Land Peace Foundation

Fellowship Programs The Wabanaki Leadership Institute (WLI) is an 18-month fellowship program that provides intergenerational leadership training for Indigenous people living and working in Wabanaki territory. The program is designed to create well-trained, culturally grounded leaders for the Wabanaki Nations, and to establish a broad network of leaders within Wabanaki territory who are committed to working cooperatively to advance the interests of all Wabanaki and Indigenous Peoples. The WLI provides existing and emerging leaders with the skills needed to handle the complex challenges that Indigenous Peoples face today. Whether they are spiritual leaders, government leaders, policy makers, academics, health professionals, artists, or public media makers, the WLI provides fellows with valuable tools and resources that support the development and potential of their individual and collective strengths. Our partners in this program include: The Native Programs Department at the University of Maine, American Indian Ambassador Program in New Mexico, Turtle Island Institute in Toronto, and the Maine Leadership Development Foundation. We will be recruiting fellows for our 2025 program at the end of 2024. EcologyShifts Learning Cohort From 2022-2024, the Land Peace Foundation worked to co-design the curriculum for an 18-month ecology-based learning program called EcologyShifts. This pilot-program brought together individuals from organizations across Maine who are committed to work toward greater equity and justice in the environmental field. The program provided participants with an understanding of the diversity of challenges present in the environment and climate field and highlighted some of the key nexus points where impacts and solutions create shared effects. We discussed critical focal points for ecology-based equity and justice work and the leverage points for creating meaningful change. The first cohort provided us with a considerable amount of learning and deepened our understanding of the types of change that are most needed along with additional areas of support that need further development or strengthening. This information will help us as we move the program forward.

Our farming program is based on our traditional understanding of sovereignty. At LPF, we believe that Mother Earth has the right to exist without bearing the weight of human expectations for productivity. Therefore, our farming program exists under the sovereignty of the land project. The Sovereignty of the Land project aims to express how caring for the land at Wicuhkemtultine is integral to the preservation of the Indigenous way of life. We approach farming as a kinship practice-a respectful and mutual relationship between humans, land , plants, soil, other animals, water, sky and all life. We utilize agricultural approaches that fall under labels such as organic, no-till, regenerative or permaculture, but our engagement with the land is rooted in a spiritual understanding of our kinship with the land. In this kinship relationship, we respect the inherent sovereignty of the land, with its own right of self-expression and right to experience life to the fullest. The sovereignty of the land, and the food sovereignty that it offers to our communities, is essential to our Indigenous sovereignty as Penobscot and Wabanaki Peoples. To date, we have planted 80 high bush blueberry, 38 elderberry bushes and 75 elderberry root stock, Dozens of raspberry and blackberry bushes, 22 fruit trees, 200 strawberry plants, 7 black walnut, four hazelnut, and four chestnut trees. We are also growing ceremonial plants on the land. We have tobacco, red willow, and cedar growing on the land and will be introducing sweetgrass in the next year. This year, we are starting our vegetable gardens. We will have multiple types of lettuce, kale, spinach, herbs, many varieties of peppers and tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, several varieties of squash, corn, beans, peas, and more. We will be sharing some of these foods with participants of our programs, the rest will be donated to local food banks and elder meal sites. Since many of our plants require several growing seasons before they produce fruit, our output is expected to be limited this year. We look forward to sharing greater contributions of foods to our local area as our berries and fruit and nut trees mature.