First Friday Presentation at Marion Soil and Water Conservation District

By Rose High Bear (Deg Hit’an Dine, Inupiaq),

Founding Director

EWF’s Rose High Bear has been invited to appear on First Friday at the Marion Soil and Water Conservation District on Friday, December 5. This is a last minute scheduling and you can still register here.

Rose will share her experience integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge into Elderberry Wisdom Farm’s experiential service-learning activities with partners in the mid-Willamette Valley for the past five years. She will share how her team provides culturally-tailored career pathway planning support to Native American and other interns of color pursuing conservation work. 

This is an example of a positive collaborative partnership and is as important to Elderberry Wisdom Farm’s growth and sustainability as the culturally tailored learning model and TEK Internships the team has continued to expand since 2020. The partnership began six years ago with Marion Soil and Water Conservation District during a Plan For Your Land project as the soil at the farm began to regenerate. 

Marion Polk Food Share Logo

Partnerships have continued to expand, including Chemeketa Community College in 2020 followed by North Santiam and Pudding River Watershed Councils, Polk Soil and Water Conservation Services, Institute for Applied Ecology and its Willamette Valley Native Plant Partnership, Oregon Tilth with its TOPP program, several Oregon tribes, local organic farms, and more recently the City of Salem Urban Forestry and the Oregon Department of Forestry: Urban Forestry. Part of this success is attributed to EWF’s race reconciliation model and its focus on positive diplomacy.