Trickster Times: finding unity to defend our ways of life

Not at AFN this year? The Trickster Times brings you a video recap of Day 1 at AFN, the Defending Our Ways of Life rally, a few policy updates, and some updates about Ambler Road, the Nenana Totchaket land sale, and nuclear energy.

Doomer Mentality and the Importance of Organizing with Joy

Spending time in the Alaska Botanical Gardens during a Just Transition Collective convening. From left to right: Michaela Stith, Brittany Woods-Orrison, Gunnar Keizer. Photo Courtesy of Gunnar Keizer/ Just Transition Collective

Doomer Mentality and the Importance of Organizing with Joy

By: Gunnar Keizer

Maybe you have also experienced something like this: Feeling like you committed a war crime for buying a plastic bottle of water; or treating yourself to a spa day and then not being able to enjoy it when you wonder what the experience could have meant to someone in real need. 

Maybe you scroll through Instagram or TikTok and see stories of crisis or injustice next to cute puppies or funny memes, and become desensitized. Maybe you think you don’t want to have children because the world is burning and the future is bleak. 

There are so many problems in the world and it is hard to not feel like anything you do matters. Some days, it’s hard to be a human being or feel empathy for others when everything sucks. 

These are ideologies of a doomer. Doomerism is damaging to mental health and personal well-being, but it also damages our community organizing, as it stifles the creativity and care necessary to envision a just world that we all can see ourselves in. I think the doomer mentality is being weaponized by those in power that don’t want the world to change away from oppression. We must combat doomerism with joy and optimism in our organizing.

It can be so easy to fall into a doomer mentality, particularly for us youth who grew up on the Internet. Our social circles thrive online, where the lines between leisure and news sources are blurred – leaving us desensitized to world issues and hopelessness.

At the Alaska Just Transition Community Summit this summer, we heard from Gopal Dayaneni who posed the question, “What if we are already winning and we don’t even know it?” He went on to say that the scale of the solutions do not have to match the scale of the problem –meaning any of our actions, as small as they may seem, can add up to huge systemic changes. 

We need to hear and share the stories of how we are winning. When feelings of hopelessness set in, just being in community with one another is enough to find reason to fight for a better world. We, as Indigenous people, already know how to live in right relation with each other, the lands, waters, and other-than-human kin. 

We can center our Indigenous ways of knowing, model what community care looks like, and be joyous. Our values and all the small actions we take can add up to create solutions that together can match the scale of the problem.

As we organize for a bright future, we must be optimistic and joyful. We must be visionaries and lead by example. Events that have concrete goals or products can show how what we do is impactful. Community art or days of action that bring people together can fight the darkness, and instead, model the bright future we deserve. 

Hand-in-hand, joyous and bright, following the original instructions bestowed upon us by our ancestors, we can overcome doomer mentality and create a world in right relation that we want to live in.

When the fish go, a river runs quiet

The Tanana River is unusually quiet this summer due to low salmon returns for the third year in a row. Photo by Jeff Chen/Native Movement.

When the fish go, a river runs quiet

By: Jeff Chen

Elder Vernell Titus remembers the Nenana shores of the Tanana River as a lively place when summer would arrive each year – fish wheels churning, noisy birds all around, and boats zooming up and down.

“Usually there’s thousands and thousands of seagulls just making all kinds of noise – wanna get to that fish,” she says, gesturing to a modest fish rack drying nearby. “Right now with all that fish hanging there, you don't see not one seagull. It's strange – very very strange.”

Fish returns on the Tanana River have been abysmal since 2020 – both chum and king salmon numbers so low that Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) closed the river to subsistence fishing for the third year in a row (2021-2022 summer chum salmon closure and 2020-2022 fall chum salmon closure). Meanwhile, commercial fishing in the South Alaska Peninsula remained open, harvesting a sizable portion of salmon bound for western and interior Alaska rivers.

A handful of community members nearby cut, dry, and smoke salmon. This year and last year’s salmon were donated from North Soul Salmon in Bristol Bay through a program called Fish for Families.

When the fish don’t come back, Titus says everything changes. On a recent trip to Lake Minto, she observed that only one lone swan drifted by, where normally a whole ecosystem thrives. As she teaches students how to sew birch bark, Titus repeats to them what her elders predicted, “The world is coming to a big change.”

