In 2023, Trees, Water & People (TWP) will celebrate 25 years of creating environmental, social, and economic impact for frontline communities most affected by climate change.

On October 13, 2022, second graders from Kwiyagat Community Academy (KCA) in Towaoc, Colorado, participated in a planting event in the Mancos Canyon on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation.

Happy Indigenous People’s Day! At Trees, Water & People (TWP) we are privileged to work and live alongside the brave and proud Indigenous Peoples in the Americas. We honor them as first stewards and caretakers of these lands. The resilience of these Peoples have contributed to the greater good of our society and help shape the fight towards equity and justice.

Conventional conservation often portrays stewards and land managers working together to conserve, protect and/or restore critical landscapes for the survival of our planet. But underneath the macroscopic lens of conservation, women, more specifically Native American women, are rarely recognized for their achievements and dedication in the world of conservation.

After years of planting tree seedlings every spring, this year, Trees, Water & People and partners will be conducting fall plantings in New Mexico, Colorado, and South Dakota, to test whether survival rates are higher as we head into winter, versus into the hot dry months of summer.

On May 23rd, Executive Director Sebastian Africano and Indigenous Lands Program Director James Calabaza attended a full day workshop for grantees of the New Mexico Foundation, who awarded us a grant for our work on water resilience for Puebloan communities.

Winter is a quiet time of year for communities working on reforestation initiatives, including our partners at Santo Domingo Pueblo and the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, but winter is a critical time for our nursery partners and the baby seedlings that will be planted in the coming months.

For Santo Domingo Pueblo elder, Joe Bird, the restoration of Tribal lands is more than regenerating critical natural resources. He believes in restoration as a form of medicine to preserve the land, language and rich traditional values that are imperative to the survival of people in Santo Domingo Pueblo.