SACRED CONTRACT CONVENING

AUG 30th-Sept 1st, 2022

In late August 2022, Sacred Contract hosted a curated convening for Land Centric and Justice Organizations, Original Peoples, Spiritual Leaders, Wealth and Land Stewards, and Attorneys and Mediators to listen deeply together and ask courageous questions in order to inspire collaboration and collective action towards a new relationship between humans and the earth in modern times.  We gathered in a way that centers the land and honors original peoples' relationships to the land, deeply listening to their wisdom. We asked ourselves how in cultural practice and in law we can shift from holding land as an asset, commodity, and private property to honoring land as a sovereign being. Together we explored the pathways that are emerging for a fundamental shift in our sacred contract with land that can meet the crisis of the modern era. Our intention is to form new collaborative relationships that will last beyond this gathering to contribute to the practical application of honoring the land as sacred and supporting multi cultural and multi generational stewardship. 

Questions We Explored

• How do we transition land from the legal and spiritual fiction of private property?

• Acknowledging the cultural and ancestral histories of genocide, enslavement, displacement and colonialism woven within and amongst us, how do we allow the land to bring us together to heal intergenerational trauma?

• What would a legal framework look like that includes the land and all beings as stakeholders ? How could that be enforced?

• How can we take an intercultural approach to listening to the land and allowing it to inform our legal guardianship?

• How can we liberate land and transition into equitable, respectful, cooperative stewardship while maintaining a secure home for all who live there?

• How can communities make reparations with original peoples, and integrate appropriately their contemporary communities and cultural wisdom of specific regions?

• What is the role of the stories of the land?

• How do we repair with land itself?

Intentions

• To gather in a sacred place and embody land listening practices together.

• To build an alliance of land based wisdom holders by bringing together those who are holding these questions in their lives and work.

• To enrich the participants shared perspective on land stewardship.

• To clarify the essential spiritual and legal questions that our communities need to address now to truly shift our relationship with Earth.

• To nourish a movement supporting a renewed sacred relationship with land.

• To harvest the information from the gathering and share it with all the participants.

• To listen for and imagine the next steps for Sacred Contract.

Participants

• Are you an organization or individual whose purpose is rooted in restoring our right relationship with land?

• Are you deeply considering how to reimagine our fundamental legal relationship with land?

• Are you inspired by or working for the rights of nature?

• Are you curious how we remember how to listen to the land and incorporate that guidance into our stewardship organizations?

• Are you holding the complexity of repairing relationships with native peoples in the place where you live and work?

This gathering was held at Commonweal Retreat Center in Bolinas California in a largely outdoor setting with strong community care practices. Sliding scale fees allowed many to be sponsored to attend.

Facilitators

We are a circle of women who each have founded and co-led land based organizations advised by indigenous elders. We met at a convening in Costa Rica in 2019 and have been regularly circling since then around the questions of sacred contract and how to serve a fundamental shift in the “on the earth” cosmology to an “in and of the earth'' cosmology. We believe that deep change must be supported on personal, institutional, cultural and legal levels. We share a belief that our changing relationship with the land is at the base of all regenerative endeavors and must be addressed through a culturally sensitive and trauma informed lens. We are all personally and professionally advised and mentored by native and non-native elders . We are committed to collaborative co-creation.