent 15,000 people to hospitals with respiratory issues. This explosion motivated her to become involved in creating a better world and stopping climate chaos. 

Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people.

Connect: 

Sogorea Te’ Land Trust | Website 

Everybody’s Climate 2024: Connect with others to address the climate crisis in ways that are meaningful to you, from poetry and music to science and practical action.