Despite a quiet river, a group of roughly 50 people showed up each day for two weeks in July at a culture camp along the shore, put on by the Nenana Native Council. Most days, parents dropped off their kids to an intergenerational crew of elders, culture bearers, and advocates to share skills and knowledge of the Lower Tanana Dene – beading, crafting with birch bark, learning songs and dance, and studying plants.

The camp came alive in recent years as cultural advocates like tribal member Eva Burk and Nenana Native Council First Chief Caroline Ketzler sought funding and in-kind donations for the community to coalesce around culture.

On a sunny afternoon, Ketzler visits with camp organizers and helps with potlatch preparations. From cutting meat, preparing gifts, and serving elders, Ketzler expects a sense of community to emerge, something she says has wavered this last decade. “I'm really happy to see all of our hard work coming together and people getting that sense of community back, and just realizing that everybody is a person, an individual themselves. And even though we may not agree with each other, we can all come together and celebrate together.”

Families begin to arrive at the potlatch and get seated along the shore, just down the road from a former church mission, which eventually washed away with the river. “This land held significance before it was mission land. If you look at the pictures of our traditional chiefs in this area, you'll see them take photos right in front of that hill.”

At the same time that cultural revitalization is steadfast, subsistence opportunities have conversely dwindled. Hunters at camp who went to look for moose came back without any luck. Nenana residents talk about how their family’s traditional hunting areas aren’t the same as they used to be. 

And now, the State’s nearby effort to sell 140,000 acres of land – the Nenana Totchaket Agricultural Project – threatens those traditional hunting grounds. The State has been looking to sell the land west of Nenana for decades, and this summer, the bidding began.

A range of views on the development exist, but Ketzler says industrialized agriculture activity will disturb the land, create runoff, and likely impact the adjacent land owned by the Toghotthele Corporation and also the waterways.

She believes the State has the development project already planned, and says the State sent consultation paperwork to Nenana Native Council during Christmas, when nobody was in the office.

Even as soil studies have yet to be completed, the State’s first auction for 27 parcels closed on October 4, 2022. “To buy that amount of land on that large of a scale, you have to have significant money,” Ketzler says. 

A Nenana food sovereignty project called The Tlaa Deneldel Community Group was formed recently to make a bid on some of the land in order to build local tribal agricultural projects on.

Back at camp, 14 year old North Pole High School student Michael Burk and a friend help carry a couple boxes of frozen salmon to the cutting table. “It’s peaceful down here next to the river, and you get to talk to people,” Burk says. “We're just around the city most often. And once you come down here in Nenana, you honestly get to experience firsthand how to do things by hand.”

As the potlatch begins, elder Virgil Titus of Minto, stands up, beaming with pride. He’d just arrived from the Doyon 50th anniversary potlatch in Fairbanks. To the gathering, he speaks. “You’re holding your Alaska together. We love you for that, and we’ll never forget you. That’s all what we’re trying to pull our young people together for,” Titus says. “Believe me, this is the best camp I ever seen for a long time.”

The State of Alaska is currently auctioning off traditional subsistence lands for industrial agriculture. Donate today to support the Tlaa Deneldel Community Group, a Nenana food sovereignty project. www.NativeMovement.org/Landback.

This week, Native Movement and Always Indigenous Media brings you The Trickster Times . You can pick-up a print version at the Elders & Youth and Alaska Federation of Natives conventions. Some stories are more newsy, some are more commentary, and all are written from the heart and for our community. We welcome you to join us as we build people power, rooted in an Indigenized worldview, toward healthy, sustainable, & just communities for ALL.

Never Alone, Reflections from a Circumpolar North Indigenous Youth Leadership Workshop

David Clark speaking alongside Indigenous leaders and Norwegian dignitaries on a panel regarding circumpolar Arctic cooperation, geopolitics and climate change. Photo courtesy of David Clark/Native Movement.

Never Alone
Reflections from a Circumpolar North Indigenous Youth Leadership Workshop

By David Clark

I stepped out onto the deck of the large houseboat that we had all settled into mere hours earlier, and took a deep breath of crisp, southern Norwegian air. The harbor in Arendal, Norway, was ornamented with houses that reflected the golden morning sunlight under ribbons of muted baby blue sky and wispy clouds. After soaking in the sight, I stumbled back into the boat for coffee and a light breakfast with my roommate, whom I had met only hours before.

