September 2026 Newsletter - Learning, Sharing, and Centering Indigenous Stewardship at Land Trust Alliance

Greetings friends,

Amah Mutsun Land Trust was well represented at the Land Trust Alliance (LTA)’s annual conference in Denver this year, where I had the opportunity to share our experience as a Tribal nonprofit working to protect and steward Mutsun homelands. I joined a panel on governance of Indigenous nonprofits, speaking about AMLT’s unique relationship with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and our work to carry Indigenous stewardship into land conservation.

I have been attending the conference known as “Rally” for more than 20 years, and it was especially meaningful to see how much Indigenous stewardship and knowledge were woven throughout this year’s conference. This is a long-overdue shift in the conservation movement, and far more work remains. The conference’s plenary included a powerful conversation between a Tribal leader in Colorado and a non-Indigenous land trust Executive Director about their partnership and the power of centering Indigenous knowledge and stewardship in land conservation. There were also numerous Indigenous-centered workshops about land return projects, seventh-generation stewardship planning, and partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizations.

AMLT’s Lands Project Manager, Taylor Pulsifer, a member of the Skokomish Tribe in Washington, and Alexii Sigona, an AMLT Research Fellow and member of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, joined me at the conference. We were grateful to participate in the First Stewards Network gathering organized by LTA before the conference, where we connected with Indigenous leaders, practitioners, and allies from across the country who are advancing this work in many different places and contexts. Together, we had the opportunity to both learn and share, bringing our experiences at AMLT into a broader national conversation while learning from Indigenous communities and organizations working across the country.

It was an inspiring reminder that this work is part of a much larger movement to transform how we understand conservation, land relationships and stewardship, and that AMLT has an important role to play in that movement.