Ecological and Social Restoration

The DMC understands climate change is the outcome of colonialism and capitalism, forces that have negatively impacted the health of our bodies, our societies and the planet. We work to restore balance through repairing critical relationships that were fractured through these projects. As such, restoring the place of Indigenous peoples as leaders in their ancestral lands and creating opportunities for people to reconnect to land is critical to our work. We partner to uplift their priorities and work together to bring the best of different systems of knowledge to improve the health of the systems of we work with.

At the 38-acre farm in Ramaytush Ohlone territory, the DMC is working to support the return of land back into Ohlone hands, through our Landback Program, led by Charlene Eigen-Vasquez, of Ohlone descent. The farm is just a short walk away from where the Portola expedition passed on his genocidal conquest of the peninsula. He and his crew got sick on the journey and they stayed several days at the mouth of the San Gregorio Creek. The Indigenous communities who lived in the nearby villages offered them food and medicine to restore their health. Their generosity was met with land theft, murder and destruction of thousands of years of culture and relationship. Those foods and medicines are still present in the riparian alleys of the watershed, and DMC is working to amplify their presence under the guidance of Indigenous Plant Medicine Doctor Sage LaPena, in order to offer these medicines to communities sick from colonial rule. Restoring the land back to Ohlone hands is the first step to ensuring all beings can realign to the healing priorities needed to repair what has been broken through colonial conquest. As Native communities are supported in healing and cultural revitalization, other communities on stolen land can start to imagine other ways of being in relationship to one another and the web of life.

The DMC is also working to heal the San Gregorio Creek, an important watershed along the San Francisco Peninsula which has been designated a key river to reintroduce salmon. One half-mile of the creek borders the farm, with several acres of beautiful riparian corridor, full of nettles, elderberry, alder, cottonwood, bay and other California native plants and medicines. Currently choked with cape ivy and impacted by drought and short-sighted water allocations, the collective is working with local and regional Indigenous elders, neighbors, Peninsula Open Space Trust, the San Mateo Regional Conservation District and other organizations to advance plans for holistic watershed restoration. The farming activities on-site will be integrated into the ecological restoration of the creek, with the land used to filter the water.

On the 1-acre rooftop farm in Oakland was designed by Director of Agroecology and Land Stewardship Benjamin Fahrer, who brings his 25 years of ecological farming together with his design and building experience to rewilding the urban landscape, while providing nutritious organic food to historically marginalized communities. The Rooftop Medicine Farm creates habitat for butterflies, birds, bees and other beneficial insects. The plants contribute to offset urban heat island effect and the living roof helps to manage stormwater. Through productive successional plantings, the rooftop farm becomes an example of how urban farming can function as a carbon pump. We partner with Poor Magazine, the City of Oakland, People’s Programs, Essential Food and Medicine and UCSF Children’s Hospital Oakland to demonstrate how urban agriculture working at scale can provide multiple ecological and social benefits.