The day prior, Indigenous youth had all traveled to Arendal from across the circumpolar North to participate in a weeklong intensive leadership training, designed to empower young Indigenous people with the leadership skills and connections necessary to become the next generation of climate action leaders for their communities. All of us – from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Sweden, Finland, and Norway – woke up blurry-eyed, parched and exhausted from the multiple borders and timezones we crossed to reach our destination. Slowly, as we sipped our coffee and ate our breakfasts, we began conversations that would spark lifelong connections with one another.

I sat down with my roommate, who is Sámi, at the breakfast table. Our conversation started out light; laughter was shared as we exchanged stories of our lives back home and how we had met the night before in a state of dazed exhaustion. I got to learn a little bit about how Sámi families manage their reindeer herds. I got to share about the time I ate freshly-caught seal on Nuchek Island, how it tasted like the salt water I was learning to be in relationship with, and what it was like visiting Prince William Sound.

The more commonalities we drew in that initial conversation eventually led us to more in-depth topics, not all of them happy ones. I learned about fornorskning – the official policy of the Norwegian government that targeted Sámi and Kven peoples in northern Norway for total assimilation. I learned that Sámi children were also forcibly removed from their communities and forced into boarding schools; oftentimes, they would not return home, feeling a deep sense of shame and believing that they were honestly better off having become Norwegian. I shared how that same colonial strategy at the hands of the U.S. government is something that Alaska Native peoples continue to grapple with, as well; how some of us (like myself) have grown up disconnected from those roots as a result of that policy, and how so many of us yearn to return but can’t, because it’s not that simple. 

It was clear from that initial conversation that we both experience intergenerational trauma in the same ways, and that the hurt we experience in ourselves and our families is just the same, and that those experiences aren’t isolated. As the week wore on, almost all of the students in our international cohort would share personal stories and anecdotes to the same effect.

Naming the harmful effects of western colonialism and how it affects us was an important bonding experience that made our worlds much smaller and brought us a sense of healing and community. It would also set the tone for the week ahead, as we’d learn conflict negotiation and crisis management skills when dealing with imminent threats to socio-ecological welfare. 

Norway is a world leader in development of renewable energy, or the “green shift” - which is ironic, seeing how petroleum accounts for around 40% of their annual exports and over 10% of their GDP. What most may not consider, though, is that producing renewable energy often involves extraction of critical minerals to produce machinery such as windmills, solar panels, and rechargeable batteries. Mining for these minerals, which already disrupts local ecosystems, also produces tailings – which are powdered byproducts that are extremely toxic to the environment, and are often disposed of by simply dumping them into open landfills or adjacent bodies of water.

Because of the severe public health risks that mining presents, mining projects in Norway are rarely slated close to populated cities and towns, but rather, sparsely populated areas that constitute the birthing grounds of reindeer herds – thus, the heart of Sápmi—Sámi homelands across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. (Sound familiar?...)

Norway has a long history, dating back to as early as 1974, of violating Sapmi’s inherent sovereignty in favor of extracting resources and minerals with little in reparation to the Sámi people. This means that, over the last few decades, reindeer herds have shrunk dramatically, there is much less access to wild salmon fishing, and the government has a vested interest in allowing development to continue. 

As Norway continues with its “green transition,” threats to Sámi communities and lifeways persist. Their fight continues today with some success; within the past decade alone, the Norwegian Supreme Court sided with the Sámi Parliament to halt operations of two wind farms in the Fuson region central Norway, citing violation of international conventions on Indigenous cultural rights, as well as provide Sámi in the Fosen region USD $10 million in damages caused to local reindeer herds as a result of windfarms. Other fights are more unclear; as of today, the Nussir Mine case in Kvalsund has been halted indefinitely, thanks to the large turnout in 2021 of Sámi and environmental activists across the country to stop mining. However, permitting for the project – which proposes marine disposal of copper tailings directly into the fjord – has not been rescinded, and the project continues to be the subject of ongoing litigation. 

