Cultivating Place

Ali Meders-Knight is a Mechoopda tribal member whose traditional and present homelands are based in interior Northern California, a mother of five, and a traditional basketweaver in Chico, CA she is also a tribal liaison working to form partnerships for federal forest stewardship contracting and tribal forestry programs authorized in the 2018 Farm Bill. She has been a Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) practitioner for over 20 years, creating, collaborating on, and leading decolonized environmental education and land restoration projects with Chico State University and the City of Chico. In 2009 she envisioned and helped to manifest a unique 17-acre interactive food forest and interpretive park in North Chico known as Verbena Fields. This restoration of a small slice of the degraded watershed and its native plants works to heal land while educating the larger human community about the rich ecological heritage of the Mechoopda people. As Ali expresses in all aspects of her cultivating practice, especial