2024-50 Mountain Sentinels Fellow Abriti Nidhirma Moktan recently spent four days in Colorado alongside Dominique David-Chavez, Director of the Indigenous Land & Data Stewards Lab. Together, they visited the organization’s northern Colorado Indigenous land-based learning site in Livermore along with another Mountain Sentinels associate, Timberley Roane.
“Dominique had been inviting me to the land-based learning site for some time, so I was thrilled when I was finally able to accept her offer,” said Timberley. “Being invited into the place is an honor. We laid tobacco on the earth and offered thanks to our relatives past and present. As we explored, you could feel the sacredness. I couldn’t help but to think about what the trees and stones have seen – moments of beauty and moments of pain.”
Walking the land with students and Colorado State University Native American Cultural Center collaborators at our northern Colorado Indigenous land-based learning site
Abriti is a PhD candidate at the Pennsylvania State University. For her doctoral thesis, she is studying the governance of community-conserved sacred groves (forests), their relationship to water security, and the adaptive strategies of local communities in conserving these sacred spaces within the complex social-ecological systems of the Khangchendzonga Eastern Himalayan region.
“Our visit to Livermore was the entry point to experience the unique living lab (forests, land, water) that Dominique is building with her students, Indigenous community members and Elders, landowners, the Native American Cultural Center at Colorado State University, and collaborators nationally and internationally,” said Abriti of the experience.
Abriti, Timberley, and Dominique appreciating a mountain view at the northern Colorado Indigenous land-based learning site
“I am a firm believer in learning by doing, and having an advisor in the field and learning firsthand from them is irreplaceable,” said Abriti. Among the many important lessons Dominique imparted, she taught Abriti to identify ponderosa pine by it’s vanilla-scented bark.
Timberley and Abriti enjoying the vanilla scented bark of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) while visiting and sharing in knowledge exchange at the northern Colorado Indigenous land-based learning site
Abriti visiting with some mountain sage at our local Native community garden with Masters student Brianna Maxwell
“Experiencing everyone’s shared purpose to learn from and protect the site, initiated by the landowner, was healing especially in a time when spaces and places are being so readily used for extraction,” said Timberley of the trip to Livermore. “I am restored thinking about the generations of students who will be able to learn and practice the 6 R’s (respect, relationship, representation, relevance, responsibility, and reciprocity).”