During a field trip to the small town of Furman, Ala., researcher Mistinguette Smith spoke with locals about their farms, towns and neighborhoods. These conversations sparked something inside her. “I felt called,” she says in a video at blacklandproject.org, “to listen to and to ask for more stories about black people’s relationship to land and place, and to help unlock the deep knowledge that was held inside them.” This calling is the basis of Smith’s research undertaking, the Black/Land Project, through which she collects and analyzes narratives of African American populations about their connections to environment. Smith offers the interactive seminar “Black/Land Questions: Place, Race and Wellbeing” at Goddard College.
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