Meet Our Planning Committee

Caroline is an author and literacy consultant at www.carolinebrewerbooks.com, program director for BTFNA, and former chairwoman of Nature Forward's Taking Nature Black Conference. Brewer has said, "As a child, outdoors was freedom. Intoxicating freedom. It was birth and rebirth, resonating somatically, like a song. So when I’m outside, sometimes weighted by the brutality and sorrow of Black Americans and the Indigenous on this land, I must carry the breath and memory of that little girl and her ancestors with me. They understand that, like the lilies of the field, we are worthy of the shine of the sun. They understand that we’ve got to water the truth, the way forests water themselves, the way leaves are the “eyes” of trees, the way trees breathe, so that we can too.

Ultimately, we who dance in the noonday sun, pregnant with our rich history, must nurture the sweetest thing we’ve ever known, and our belonging to it."

When outdoors, I feel centered, as though the earth and ancestral home, a place of endless wonders. There are so many places where I feel symbiosis, partnership. The earth and the unbuilt world, are  where I usually feel I have real belonging. 

We, as Black people, have been unable to tell our stories over the ages largely I think because so many people have been willing to tell stories on our behalf. The truth is we are a resilient people with deep mind, body, and spiritual ties to nature and with a heritage of stewardship that is I think like nature, entirely infinite.

I’m a New York City kid, a Harlem child from what some call “the concrete jungle”. I never knew there was such a thing as an urban or community forest. The closest I came to a forest was the one, baby tree that was planted outside our apartment building!

I didn’t know enough to hope that it would provide us shade in summer, a spectacular show of color in the Fall. All I knew was that it was life. It was ours. I loved it and wanted with all my heart to see it grow….

When I’m outside, being touched by the sun, I feel free, free to be me and to not care about time, or to-do lists. I indulge my whims and cradle myself in tranquil thoughts. I love that I can breathe easier and release. I love that I can cry in the rain and run through a thunderstorm.  Being outside often triggers thoughts about my ancestors, especially when I am barefoot. They speak to me and provide guidance. When outside looking upward, under the moon and stars, I wonder who else is looking at the same star? I wonder did my kinfolk of long ago walk these same grounds, as they laid a path for me. Sometimes, too, when I pass certain trees, I shiver with dark thoughts that, perhaps, someone hanged there. I try to shake the images of “strange fruit,” but those images... Belonging is helping us to share the critical history that Black Americans are the farmers who have fed many generations.

We are watermen, the cowboys, the boat makers, the herbalists, the cotton pickers, the tobacco harvesters who labored sunrise to sunset for small wages or without recompense. I think of those ancestors who paid the ultimate sacrifice so that I can be outside, unchained and free. We will not be omit-ted or erased

As a child I played in the woods, carved names on a birch tree on the day President Roosevelt died (the tree is still there). When I walk this land breathing clean air and soaking up birdsong and country sounds it inspires me to be a good steward of the farm that has been in my family since 1925.

Black people have been in intimate communion with nature since time immemorial—our hands in the soil, smelling the earthy aroma, conserving, preserving, appreciating its worth to the spirit as well as the bountiful food harvests which nourish the body…

Princess Mutasa  is a public policy intern in the city of Durham, NC and a network training coordinator for the Food Bank of Eastern and Central North Carolina. She is passionate about community-based work in the environmental field, and tackling environmental justice and equity. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, hiking, kayaking and artistic pursuits such as drawing, embroidery, and nature photography.

I am a brand strategist, and business and marketing executive with global experience leading, managing and training all phases of the marketing process.

Pam is committed to sharing, following and nurturing the collective wisdom of the Black environmental community whose values support a holistic understanding of the place of human beings on this earth. Overlooked, underserved and too often disrespected community voices offer insights into how to heal with the environment.

Xavier Brown is a  lifelong Washingtonian.  He earned his Bachelors from North Carolina A&T, and a Masters from the University of Vermont,  Xavier is a alumni of the Robert Wood Johnson Culture of Health Leaders Program, a cofounder/worker-owner SouthEats cooperative, a Member of  Black Dirt Farm Collective & Founder of Soilful. 

Xavier operates at the boundaries of urban agriculture, environmental sustainability, and African Diasporic culture.  Xavier is a part of a new sustainability movement that is healing the people and the land by reconnecting our scared relationship to the earth.

I was picked up out of Southeast DC and placed in the country setting on farmland with horses and other animals that were not in cages.  Teen Haven Christian camp not only introduced me to the wonders and pleasures of Love and Its creation but also to the comfort, healing properties of the outdoors.  Time outdoors is a requirement for my peaceful existence on this planet.  Yes, Nature is my mental and spiritual hospital.  When in need of guidance or healing, I go sit outside. Things become clearer.  Love is able to lead me. 

Outside in nature has always been the place where black people have sought healing – peace, liberation and rejuvenation.  We sing songs about laying down burdens down by the river side. We have a long history of being caretakers and care givers of Love’s estate.