This guidebook centers restorative justice as the necessary and primary place for restor(y)ing soil and facilitating succession. It features thoughtful and well-practiced approaches to renewal from Beata Tsosie-Peña, Indigenous Sustainable Designer. The guidebook was made in collaboration between Tsosie-Peña and Bryson.

What is succession?

In ecosystems, the process of succession refers to how a biological community evolves through sequential progression over time, how different organisms and species move in and out of a place due to changing conditions and resources, and as such, pave the way for future generations. We can think of high-heat and high-intensity post-wildfire landscapes as places for primary succession to occur. Meaning that succession is starting from ground zero. Due to the extreme temperatures of the Calf Canyon and Hermit’s Peak wildfires, the soil web was nearly destroyed rendering certain soils — the primary location of the food chain — lifeless.

restorative justice

As we work to abolish centuries of colonial and genocidal policies attempting to disconnect Indigenous Peoples from their lands and cultures, there is hope that remains in the continuance of Indigenous and land-based ways of knowing. When this knowledge is Indigenous led and implemented as part of the bigger Land Back movement, it can help to soften the climate crisis and strengthen the relations and reconnection needed to heal a communal consciousness and our true place as humanity within Natural Law and within our ecologies. This does not mean the burden of solutions and labor should fall on Indigenous Peoples,

but that restorative justice, LandBack, and liberation is a necessary piece of a healthy environment and sustainable future. When we center Indigenous Pregnant Families in the work of supporting the transformation already underway on the planet, when we center them as the standards for protections, then everyone is protected.

In Northern NM, we have been enduring decades of wildfires as a result of Indigenous land theft, gross mismanagement from colonial regulatory agencies, and long term drought brought on by the climate crisis. This has greatly impacted the severity and frequency of devastating wildfires in our state. There are strategies that we can take to help nurture the restoration and strengthen our forests in need of healing.

—Beata Tsosie-Peña

Facilitating succession means that we are facilitating relationships - allowing communities to be built, maintained, and strengthened through nourishing their numerous and abundant interactions; honoring their cycles of living and dying. Each generation makes food for the next.