Braiding Knowledge, Advancing Stewardship Across Communities

Recently, I attended a water policy public hearing in Sacramento. Around the table were representatives from agriculture, dam operations, conservation, fisheries, and Tribal communities, each invited to explain why their priorities should shape California’s next water plan.

Farmers spoke about crop failure without reliable water. Ecologists warned that diverting too much water from rivers would push keystone species toward collapse. Others proposed compromise solutions, maintaining current human consumption while releasing just enough water to avoid total ecological breakdown. Tribes reminded the room that allowing any species to collapse represents a deeper failure of human responsibility to maintain balance.

As I listened, it became clear  that each person held an essential fragment of the truth, yet no one held the whole. 

When I asked whether agencies were coordinating across sectors, whether dam scientists were aligned with agricultural offices, or soil experts with conservation leaders advancing 30x30 goals, the answer was largely no. Even a concurrent environmental justice convening nearby remained outside  the conversation.

It wasn’t a lack of care. It was fragmentation. Threads of commitment that had never been woven together. 

Our institutions are structured in silos, each responsible for one piece of a deeply interconnected system. But ecosystems and communities that depend on them don’t function that way.

Restoring Right Relations participant Saundra Mitrovich giving offering to the creek at Wenem To's at our opening session with Native Roots Network in Redding, CA.

In Indigenous communities, we are taught that water, soil, food, ceremony, governance, and identity are inseparable. The tides guide the salmon. Salmon feed and direct our culture. Culture informs responsibility to land. When one part weakens, the whole system feels it.

This is why Redbud works on multiple sides of a system at once.

In partnership with Together Bay Area, our Right Relations program, now in its fourth cohort with 34 conservation leaders across the Bay Area, explores how a Tribal worldview reframes stewardship, shifting from extraction and single-metric success toward reciprocity, responsibility, and balance. This year, participants examined evolving conversations around ownership and learned from cultural knowledge holders whose ecological practices have informed land management for millennia. In collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences, the cohort also engaged with ecological research, connecting traditional knowledge with contemporary science. 

At the same time, we launched this year’s Restoring Right Relations (RRR) cohort, where 20 intertribal leaders are strengthening collective power and restoring Indigenous values of safety, health, and stewardship to our homelands. At Wenem To•S (Middle Place), on Wintu, Yana, and Pit River lands, participants joined Native Roots Network to explore redesigning economic and governance systems guided by Indigenous values. 

Left: California Academy of Sciences staff shares with Right Relations 2026 about Tule Boats from their private Collection. Right: Restoring Right Relations Cohort 2026 learns to make wattles to help with Native Roots Network's stream/creek restoration efforts.

What gives me hope is seeing leaders engaged in both programs — institutional decision-makers stretching their frameworks, and Native leaders strengthening strategy and collective power. The threads are starting to connect, and momentum is growing. 

The challenges facing our lands and waters are complex. But complexity does not have to mean fragmentation.

Healthy ecosystems require strong Tribes.

Strong Tribes require collective capacity.

And shared stewardship requires all of us to widen the lens– to see connections, honor the knowledge, and act in unity. 

Thank you for being part of this work, and for helping weave these threads together

If you feel called to deepen your support, we invite you to make a contribution. Your gift strengthens collective capacity, nurtures community leadership, and sustains the long work of caring for land and water together.

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