Presidential Session: Grounding Good Relations

Growing food is a relational practice. Often, gardens are spaces where disparate communities come together through shared sustenance, turning hands to soil requires listening and practical collaboration. In a time when the land acknowledgement has become commonplace - at once a gesture towards and a limit of institutional understanding - and the labor acknowledgement has only started to emerge as its counterpart, the question of placemaking has remained ever-urgent. How do we forge relations that are just, capacious, and joyful? How do we show up for each other in material ways? How do we put people at the center of abundant future dreams?

These double-session panels build on this year’s conference theme, “Grounded,” by centering landed-approaches to community care, sustenance, and solidarity. This work does not always come easy, but we want to take sites of growing, harvest, and feeding seriously as fertile sites of possibility. Taking inspiration from the important work that farm and garden spaces do to bring people into relation atop, or despite, histories made thick by colonial, racialized, and imperial dispossession, we want to gather scholars, activists, and organizers in conversation around these themes. We propose two panels in deep conversation with one another: the first will broadly cohere around stewardship, land relations, and coalition building; the second will broadly cohere around growing infrastructures for community care and what we build with the yield of these lands.

The panelists for these sessions are scholars, activists, organizers, and dreamers that work both within and beyond academic institutions.

Alyosha Goldstein: Alyosha Goldstein is professor of American studies. His research focuses on the historical interconnections of colonialism, racialization, and capitalism as these configurations change over time and are reproduced and contested in the present. He is the author of Poverty in Common: The Politics of Community Action during the American Century(Duke University Press, 2012), the editor of Formations of United States Colonialism (Duke University Press, 2014), and the coeditor (with Simón Ventura Trujillo) of For Antifascist Futures: Against the Violence of Imperial Crisis (Common Notion, 2022). He and Adom Getachew are coediting The Cambridge History of Colonialism and Decolonization, Volume IV: 1914–2001 for Cambridge University Press. His forthcoming book, This Colonial Present: Dispossession, Irreparation, and the Ground Not Given, will be published in the Duke University Press “Global and Insurgent Legalities” series, and is a study of United States colonialism, racial capitalism, genealogies of Black and Native dispossession, and the politics of law and redress.

Hiʻilei Hobart: Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart (Kanaka Maoli) is Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies at Yale University. An interdisciplinary scholar, she researches and teaches on issues of settler colonialism, environment, and Indigenous sovereignty. Her first book, Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Duke University Press, 2022) is the recipient of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) Best First Book Prize, the Scholars of Color First Book Award from Duke University Press, and received an honorable mention for the Lara Romero First Book Prize from the American Studies Association (ASA). Hobart’s articles have appeared in refereed journals such as NAIS, Media+Environment, Food, Culture, and Society, and The Journal of Transnational American Studies, among others. Her article “At Home on the Mauna: Ecological Violence and Fantasies of Terra Nullius on Maunakea’s Summit,” received the 2020 NAISA prize for “Most Thought-Provoking Article” in the field of Native and Indigenous Studies. She is the co-editor the special issue “Radical Care,” for Social Text (2020) and editor of the special issue “Foodways of Hawaiʻi” for Food, Culture, and Society (2016), which was republished as an edited volume for Routledge (2018).

Ashanté Reese: Dr. Ashanté Reese is associate professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She earned a PhD in Anthropology from American University and a bachelors of arts in History with a minor in African American studies from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Broadly speaking, Dr. Reese works at the intersection of critical food studies and Black geographies, examining the ways Black people produce and navigate food- related spaces despite anti-Blackness. Animated by the question, who and what survives?, much of Dr. Reese’s work has focused on the everyday strategies Black people employ while navigating inequity. Her first book, Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C., takes up these themes through an ethnographic exploration of anti- Blackness and food access. Black Food Geographies won the 2020 Best Monograph Award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society. Her second book, Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice, is a collection co-edited with Hanna Garth that explores the geographic, social, and cultural dimensions of food in Black life across the U.S. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Mellon foundation and has been published in a variety of academic and public venues: Antipode, Human Geography, the Oxford American, and Gravy Magazine among others.

