What does it mean to really be with the land? What does the land have to teach us? Land steward and executive director of the Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom, Emanuel Brown, is answering those questions through his work. After being guided by his ancestors to acquire his own land, Brown began a journey of stewarding the land and creating projects that center the wisdom of Black and Trans folks. Alongside his personal journey, he has offered his land as a hosting ground for the Acorn Center’s programming that nurtures the creativity, spiritual wellness and wholeness of Black and Trans folks.

In our conversation, he discusses the community of practice that grounds the center, the power of innovation when it comes to our collective freedom and the relationship between our joy and the land.

Tell me about HEARTS justice. I was reading about it on the site, and it looks like it’s in conversation with the center’s blending of the healing, spiritual, land and arts justice.

Over the last seven years [we have] built up a community of practice of about 750 folks that we serve annually. And from that community of practice, we get about 150 practitioners who cover a wide range of earth-based spiritual traditions. And as we were having more opportunities to hear from our practitioners, they were like, “So what’s the deal with the differences between healing, art, land, justice? Why is that all so separate? I do many things. I am a writer and a Reiki healer. I am an Orisha priestess, and I run a media organization. Why is the social justice movement separating us out into these discrete categories?” And so, what we did pretty early on is we started off [at] “What’s the core of this work?” And for us, the core of the work was the heart. Also, if you put together healing art and spiritual justice, which is where we started, you can make the word hearts out of that.

We’re trying to get to the heart of people. To the heart of communities. And we agreed on that. And sometimes it would be through music and sometimes it would be through Reiki and sometimes it would be through herbalism. And sometimes it would be through planting something in the ground or sitting and talking to a tree. But we wanted to really reflect back to our practitioners, “We hear you; you are not these separate things. You are these whole things.” Over time we continued to practice, and I would say HEARTS justice is definitely a practice. What we also noticed about how we were doing our work is that we were really supporting people in practices that were going to help them in four key ways – building awareness, doing attunement work. So, once you know what ails you, how do you actually move towards it and not away? Building up a culture of accountability. So how do we both be self-accountable but accountable in our communities? And what are the practices there? And then how do we activate?

And so, we really felt like our HEARTS justice work was also helping people move responsibly. Activate inside of their lives, whether that be “Hey, get a movement home and join the front lines of something” [or] “Actually I have medicine to offer to my community, I’m going to find my pathways to be able to do that.” So those four key components became what HEARTS justice was, the practices needed to build awareness, attunement, accountability, and activation.

So, the center has four core values in practice: restoration, relational economy, innovation and land stewardship. The one that I was really interested in was innovation. What does innovation look like when it comes to our collective freedom as Black folks?

Innovation is what I think of as creativity in action. The doing not just the thinking of it. And what I say about my practice both as a land steward and body freedom practitioner is, I am a model maker. That’s what I do. I’m like, “You want to know what joy feels like in real time. Great. Here’s a model for it. You want to know what having an ethical business feels like in real time, boom, here’s a model for it. Practice it, see what it means for you.” So, I think for Black folks, especially in this day and age, innovation is coming from what we embody and valuing that to the degree that we are able to then make models from the things that we already embody [and] to then offer it back to the community. I also think innovation for Black folks is, how do we give ourselves permission to also evolve the innovation? How do we give ourselves permission to say, “I know we did it that way, but it looks like the landscape is different. And so, I’m wondering about this part or part A and part B, and maybe we need to bring in a triangle, right?” So, I think innovation is that.

And then, I think innovation for me is also deeply related to one of our other values, which is relational economy. I started this work because I thought, I believed, I felt in my bones that my relationships with Black people were all the resources that I needed. After seven years, I can be like, 95 percent of that is actually true, right? Every grant that has come our way, every person who has come our way as a member of our community of practice, every practitioner that has come our way has come through relationships. The biggest innovations that I have made in my personal life and in my professional practice has been to say that my relationships with other black people are almost the most important thing. As much as possible I want to make sure that those are relationships where transformation, evolution, healing, accountability can happen.

How have you been able to cultivate joy through the work that you’re doing with the Acorn Center? Because I know it’s not always sunshine and flowers. So, how do you maintain your joy?

As a land steward who became a land steward at a very particular time, my joy, my personal joy comes in the land and seeing the seasons change and the animals that are on the land and the way that the land has bounced back and become more vibrant. And then my most joyous moments in the work as the executive director of Acorn Center has been when people got here. Once they actually settle in, there’s that moment where we have a pool on the land and then they’re in the pool and all you can hear is laughter. And like, Deep belly laughter is echoing throughout the land. That to me has been like the center of my joy.

When I notice the quiet moments on the land and I see people scattered, maybe in small groups or maybe just one and just sitting with the trees or sitting with the pond or just looking up at the sky, that kind of witnessing of deep restoration brings me such deep joy. The thing that I keep coming back to is, why steward the land? Why offer the land to the community? And it’s because of those moments of joy. And quite frankly, and this is the last thing I’ll say, as I’ve stewarded the land and learned from the land and learned what feeds the land, it’s our joy. Our joy feeds her. She wants us to be happy, well rested, well fed. She wants that type of engagement versus the extractive engagement we often have with her.