Had it not been for that initial conversation that I had with my roommate over breakfast on the first day, then it surely was learning about threats to Sámi sovereignty and life ways that cemented my understanding of commonalities in colonialism and state violence against Indigenous peoples, not only in Alaska but across the circumpolar North. 

I found myself reflecting on controversial projects like Pebble Mine and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I thought about how contentious it is to come up with equitable solutions, yet so easy under western capitalism to bypass that process. I lamented on how money speaks more to power, rather than deep, intimate knowledge and relationship to the land. I found myself thinking about how deeply ironic it is that the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act – which granted corporations (not tribes) title to around 10% of Alaska’s total land area as settlement for future land claims. ANCSA robbed Alaska Native tribes of the right to exercise land-based sovereignty, and created deep divisions between Alaska Native tribes and Alaska Native corporations. I found myself seething yet again at how we live under a system where money overrides morality, and where decisions are often made by the moneyed elite, with a shortsighted gain in mind rather than the future wellness of the collective. I found myself hurt that the same western colonialism, that spurred the intergenerational trauma I’ve experienced within my own family, is continuing to harm our planet. 

Our last hope lies within a Just Transition, whose central principle is that a “healthy economy and healthy environment can and should coexist” through recognizing that “Indigenous Peoples have an inherent right to clean air, water, land, and food in their workplaces, homes and environment.” In the development of fair, just and equitable policies, it is necessary that frontline communities that stand to be most affected by pollution, ecological damage and economic restructuring play a critical role where negotiations are held and decisions are made (For more about Just Transition concepts, visit jtalliance.org). 

In Alaska, this would call for accountability on the part of Alaska Native corporations and the state of Alaska to look beyond short-sighted economic gains from oil and gas development, and more toward positively impacting environmental sustainability and the communities in which they serve. It would require them to eschew values of western capitalism that have allowed them to grow to be very successful, at the expense of the Indigenous Peoples they purportedly serve, and start considering projects and decisions with long-term sustainability and community health in mind. It would require the U.S. government to not only treat Alaska Native communities as equal decision makers in terms of climate and energy policy and environmental remediation, but seeking radical and affirmative consent. It would require the government to also radically reconsider what they value in building out the economic and environmental future of the U.S., and whether or not status quo corporate liberalism—where decisions are made among corporate and governmental elitists—is worth sacrificing sustainable communities, habitable climates, and the 500 Indigenous tribes to which they have a trust responsibility, within Alaska and across the country.

Those demands are not unique to Alaska alone. As I’ve learned through my own research and spending time with Indigenous youth from the circumpolar North, we ALL need a Just Transition. Just as we’ve all suffered intergenerationally at the hands of state-sponsored colonial terrorism, we all continue to suffer from an Arctic that is warming four times faster than the global average rate, and governmental administrations that continue to charge forth with policymaking, with little-to-no inclusion of the first stewards of those lands. 

A Just Transition is undoubtedly going to take time, as it is unrealistic to expect Alaska Native corporations alone to radically change the way they engage in economic development and still remain among the top economic performers in our state, in an economic climate that rewards extraction.

Together, we must imagine and work towards a future that considers the seven generations ahead, and the world we leave for them. Creating such a world must begin at the grassroots level—aligning ourselves, our families and kinship groups, and our communities with our traditional values, and creating communities and lifestyles that reflect those values. As we continue as a community to grow and unite under Just Transition values, we continue to build the power base necessary to expand the Just Transition movement to more structural levels. 

In our off-time in Norway, you could find our cohort spending quality time together. Our afternoons and evenings were filled with laughter as we ate Sámi food together, explored the small but beautiful town of Arendal, sang karaoke and shared stories of “back home.” These moments throughout the week reminded me of an important lesson that I’m learning through my work in community organizing and movement-building: no matter how urgent the fight may be, we are still inherently worthy of laughter, joy, and rest. 

Perhaps this is another important component of Just Transition that again applies all across the circumpolar North; if we seek long-term environmental sustainability and healthy communities for our kids to enjoy, should we not reach out and claim for ourselves some of the joy and continuity that we seek to build for the next seven generations?

This week, Native Movement and Always Indigenous Media brings you The Trickster Times online . You can pick-up a print version at the Elders & Youth and Alaska Federation of Natives conventions. Some stories are more newsy, some are more commentary, and all are written from the heart and for our community. We welcome you to join us as we build people power, rooted in an Indigenized worldview, toward healthy, sustainable, & just communities for ALL.

