A refuge for care and repair

The Cradle of Care is an emerging cooperative land project in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina, on the ancestral homelands of the Cherokee. Our vision is to be a multicultural, cooperatively-owned refuge for the spiritual and cultural work of learning, care, and repair across lineages.

We prioritize land-based visions that support all people and the land to thrive along the full spectrum of life, from birth to death, as well as multicultural collaborations that help us heal the harms of colonization and slavery at the root.

Vision for Change

The Cradle of Care vision emerged over two years of building relationships through the ancient technologies of walking, talking, and listening; fires, meals, and music; gathering, resting, and celebrating.

This vision is anchored in the specific land, cultures, people, and histories of this place in Appalachia, and it is tied to efforts from across the world to repair our relationships to land and each other. We seek to model and accelerate different visions for how land is owned, developed, and cared for.

How we get there matters as well. We need to more meaningful multicultural relationships, understanding, care, and collaboration, especially in the South. Through who we are and the unusual ways we are collaborating to build this vision, we hope that we may become a microcosm and laboratory of the thriving multicultural democracy we long for and need in America, creating ripples in the wider culture and politics well beyond us.

What’s Happening

Projects currently happening at the Cradle include:

  • Support for mothers, birthing people, and families through community, education, and spiritual support by doula, yoga teacher, and educator Demacy Monte-Parker from Of the Mountain Nurturing Services

  • Ripple Forest School for preschoolers and homeschoolers led by Ripple Collective

  • Programs and events for lifting up hidden or neglected histories of Black and Indigenous communities

  • Intimate community gatherings and retreats with focuses such as tending the forest, storytelling, art and music making, spiritual practice and rest, community-building, and more

  • Forest stewardship and forest farming, including a “Mother Garden” forest farm plot with herbs that support reproductive health and an “Ancestor Garden” honoring edible plants that are significant to the range of lineages that now call this region home

We are also holding space and cultivating relationships for other projects, particularly related to:

  • Multicultural forest stewardship and eco-cultural education rooted in Cherokee and other Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and practices, woven together with stories and practices from other lineages

  • Farming or community gardening led by Black, Brown, and/or Indigenous growers with a focus on food sovereignty, education, healing relationships to land, or all of the above

  • Multicultural art, music, storytelling, and spiritual practice

  • Care for death, dying, and burial

Read more about the story and vision.