GRETCHEN GROENKE (SHE/HER)
Co-founder of Four Corners Food Coalition, Fourth World Farm and Mancos Food Share
Mancos, Colorado
M. KARLOS BACA (SOUTHERN UTE/DINÉ)(HE/THEY)
Co-founder of Four Corners Food Coalition, Fourth World Farm, and I-Collective
Mancos, Colorado
AMBER LANSING (ACOMA/DINÉ/SHAWNEE) (SHE/HER)
Co-founder of Four Corners Food Coalition, executive director for Dolores Family Project and Dolores Community Garden
Dolores, Colorado
This article was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent, nonprofit news organization, and is part of a special project on Food and Power in the West. Read more stories from the series.
How many bricks of colonization do we sit under? Mesa Verde, Sleeping Ute and Dibé Nitsaa (Big Mountain Sheep) surround this valley, but its Indigeneity does not exist anymore. Rematriation began as a necessary response to the introduction of whiteness, capitalism and patriarchy. First came the Spaniards, then the nation of Mexico, and then the United States of America. Now, our landscape is covered by hayfields, and we and our plant and animal relatives are surrounded by invasive species. At Fourth World Farm, we have rematriated over 70 native species, which encourages the repopulation of the valley in and of itself; everything that has been erased gets to seed and go back out into the zone. That is our objective: A decolonial, traditional framework of agriculture in motion. This is a spatial experience that we live in as Indigenous people.
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This article appeared in the September 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “#IAMTHEWEST.”
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