Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Emily Race: Welcome to the Founding Mother's Podcast, where we're imagining new ways of living with one another and our planet. I'm your host, Emily Race. Today we are speaking with Danielle M. Jones. Danielle is a playful nature educator, systems thinker, and passionate facilitator of yoga and somatic liberation practices.

She's a weaver of Sankofa Village, Arkansas, a nonprofit informing intentional community whose mission is to transform multi-generational community health through land stewardship and education for the purposes of housing affordability, wealth building, and climate resiliency.

[00:00:49] Danielle Jones: I was learning about all of these other ways of living and relating to the world, but as I was talking to my parents about it, my parents would be like, “Uh, repurposing things, reusing things, that's not really new, Danielle. We do that. Your grandparents do that. Going to resale shopping and vintage shopping might be cool now, but we did it because we had to, because we didn't have a lot of money.”

I learned when I was in grad school that my paternal grandfather actually built a tiny home, what we would now call a tiny home from a train caboose. People have been repurposing things, living creatively, since time immemorial, and that's not new. It's just that as I was studying sustainability, I was really learning about it from a white lens that was very limited.

[00:01:43] Emily Race: This work centers Black healing, liberation, and regeneration. Danielle is inspired by folk ways, plant kin, liberatory research and regenerative systems. She's been building up to this project since her childhood in Little Rock, Arkansas, proudly drawing on her ancestors' earth connections as she weaves together ancient lessons in new ways.

Welcome, Danielle. It is such a gift to be with you in conversation today. Thank you for being here.

[00:02:09] Danielle Jones: Thanks for having me.

[00:02:11] Emily Race: Do you mind sharing who you are today with our listeners?

[00:02:15] Danielle Jones: I'm Danielle Jones. I am a native of Little Rock, Arkansas. I'm an educator, a facilitator, a yoga teacher, and I'm a weaver at Sankofa Village.

[00:02:28] Emily Race: Amazing. Can you tell us what Sankofa Village, Arkansas is and how this came to be?

[00:02:34] Danielle Jones: We're an intentional community that is forming and a nonprofit, and our mission is to transform multi-generational community health. We're really focused on climate resiliency, wealth building, and affordable housing, and we're focused on the Black community, so we're really focused on Black healing, liberation, and regeneration in central.

[00:02:57] Emily Race: These are no small tasks to take on, and so the vision is really beautiful, really big. I'd love for you to share if there's an origin story that you want to share with listeners around how that happened.

[00:03:09] Danielle Jones: So in 2013, I studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark. I was taking classes on livability in the modern city and on sustainable food systems, and that was the first time that I visited an eco village, which is a kind of intentional community.

They’re usually focused on sustainability principles, maybe growing food or having green housing. And so that was the first time that I saw people who chose to live together because of their values. They had a shared tool shed, and this was in the middle of the city, a tool shed, and they had rooftop gardens.

And I just thought it was really beautiful because I don't think I had thought of housing more than just a place that you live. The nicest health plan, I haven't really seen that before. And then in my food systems class, we took a trip to Totnes, England, and at the time they had this “Totnes Buck”, they had this whole economic system.

And there's examples of this that are still functioning, but it was a way to share resources and to keep income in the community. And so that was like, wow, I'd never seen that before. So I was learning these things when I was studying abroad. Also in graduate school I studied leadership for sustainability education, and I was learning about all of these other ways of living and relating to the world.

But as I was talking to my parents about it, my parents would be like, “Uh, repurposing things, reusing things, that's not really new, Danielle. We do that. Your grandparents do that. Going to resale shopping and vintage shopping might be cool now, but we did it because we had to, because we didn't have a lot of money.”

I learned when I was in grad school that my paternal grandfather actually built a tiny home, what we would now call a tiny home from a train caboose. People have been repurposing things, living creatively, since time immemorial, and that's not new. It's just that as I was studying sustainability, I was really learning about it from a white lens that was very limited.

