Relationships & Reciprocity Program
The Relationships and Reciprocity (RR) program carries out the NEFOC-LT vision by actionably prioritizing reciprocal relationships with land, community partners, external partners, and non-human kin. Guided by our vision and continuously evolving values and principles, in collaboration with NEFOC-LT’s Co-directors, community of organizers, and staff, the RR program is contributing to the co-creation of a community of holistic, celebratory, polyculture of Land-based Practice that reciprocally sustains each other and will continue to do so for generations. This co-creation ensures the RR program can develop, maintain, evolve, and compost the resources, structures, systems, and processes required to build and steward the reciprocal relationships required to manifest and maintain a kin-centered, BIPOC-led regional land trust. The core of the RR program considers how we can be in reciprocal relationship with the land and each other through ancestral, relational, and technical/transformational approaches.
Contact Email: reciprocity@nefoclandtrust.org
The RR program is where NEFOC begins its journey with potential partners, funders, allies, and siblings and includes:
We The Land! Biannual Conference: We The Land! is NEFOC's gathering centering Indigenous, Black, and Brown earth workers, land stewards, and farmers — a weekend of knowledge exchange, skill sharing, grassroots organizing, celebration, and ceremony. Rooted in NEFOC's vision to advance land and food sovereignty in the Northeast through permanent and secure land tenure for People of Color farmers and land stewards, We The Land! honors our ancestors' dreams for regenerative farming, human habitat, ceremony, native species ecosystem restoration, and cultural preservation. The 2026 gathering meets August 7–9 at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Register, volunteer, sponsor, or donate at wetheland.com.
Earth Echoes: Earth Echoes: Archiving Transborder Memory, Migration, and Land Stewardship is NEFOC's living, community-governed archive gathering the oral histories and land-based practices of women and femmes of the global majority who steward land, seed, and memory across the Northeastern U.S. and southern Canada. Unlike archives that rely on extraction and digitization, Earth Echoes is a biocultural, embodied practice — held in gardens, seed bundles, storytelling circles, kitchens, and our bodies. Thirteen Garden Pots and their Watering Cans are co-creating this archive alongside a Community Advisory Council, gathering stories that move across physical, political, and bio-geographical borders: seedkeeping and ancestral foodways, spiritual relationships to land, displacement and return, ecological grief and repair, and matriarchal stewardship. Guided by OCAP® and CARE principles and Indigenous data sovereignty protocols, every story stays under the ownership of the people who share it, with consent understood as an ongoing relationship rather than a one-time signature. Stories will circulate through memory gardens, seed and story bundles, pop-up installations, multilingual zines, community rituals, and a twelve-episode podcast series produced in collaboration with Real Food Media launching in 2027. Earth Echoes is a co-creative act of remembering — through land, through story, and through seed.
Indigenous Reciprocity & Partnerships: We are building relational bridges between our communities with First Nations whose lands we currently occupy, partnering through reciprocity leading to stonger BIPOC land relationships and cross-cultural partnerships. Most recently, we have co-created a draft guide to Advancing Indigenous Reciprocity in the Northeast; are defining ways to be in right relationship with the Indigenous nations of the Northeast through a 3-panel track at our conference, We The Land!, that spans essential conversations about Rematriation, Black-Indigenous Solidarity, and the impacts of Pretendianism on land justice; and are supporting Indigenous community food sovereignty through resource redistributions such as the Onondaga Nation’s Seedling giveaway and consulting for WNY Land Conservancy on their Indigenous Solidarity Strategy.
Communications & Knowledge Mobilization (KM): Stories are the key creating containers for historical memory, knowledge dissemination, and ancestral practice. The RR program holds and tells multi-lingual stories, webinars, and other KM approaches that keep all stakeholders informed- communicating to our networks, partners, and resourcers about our work in the world.
Reparations Map: The Northeast Farmers of Color Network calls for reparations to heal the injustices of a food system built on stolen land and labor. We demand land, resources, and financial support to reclaim sovereignty, cultivate healthy food, steward ancestral homelands, and promote reconciliation. Through the Reparations Map, you can directly support BIPOC farm projects. Please respect their privacy and avoid unsolicited contact. We are currently working on a new map project that will respect farmer’s privacy and safety and tell their stories in a richer and more robust way. If you’d like to offer reparations support to a farmer in your area, please reach out directly and we will connect you!