Rematriation
In Kentucky, two Indigenous women are hoping to stop a prison's construction by purchasing the land where it is being proposed.
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LISTENING: to happy, groovy jams
FEELING: hungry because I skipped lunch (oops!)
SEEING: my pink therapy journal taunt me
Since last year, I've been thinking about how to honor Nex Benedict for the anniversary of his death. For those who forgot, they're the trans teen from Oklahoma who died last year after a group of girls bullied them. I started reporting on a climate tie-in for Atmos, and that story is finally out here.
In reporting that piece, Oklahoma-based two-spirit advocate Alex DeRoin first introduced me to the word "rematriation." Have you heard of the term? I hadn't. DeRoin described it to me as "equivalent to the land back movement, but it's different in that rematriation acknowledges that we need to return to the Mother Earth and degrow in the name of nature and being environmentally sustainable but also addressing the patriarchy and how it affects those overlying issues."
"Rematriation works more toward establishing matriarchial systems again within our tribal systems because a lot of tribal nations are very patriarchal nowadays, and that's counter to what they were prior to colonization," said DeRoin, an Osage, Otoe, Pawnee, and Blackfeet Native who is also a sitting council member at Tulsa Two Spirit, a local nonprofit dedicated to cultivating Indigequeer spaces.
I didn't get to explore this framework in the article about Benedict and Oklahoma, but I wanted to do so here — especially because the term came up yet again in an interview I conducted last week with Tiffany P.* and Taysha DeVaughan, co-executive directors of the Appalachian Rekindling Project. They're in the process of rematriating a 63-acre plot of land in Letcher County, Kentucky, in part, to stop the construction of a federal prison.
I first learned of their work through this Kentucky Lantern article by Liam Niemeyer.
This effort highlighted for me the possibilities that lie where community and crisis meet. And that's exactly what this newsletter is about.