Corrina Gould: Corrina Gould (Lisjan Ohlone) is a globally recognized Indigenous leader and public speaker at the forefront of Land Back and rematriation movements to protect Indigenous Sacred sites. Gould is the Tribal Chair and Spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan— born and raised in Oakland, CA, the village of Huichin—her ancestral homelands. A mother of three and grandmother of five, Gould is the Co-Founder and Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a Native run organization. They organized the Shellmound Peace Walks from 2005 to 2009 and for twenty four years, they organized the annual, Day after Thanksgiving, Shellmound protests and prayer walk. Gould is co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an Indigenous women-led organization located in Oakland. Based on an understanding that Oakland is home to many peoples that have been oppressed and marginalized, Sogorea Te is centered on returning Indigenous land back to Indigenous peoples and works to create a thriving community that lives in relation to the land. Since 2016, in collaboration with Sogorea Te’, Gould has seen the return of dozens of acres of land across Northern California, as well as the renaming of several prominent public parks into the Chochenyo language. In 2021, Gould received the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award from Hey Day Books/News from Native California and in 2023, she was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame in addition to receiving the Alameda County in addition to receiving the Community Leadership Award from the San Francisco Foundation. In March 2024, the Berkeley City Council guided by the leadership of Corrina Gould and the Conferederated Villages of Lisjan Nation, transferred the title of the West Berkeley Shellmound, the largest and oldest sacred site in the Bay Area, to the Sogorea Te Land Trust. This historic victory is believed to be the largest and most expensive urban #LandBack victory in California history.

Eric Jackson: Eric Jackson is an organizer, educator, and filmmaker, humbly serving as the visionary and a co-founder of Black Yield Institute, committed to building a movement toward Black Land and Food Sovereignty in Baltimore. Currently, he and his team are committed to a 1.25 acre urban agriculture operation and building a cooperatively-owned grocery store in South Baltimore, while also conducting Black-led research, facilitating political education, and organizing an action network. Eric has over a decade of experience working in and with communities operating programming and helping people to build power and address a myriad of issues, including food inequities. A Baltimore native from the Cherry Hill Community, Eric is the recipient of numerous awards and a public speaker who has presented hundreds of addresses and workshops to diverse groups about food sovereignty, building power, and establishing strong organizations to address complex social issues, specific to people of African Descent. He is affirmed in and secured this work through the love of his family and friends.

Leah Penniman: Leah Penniman (all pronouns) is a Black Kreyol farmer, mother, soil nerd, author, and food justice activist from Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, NY. She co-founded Soul Fire Farm in 2010 with the mission to end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral connection to land. As Co-ED and Farm Director, Leah is part of a team that facilitates powerful food sovereignty programs - including farmer training for Black & Brown people, a subsidized farm food distribution program for communities living under food apartheid, and domestic and international organizing toward equity in the food system. Leah has been farming since 1996, holds an MA in Science Education and a BA in Environmental Science and International Development from Clark University, and is a member of clergy in West African Indigenous Orisa tradition. Leah trained at Many Hands Organic Farm, Farm School MA, and internationally with farmers in Ghana, Haiti, and Mexico. She also served as a high school biology and environmental science teacher for 17 years. The work of Leah and Soul Fire Farm has been recognized by the Soros Racial Justice Fellowship, Fulbright, Heinz Prize, Pritzker Environmental Genius Award, Grist 50, and James Beard Leadership Award, among others. Her books, Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land (2018) and Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists (2023) are love songs for the land and her people.

Tagan Engel: Tagan Engel is a food justice activist, chef, radio journalist, educator, and mother. She has worked in regenerative food systems, grassroots community building and liberation work for over 25 years. Tagan is a Producer with the CT Public Radio show Seasoned and the Executive Producer of The Table Underground podcast and website where she records stories about food, radical love, and creative social justice. She is also a Resident Fellow at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment where she brings in practice-based learning around regenerative food systems and methods for shifting power and resources to address the harms of colonialism and capitalism. After a decade working as a chef in New York City and Boston, Tagan returned to her hometown of New Haven, CT in 2006 to work in beloved community to address economic and racial justice issues through food. At CitySeed she led programs on school and community gardens, food access for low-income communities, culturally connected culinary education, and BIPOC food business mentorship. She worked on sustainable food procurement and workers' rights with New Haven Public Schools, Yale University and multiple local businesses. Tagan was Chair of the New Haven Food Policy Council, a coalition which spearheaded the first community-driven food policy for the City and established the Food System Policy Director position in local government. Tagan is a founding Board member of Soul Fire Farm and a member of Tzedek Lab. She is an Ashkenazi Jew, the grandchild of Holocaust survivors who led a revolt and escaped from the death camp Sobibor which has inspired her deep solidarity to the liberation of all people and beings. She is also an Iyanifa in the Yoruba Orisa tradition. Tagan can often be found cooking up treats to share, loving up on her family, and gardening in the city.

Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu: Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu (PhD) is a Tongan, Pasifika/Oceanian story-teller, community organizer and scholar. A former University of California Presidents Postdoctoral Fellow, she is currently Assistant Professor of Critical Race & Ethnic Studies (CRES) at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Niumeitolu’s research and community work are interconnected and centered on ending violence against the bodies of Native and Indigenous women and girls, where she draws connections to the cycles of violence committed against the bodies of Indigenous Lands and Waters, with a focus on Tonga, Pasifika/Oceania and Native California. Her book project is entitled The Mana of the Tongan Everyday, The Refusal of Empire. Niumeitolu is on the organizing committee for the Tongan Women Scholar’s Koka’anga Collective, a project located at Oregon State University, advocates for Tongan women and girls in higher education.. In addition, Niumeitolu is on the organizing committee for Oceania Coalition of Northern California (OCNC) for Pasifika self-determination. OCNC’s work includes: Prison abolition, mobilizing the Free West Papua Movement in the U.S. and organizing Pacific Islanders to tauhi va, create good relations, with California Native communities by standing with them to protect Indigenous sacred sites. Niumeitolu is on the organizing committee for the Pasifika Planting Collective at Filoli Historical House & Gardens. This is a collaboration with Pasifika scholars, community practitioners and youths to grow and nurture traditional plants—taro, kumala, and si--for the purposes of reconnecting our sacred relationships with the natural world. Furthermore, the garden space supports with learning Pasifika languages, histories, cultural protocols, traditional ecological knowledges, and the importance of food sovereignty. In addition, this project supports Pasifika communities to build good relations with the Indigenous stewards of the land--the Ramaytush Ohlone and other California Indian communities. This project and others like it highlight many of our core objectives for creating new pedagogies and curriculum for grounding and teaching Oceania: Pacific Islands Studies here in the Bay Area, California.

Sarah Fouts: Sarah Fouts is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies, director of the Public Humanities program, and affiliate professor in the Language, Literacy, and Culture doctoral program. Fouts’s research interests include political economy, food studies, New Orleans, Honduras, ethnography, labor studies, and community engagement. Fouts’s book manuscript, Right to Remain: Street Food Vendors and Day Laborers in Post-Katrina New Orleans (UNC Press 2025), uses ethnographic and archival research to analyze the stories of Central American and Mexican immigration in post-Katrina New Orleans. Fouts shows how despite being criminalized and pitted against other low wage workers, immigrants use multiracial solidarities and grassroots resistance to shape politics and culture in New Orleans. Drawing from this research, Fouts produced two documentary shorts in 2023 as part of the American Folklife Center’s Homegrown Foodways Series. The films entitled, El Camino del Pan a Baltimore, and, El Camino del Mole a New Orleans, put the two cities in dialogue with each other through Mexican food. Fouts is a 2022-2023 Whiting Public Engagement Fellow for the collaborative New Orleans-based work, “Project Neutral Grounds: At the Intersection of People, Food, and the Hustle.” Fouts was the principal investigator for the 2022-2023 ACLS Sustaining Public Engagement funded project entitled, “Baltimore Field School 2.0: Undoing and Doing Anew in Public Humanities.” Each project focuses on developing grassroots collaborative humanities projects with community partners. Fouts’s research includes public humanities projects with the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, the Southern Foodways Alliance, and the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ) New Orleans Black Workers Organize labor history timeline. From 2017-2019, Fouts produced and edited the series “Latinx Foodways in North America” for the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition. Fouts has contributed scholarship to Southern Cultures, Gastronomica, and the Journal of Southern History and more public facing publications such as the New York Times, NACLA, and Gravy magazine.

Sara Black: Sara Thomas Black is a geographer, organizer, and administrative director of The Freedom Food Alliance, a Black-led network of New York farmers and activists using food and land as organizing tools toward prison abolition. Founded in the visiting room of Sullivan Correctional Facility, the Alliance has organized mutual aid projects across prison walls and the urban and rural divide since 2011. Sara leads development for Sweet Freedom Farm, an Alliance project and production vegetable farm that grows culturally relevant and life-sustaining foods for 400+ Black, Brown, and working class families each month, including those visiting our monthly free farmstand outside of Sing Sing prison. She earned her PhD in Geography from the University of Georgia in 2022, where her research in critical food studies, Black geographies, carceral geographies, and urban political ecology was funded by the National Science Foundation. Her dissertation, entitled Grow Food, Not Prisons! Innocence, Abolition, and Place-making in the Hudson Valley (2022), examines contemporary rural development agendas focused on small farms, small towns, and food tourism in New York, as they are situated within the legacies of urban renewal and rural prison expansion. Her research was informed by her ongoing work with the Alliance, her decade of labor in the regional food system as a farmer and cook, as well as her years of study and practice within multi-racial, multi-generational, grassroots movements for food and climate justice in the Deep South and Appalachia. Sara has been published in Food and Foodways, The International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Antipode, Geography Compass, and Gender Place and Culture. She is a lecturer in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Speakers

Tracks

Types