Growing Beyond our Indoctrinated Histories of Extraction

Canoes landing at Auke Bay in Juneau, Alaska for Celebration 2022. Photo by Lyndsey Brollini/Native Movement. 

Growing Beyond our Indoctrinated Histories of Extraction

By: Lyndsey Brollini and Anaan’arar Sophie Irene Swope

For thousands of years Alaska has been  stewarded by Alaska Native peoples. People with rich knowledge systems who for centuries have navigated these lands  from a culture of sharing, of regeneration with  little to no waste, using each item as a sacred gift of the Earth.

 With the first  European explorers began the practice of extracting and exploiting Alaska’s  natural resources.

Russian and then French explorers came to Alaska bringing with them  diseases which caused near population collapse. The resilient few were placed into a society of forced labor, where the Russian extraction around furs began a critical shift in the natural world as a commodity to capitalize on for wealth garnering. 

The Russian contact significantly diminished the animal populations of Alaska and brought new systems of belief and the ideology of money to Alaska Native people.

During the United States’ Western expansion, the U.S. illegally purchased  Alaska in 1867 for the tactics of war, bringing leverage on the Pacific front. As time passed and settlers explored, it led to the 1896 discovery of gold.

This discovery brought a stampede of 100,000 prospecting miners to Alaska during the “Klondike Gold Rush” from 1897- 1898. 

Alaska Native lands continued to be prospected by outside influences. Alaska became a state in 1959, and seven years later in 1966 the Alaska Federation of Natives organized for the first time. That same year, a “land freeze” was imposed to protect Native occupancy and use of Alaska lands. This all changed in 1968 when oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay.

Discovering oil in the Arctic triggered fervor within the state economy. With oil in mind and no existing settlement over land, the 1968 “Alaska Land Claims Task Force” began Alaska's Indiginous journey to settlement.

In 1971, Congress signed the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act (ANCSA) into law. It mandated the creation of 13 regional corporations and hundreds of village corporations that represent Alaska Native people in a foreign economic system. ANCSA extinguished Alaska Native claims to 90% of their lands in the development of Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs).Which extinguished indigenous hunting and fishing rights, and laid the foundation for undercutting Tribal governance and self-determination in Alaska 

Alaska Native people, as always resilient and adaptive, navigated the foreign system, attempting to negotiate the system to meet their needs of survival and change it to be more aligned with their values and traditional ways of life. 

But the colonial and capitalist systems ANCSA put in place have become embedded in Alaska Native communities today, and are a major reason why our communities are so deeply divided.

This is most literally shown through the ongoing debate about blood quantum. When ANCSA originally passed into law, a 1/4 blood quantum requirement was in place with the colonial goal of eliminating our Nations. That, despite our continued growth of our populations, the legal recognition of "tribal blood" would in fact lessen. 

That requirement was removed in later amendments to ANCSA, but many regional and village corporations still use that requirement – keeping future generations from having a say in what happens to the land their ancestors stewarded for thousands of years. Tribal Governments who are federally recognized as sovereign entities and policy makers, are completely separate from the ANCs, and yet even Tribes adopted blood quantum requirements.

It is unnecessary to hold onto an outdated and counterproductive policy. If we look to our values, we love children and the expansion of our families and communities. The growth of the communities does not mean we must enforce a shrinking system. 

ANCs and Native Tribes: Are They Benefitting Equally?

ANCs started extracting from their lands through oil drilling, mining and clear-cutting old-growth forests for timber. These are non-renewable industries that hold impacts that will remain for all of time.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a particularly devastating demonstration of this. In 1989, a 987-foot oil tanker struck rock while transporting 53 million gallons of North Slope crude oil. This incident brought total collapse of the local marine population, which is the core sustenance to many, if not all, Alaska Native populations. This was a detrimental time to the Alaska Native people of the area.

Despite the fact that oil and minerals are already running dry and have caused irreparable harm in the past, ANCs are still pursuing non-renewable resource projects. 

These projects have a possibility of short-term gains but come at a huge cost to the Earth and our ways of life. Our coastal villages are being threatened more often by severe storms, and the long sustained ways of life are dwindling and as weather patterns are becoming more unpredictable.

