Funding Campaign Underway

Can a garden change the course of a city? Tewa Women United (TWU) thinks so. The award-winning nonprofit organization has partnered with the City of Española, New Mexico, to establish the Healing Foods Oasis, a community garden tucked behind city hall. (Note: TWU is one of the participants in First Nations' NativeGiving.org fundraising platform.)

Since May, the group has transformed a barren slope with erosion problems on the west side of Valdez Park into a thriving garden featuring native herbs, flowers, grasses and trees. The long-term vision is for the site to serve as a living classroom with community workshops and labels on each plant species in their Tewa, Spanish and English names. The garden has already hosted five free community workshops this year, as well as the first-ever Regeneration Festival Española, a celebration of local youth, on September 3.

Corrine Sanchez, TWU’s executive director, says, “The Healing Foods Oasis is helping us tell a new story about Española, one we've known has been there all along but can be obscured by the challenges of living in an economically distressed area. This is a story of a community with strong traditions and deep roots, and a community that values working together and supporting one another.”

Over the spring and summer, nearly 150 volunteers from Rio Arriba County and beyond have contributed more than 600 hours to the garden’s creation, an intensive process of laying irrigation dripline, preparing the soil, laying down mulch and digging holes for dozens of native plants such as amaranth, beebalm, sumac and sage. Local businesses and organizations supporting the initiative with in-kind donations have included Angelina’s, Cooks Home Center, El Paragua, Española Transit Mix, the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, and radicle.

The project, based on TWU’s organizing principle of the Two-World Harmony Butterfly Model, balances Western technology with traditional Indigenous knowledge.

Beata Tsosie-Peña, coordinator of the organization’s Environmental Justice program, says, “The Healing Foods Oasis is part of our vision to end all forms of violence against women, girls and our Mother Earth. It’s facilitating our reconnection to the plants, water, air and all the elements.”

TWU is currently in the middle of a campaign to raise funds to finish this phase of the project, which includes completing the irrigation system and constructing pathways and staircases throughout the garden. To support the project, visit: http://www.nativegiving.org/partners/tewa-women-united.

To learn more about opportunities for volunteering, sponsorships or donating materials, contact Maia Duerr, maia@tewawomenunited.org, or Beata Tsotsie-Peña, beata@tewawomenunited.org.

About Tewa Women United

Tewa Women United, started in 1989, is a collective intertribal women’s voice in the Tewa homelands of Northern New Mexico. TWU’s mission is to provide safe space for Indigenous women to uncover the power, strength and skills they possess to become positive forces for social change in their families and communities. For more info, visit: http://www.tewawomenunited.org.