Happy Season of Light: Roots of Resilience: Our Path to Shared Stewardship

Shasta McBride
Dec 17, 2025
3 min read

🎄 Roots of Resilience: Our Path to Shared Stewardship

Forging Deeper Partnerships for Collective Vitality

As we reflect on this season of giving and abundance, we look toward a future defined by collective vitality for the lands around Clear Lake. Achieving this vision has required us to forge deeper partnerships with all community landowners and, most critically, with our tribal colleagues. Our current initiatives—aimed at restoring the entire landscape—are:

This goal demands a shared foundation of knowledge. Our team is committed to the journey of learning and collective co-stewardship.

Learning from Traditional Ecological Wisdom

Inspired by and guided by vital conversations with our Pomo colleagues, our team has been studying traditional ecological wisdom firsthand. This Pomo knowledge, passed down for millennia, shows us how communities and the land can thrive together.

To strengthen our current projects, we’ve gathered the following key resources—the books and websites below—to share. Our goal is not simply to "bring" resources, but to cultivate a new culture of respect and mutual benefit, enabling everyone to contribute to the land’s vitality.

Important Note on Local Resources

The following list focuses on key resources for ecological wisdom and co-stewardship practices. For information regarding local Tribal governance, history, and community services, we encourage direct consultation with the specific Pomo Tribal Nation websites.

6 Resources for Our Shared Journey

These foundational sources are helping our team integrate traditional wisdom into our contemporary projects to build a healthier, more resilient Lake County.

Tribal Eco-Restoration Alliance (TERA)

Local, Indigenous-led organization responsible for essential services like fire mitigation and habitat restoration, making them key to the co-stewardship efforts we support.

Redbud Resource Group

Based in neighboring Mendocino County, Redwood offers several public workshops and programs that teach valuable skills in relationship-building and local plant knowledge, making them a crucial resource for our shared goals of resilience.

Corine Pearce Website

Award-winning artist, master basketweaver, and cultural educator, Corine Pearce shares vital Pomo wisdom on native plants and active stewardship, showing how this knowledge is practiced today.

Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson

Essential, detailed context on how Native Californians managed the landscape (cultural burning, etc.), critical for our CWPP/WERP projects.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Inspires us to move toward a reciprocal relationship with the land, informing our long-term goals for resilience; also a version for younger adults.

Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo (Metropolitan Museum of Art Catalog)

This catalog provides historical context for the monumental painting, Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878). Displayed at the de Young Museum (2021-2022), this exhibition centerpiece documents a major feature of Pomo life and the local landscape, supporting our respect for Pomo history before modern changes.

🌱 Conclusion

These resources are tools our team uses to grow our capacity to ensure the health and vitality of Lake County. To truly benefit everyone for living well with wildfire, commitment to co-stewardship alongside the Pomo community is critical. By exploring these sources, you are investing in your own knowledge and taking the first step to join us in honoring the land, celebrating its wisdom, and securing a brighter, more resilient future for all inhabitants.