It is possible to return to our teachings of being in harmony with the land. Some ANCs are starting to move away from extracting from their land and aligning business more with Native values. 

While some ANCs are slowly incorporating more socially conscious entrepreneurial practices, wealth inequality is still prevalent, a strong departure from a history of sharing and cultural “mutual aid”.

The leaders who fought for ANCSA did the best that they could with the resources they had – which was hardly any resources at all in the beginning. 

ANCSA was the biggest land claims settlement in the history of the U.S.. ANCs provide jobs for their shareholders and fund culture camps and language revitalization. It is important to acknowledge that it has been an important vehicle in economic development that is unprecedented in other parts of “Indian Country”.

But still, it wasn’t quite a win either. Most Alaska Native lands were taken and with many Tribes having little or no  legal land claims currently. 

Furthermore, hunting and fishing rights were extinguished with the passage of ANCSA Instead the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) has failed to protect “subsistence” hunting and fishing. ADF&G has continually opted to side with commercial fishing interests. 

 A transition must be made away from extractive business-as-usual practices, we must look to our history of thousands of years of successful earth stewardship as we build forward.

So What DOES a Just and Equitable Transition Look Like in Alaska?

In May 2022, hundreds of Alaskans gathered at the Nughelnik Just Transition summit to talk about all the ways regenerative economies are already being shaped in the state. 

Just Transition is a framework that the International Labour Organization describes as “maximizing social and economic opportunities of climate action, while minimizing and carefully managing any challenges – including through effective social dialogue among all groups impacted.” 

Many organizations that participated in this year’s summit are building food distribution systems and utilities that center community care over individual gains, and have engaged in mutual aid since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. 

In 2021, the Alaska Native Heritage Center organized a fish drop, giving 25 pounds of salmon to families during the pandemic. Community farms and greenhouses funded by community organizations and Tribes are emerging all across the state. And the network of reciprocity displayed every year during herring egg season is an impressive model for how communities can share resources with relatives across the state. 

Tribes are also building their own broadband internet access systems. The Akiak tribe started their own broadband network, and Wrangell is a starting point for the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska to build their own broadband service to communities in Southeast Alaska. 

Alaska also has a lot of opportunity to invest in renewable energy – a field that harnesses infinite forms of energy – instead of investing money and technology in extracting hard-to-find deposits of oil and gas. 

A transition to renewable energy is not just possible, it is necessary. Alaska Native communities are at the forefront of the devastating effects of climate change. Extreme weather patterns that caused the deadly landslide in Haines in 2020 and the storm that tore through Western Alaska in September 2022 are becoming more common as the ocean warms.

Some Alaska communities already demonstrate that it’s possible to rely on renewable energy. Juneau’s electricity is already almost entirely renewable, relying on hydroelectric power supplemented by diesel fuel. Since 2014, Kodiak Island Borough has successfully gotten over 99% of their energy from wind and hydropower resources immediately available to them.

People may not be able to envision a future without an extractive economy, but the roots of it are already here. Alaska Native knowledge has created systems of care for the community and environment for thousands of years.

Alaska Natives and countless ancestors were the true stewards of the land for time immemorial and are the inventors of the only system that worked in preserving fish populations. It needs to be known that we are not economically depressed; we have every resource necessary to thrive. 

Being self-sustained by switching to renewable energy and growing food on our immensely fertile soil creates lifetimes of jobs and provides food security. That is more rich than a 30 year mining project that provides only for a single generation, while also destroying the lands and foods they already provide. 

We must  recognize when our current systems are not working or leaving many people out, and we deserve better. When corporations become truly accountable to Tribes and our tribal communities, then perhaps we can lead all of Alaska with traditional values that embrace communities of care for each other and for Mother Earth then a better future is guaranteed for everyone. 

This week, Native Movement and Always Indigenous Media brings you The Trickster Times online . You can pick-up a print version at the Elders & Youth and Alaska Federation of Natives conventions. Some stories are more newsy, some are more commentary, and all are written from the heart and for our community. We welcome you to join us as we build people power, rooted in an Indigenized worldview, toward healthy, sustainable, & just communities for ALL.