About Bomazeen Land Trust
Learn more about Bomazeen Land Trust from its leaders:
Board members: Sikwani Dana, Jus Crea Giammarino, Tagwongo Obomsawin, Lokotah Sanborn, Ann Ranco
Staff: Mali Obomsawin, Kessi Watters, and Monet Levalley Garcia.
We are also directed by Wabanaki community members at large.
Connecting through learning, teaching, and ceremony
Connection to nature looks like learning and teaching ancestral knowledge together, learning by doing, out on the land. The more we walk in our ancestral homelands and reestablish relationship with our ancestral foods and medicines, the more our people heal from the physical and mental health impacts of colonization. Even when one individual Wabanaki person learns something from our land, it ripples through the community and can be shared for generations. We also connect with our home and ancestors through ceremony. Our main goal is to simply be together in the land, sharing food and space.
Collective healing
Being with our homeland connects us to our ancestors and culture. It makes us feel complete, and gives us the tools to heal ourselves physically through traditional foods and medicines, ceremonial practices that purify the body, and sharing with one another. These community practices make us feel strong and supported, and collective. Collectivity is power.
Building solidarity
We strive to connect Wabanakis with parts of our homelands that we have been displaced from, especially in central and western Maine. When appropriate, we welcome others who have been displaced from their own homelands (Black, Brown, Indigenous non-Wabanaki) to join and connect on the land together with our community. We recognize the need for land-based healing for all colonized people, and that together we can learn about each other and build solidarity in our movements toward justice.
