Land Justice: Re-imagining Land, Food, and the Commons

by Justine M. Williams

So much of the traditions of the folk whom are Indigenous to the Americas or Africa are grounded with deep, profound, and animated spirituality surrounding the relations between land, people, and the cosmos. These cosmovisions are systems of reality that carry images and values for ways of relating to people and land in radically different ways than those suggested by the dominant capitalist society. When asked about what Gullah means, Chef Bill Green of the Gullah Grub Restaurant in St. Helena Island, SC shares his cosmovision: “People that live alongside the salt water. People who drink a lot of salt water, that live with the sun. That basically live off the fat of the land. So I always say—when they ask me about Gullah—love and kindness.”

living ethnoscape