[00:05:16] Emily Race: Yeah, I was going to say, I am sure there's some whitewashing, for lack of a better term that's happened, and I love that you're bringing it back to your own ancestral roots and how this looked in your family. Are there any other family members that have inspired you in this work coming to life? 

[00:05:30] Danielle Jones: A lot of my aunts, the women on both sides of my family caretaking and also sharing the caretaking. I think that's also really inspiring when I was thinking about this village and all of the people that could be supported and the benefits for children of growing up around different people and maybe there's that phrase, of it takes a village to raise a child, and just like how I, as one person, can't dream up and shouldn't dream up this whole village by myself. One parent or two parents can't really give a child all of the things; we need different kinds of teachers and different kinds of supporters and blood and non-blood relatives to help develop ideas and the minds of children.

I didn't get to meet my dad's mother, but I hear about all of the recipes that she did that were very creative. And I guess this is cuisine all over the world, but also in the south, ears and tongues and chitlins, which are intestines and people all over the world eat what I think middle class Americans would consider throwaway food.

And there's been a lot of critique in the Black community over the past few decades. I think we're getting a little more nuanced now, but it's been called the Slave Diet, and I think that ignores the creativity ingenuity to make something like pig ears or chicken feet taste good. And I think that also gets back to sustainability principles of not wasting anything.

[00:07:00] Emily Race: Thank you for sharing that, and I am really now eager to hear more about your vision. And this could be inclusive of Sankofa Village, but also beyond that too. But what is your vision for the world?

[00:07:14] Danielle Jones: I'll give a vision for Arkansas, I don’t know about the world. But for Arkansas, I hope that all Black folks in Arkansas have access to intentional spaces for Black folks where they can be their whole selves, where they can engage in ceremony and in healing, and not feel like they're being watched or that they have to censor who they are.

And broader than that general vision, I would love to see businesses. I would love to see events and things where there's a connection to what people have to offer, what they have in abundance, their skills and their passions, and being able to do that work that does feel fulfilling. They can get the skills that they need to do that work and be able to live.

There are varying degrees of valuing different skills. You know, if you're an artist or you're a builder or you're a doctor, you get paid very differently and we need all of those people in the world. And so I would love to see people being valued for their work and having stable places to live.

Space to continue to dream and be in abundance and support other people in their community.

And then broader than that, I'm really focused on Black folks, but I'm also trying to make anything that we learn, any mistakes or the processes that we learn really transparent so that other communities that have some similarity, whether it's geography or what the intention is, can take what we've done as a blueprint and go from there.

So I would love to see other communities. Maybe there's a vegan community in Arkansas or an intentionally multiracial community. I would love to see the growth of people living more intentionally with their values and feeling supported and that holistic way of living. Mm. 

[00:09:10] Emily Race: So beautiful as a vision. I'm curious, what is Sankofa doing to bring that to life? What does that look like?

[00:09:16] Danielle Jones: I'm taking a deep breath because there's so many different things going on right now. One of our foci, one of our focuses is in getting more community feedback. We launched in January 2021, so I would say for the first half of the year when the land that I tried to purchase didn't work out, I convened a community collaborative that met twice a month. And that was really for Black folks that have connections to Arkansas. You shape the vision of the project and so that we could learn from each other, and that was a really, really beautiful experience. And two of the folks continued on. We meet once a month and we have a couple more folks that are coming in.

You think of that as like a board, I guess, but not really, and then I was just in Arkansas this past month and we were doing stakeholder meetings. So we had three meetings that were really partnering with Clarice Abdul-Bey and Kwami from the Arkansas Peace and Justice Memorial Movement, and they were connecting folks that they have relationships with that are really grounded in the Black community in central Arkansas and actually in Arkansas as a whole, because there were folks from other areas, but people that have invested interest in seeing this kind of community happen and sustain.

And that was a really great opportunity to share what we have so far and get feedback and see what the vibe is. We also did a couple of events. We had a Black women healing event for the fall equinox, and we also did an event that we called Nature Church that was a nature walk and some medicinal medicine making.

