Restorative Justice in Heritage Studies and Archaeology

Too few sites on the National Register of Historic Places relate to Black history and build heritage. Getty and our partners are working to change this.

How Getty is working to protect Black heritage: https://gty.art/4dIvaXL

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-archaeological-practice/article/guiding-the-next-generation-of-nagpra-practitioners-formalizing-undergraduate-nagpra-education/3B1AB1EB35C3E7B54CAC43A3A756C429

Guiding the Next Generation of NAGPRA Practitioners: Formalizing Undergraduate NAGPRA Education | Advances in Archaeological Practice | Cambridge Core Guiding the Next Generation of NAGPRA Practitioners: Formalizing Undergraduate NAGPRA Education

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1811701/episodes/19183717

Pawnee Histories, Oral Traditions, and Archaeology with Dr. Carlton Shield Chief Gover - Native Circles In this episode, co-hosts Dr. Davina Two Bears and Dr. Farina King speak with Dr. Carlton Shield Chief Gover about how Indigenous scholars are reshaping archaeology from within. Carlton reflects on his journey into a field long seen in Native comm...

https://uofrpress.ca/Books/F/Free-To-Be-More

Free To Be More Celebrating the artists at the forefront of a Black aesthetic renaissance and how they harness the arts to shape a freer futureIn the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis ...

Commit to learning more about the diversity and many cultures of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities this month and beyond ✨.

This Learning for Justice resource page is a great place to start to learn and teach about AAPI stories, featuring content that uplifts the histories and lived experiences of AAPI communities 🔗: https://bit.ly/4ugRzlW

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/climate-change-nature-ecosystems-environmental-movement/687162/?gift=QzQwTVo0NdWr78mf1IgNt-LxAyYcv_DBui9ULswJO7o&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Power And how to get it back

in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

The case began when Linda Brown was denied admission to an all-white elementary school near her home in Topeka, Kansas, solely because of her race.

The court’s decision rejected the “separate but equal” doctrine and marked a turning point in the fight for civil rights.

School segregation did not end overnight, and inequities in education persist today.

In 2020, University of Delaware entomologist Doug Tallamy and his co-founder Michelle Alfandari launched a project that sounds almost too modest to matter: an interactive online map where individual homeowners could register their native plantings and watch a "firefly" light up at their location.

Five years later, the Homegrown National Park map has logged more than 170,000 acres of native plantings across the United States and Canada, representing tens of thousands of individual yards, hundreds of partner organizations, and a growing network of community groups, churches, schools, libraries, and municipalities that have collectively built something larger than most national parks in the lower 48.

Yellowstone is 2.2 million acres. Glacier is 1 million. Great Smoky Mountains is 522,000. Acadia is 49,000. Voyageurs is 218,000. The Homegrown National Park sits, today, between Acadia and Voyageurs in total scale — assembled almost entirely from suburban front yards, side yards, parking medians, schoolyards, churchyards, and the strips of land between sidewalks and curbs that nobody in formal land-use planning ever thought of as habitat.

The premise underlying the project is mathematically simple. The United States has 44 million acres of lawn — bigger than New England — most of which Tallamy calls an "ecological deadscape," supporting almost no insect life because Kentucky bluegrass and other turf monocultures evolved on a different continent and host virtually no native caterpillars.

Caterpillars are the foundation of the food web that supports songbirds: a single chickadee nest requires 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars to fledge.

North America has lost 3 billion breeding birds since 1970. The collapse of insect populations is happening in parallel. Tallamy's calculation was that if half of America's 44 million acres of lawn were converted to native plants, the resulting habitat would exceed the combined area of every major national park in the contiguous United States.

Homegrown National Park is the structured, measurable, gamified version of that idea. Anyone can register at homegrownnationalpark.org. The map shows, in real time, where the network is densest and where it's still thin.

State-level rankings create a friendly competition. Affiliated organizations like Wild Ones, garden clubs, native plant societies, and conservation land trusts plug into the same framework.

The 170,000-acre figure understates the actual impact, because many participants don't register, and many native-plant conversions happen without ever being mapped. But the registered figure is enough to make a point.

The largest national park in America is now being built, one front yard at a time, by people who never asked permission. They just planted milkweed, registered the location, and waited for the butterflies.

"By recognising as a crime, we fundamentally change the rules of accountability"

In India and around the world, courts are increasingly willing to hold powerful actors accountable for environmental damage - an important development.

But, as this article by legal scholar Imran Wahab points out, making mass harm to nature a serious crime would turbocharge this shift in accountability, ensuring that clear red lines prevent the most serious ecological harms before they occur.

This would not only protect India’s forests and rivers from severe and long-lasting harm, it would also promote climate resilience, safeguard wellbeing and livelihoods, and ensure that development can occur within healthy limits.

Read the article here🔗 https://www.legalserviceindia.com/Legal-Articles/ecocide-understanding-the-global-and-indian-fight-against-environmental-destruction/

Ecocide law momentum is building.

What was once a marginal idea is now being recognised by lawmakers and governments around the world.

Learn more: https://www.stopecocide.earth/breaking-news

Colombia’s decision to block new oil and mining projects in large parts of the Amazon reflects growing global recognition that the rainforest is one of the planet’s most important ecosystems. The Amazon helps regulate climate patterns, stores immense amounts of carbon, and supports millions of plant and animal species.

Indigenous communities living within the rainforest have protected these lands for generations, often acting as the strongest defenders against deforestation and industrial destruction. Many environmental researchers have found that Indigenous-managed territories frequently experience lower rates of forest loss.

Protecting rainforests is about far more than one country or one region. What happens in the Amazon affects weather systems, biodiversity, and climate conditions across the world.