YGP Land Acknowledgment

The Moab Valley and wider geographic region has been explored and inhabited by many Native tribes, spanning many thousands of years: the Ancestral Puebloans, San Rafael Fremont, Ute (Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱), Navajo (Diné), Paiute (Nuwuvi), and Hopi (Hisatsinom). In 1887, after many years of attempted colonization by white settlers, the Ute people residing in the Moab Valley were forcibly relocated to reservations. YGP’s 1.5 acre garden sits within these ancestral homelands, wherein colonization is not in the past but is ongoing and still harming the Native community.

The Youth Garden Project recognizes that Native peoples, including the Ancestral Puebloans and Fremont, were the first to domesticate and farm many of the foods that we grow in the garden today, including maize, beans, and squash. Descendants of the tribes that lived throughout Southeastern Utah are still here today, contributing their gifts and talents and caretaking land in the Four Corners region and beyond.

The Youth Garden Project staff and board recognize the immense agricultural legacy of Native peoples. Over 60% of the foods we eat around the world today were first domesticated and cultivated by Native peoples of the Americas. Native foods have nourished us for generations, and will continue to do so for as long as we save seed, share knowledge, and care for the soil, water, and air.

YGP is grateful for the partnership of Full Circle Intertribal Center, whose mission is to nourish healing through their Native American traditions and cultures. FCIC plants a few garden rows at the YGP site each year with foods that are important to their Native relatives. Growing and sharing this food is one way for FCIC to practice their traditions and increase cultural awareness. We are delighted to be able to play a small part in this important work.