And in both of those events I did in partnership with Kendra Daniel Hendrix. Also known as Arkansas Black, who is one of our community collaborative members. So doing some events, getting some community feedback, and then one of the next focuses is on getting a draft of the legal structures, feeling more confident about that.

I've got some new connections with some lawyers based in Arkansas that will help make that feel solid because that is just so important around decision making and accessing different kinds of funds, and it's okay if it needs to change, but having a clear starting place.

[00:11:47] Emily Race: The community actually is coming first. That community piece is already being built upon, even prior to land being purchased because through that community is what some of those other details and logistics can be born from. Collect division versus you solely leading that. Then of course there are logistics like the legal piece and raising funds and whatnot. I'd love for you to just emphasize why are you creating this village, this intentional community, and why are you doing it now?

[00:12:13] Danielle Jones: There's a long history in the United States of Black communities being disrupted, being disinvested in, freeways being built through our neighborhoods, and it often feels like once we get our feet on the ground and are making progress, and we have our Black business district, that the powers that be– the white folks in power– decide that they want that land or they don't want to see that success. And so I think time after time, it's really exhausting and it takes a generational toll, that generation after generation trauma.

I'm just seeing a lot of need for other ways of living, an emphasis on healing spaces and being legally smart about it, because I've learned recently about some efforts to start Black centering intentional communities in Arkansas, but, like with my original purpose in January 2021, they come up against these monetary or legal struggles and don't have the capacity or the bandwidth to keep fighting, or they don't have the right people in the right places to help advocate for them.

I'm in a place in my life right now where I don't have kids. I don't have a lot of financial obligations. I worked for a large organization for three years with a livable wage and saved up a lot of money. So I'm at a point in my life right now where I can take a break and I can invest my time and energy into this work without necessarily needing a monetary compensation in order to do living.

I try to have a practice of abundance. What do I have that I can offer? And trusting that that's how the world can work. What people have in abundance can feed us instead of what capitalism wants us to focus on, which is scarcity.

“What don't we have? What is failing? What is not working?” And that is true also, but it's much mentally and spiritually and emotionally healthier to think about, “okay, what do I have to offer? What can I give?” And right now, that's my time.

[00:14:25] Emily Race: So there's a huge need I'm hearing in terms of having spaces like this for Black community to come together, but also the healing space that overlaps with that, the connection with the earth and having it be across the board a regenerative space for everybody, every living thing.

And then that's really merging with the abundance of time and a saved up resource that you have to devote to building this, because of course it doesn't just happen overnight. There was a vision board I watched you share, and I wish we could go through it on a podcast, but maybe there's a link I can link to. There were so many beautiful examples in that that you talked folks through in terms of what this type of community could look like, and I would love to spend a little bit time in that space with you, if that's all right, to paint that picture for folks. Maybe we start with the housing piece and then go from there.

[00:15:12] Danielle Jones: I'd love to. I'll start off by saying that some of the research on intentional communities that are long lasting have about 35 households. So that's the base number that we're starting with. So 35 households and sustainable housing, which could be so many different things. That could be compact homes, but have bigger communal spaces.

So many cultures around the world started with having a central gathering space. They have their marketplace, they have the center of town, and then there's housing around that, and then maybe there's gardens or farms around that. Being a little bit more conservative with the individual households, whether that's tiny homes, there's people that redo hotels and apartment buildings.

The only thing I feel strongly about saying we're not doing is a four-bed, four bath home on an acre. We're not doing that.

We're trying to support community connections. You need to be able to see your neighbors. You need to be able to see folks outside so that your kids or whoever can go on that walk and play outside and you're not worried about are they going to get lost? Are they going to get run over because the cars are parked?

This is a people-centric, earth-centric community with modest homes, but big spaces for events. Maybe there's an amphitheater for regenerative farming, nature trails to gather native plants, a commercial kitchen so people can create value added products and maybe cook their own food for their events.

There's a building for family or friends to come and stay. So if you have your little two bed, two bath dwelling, but you have friends that are visiting from somewhere and you want them to stay, then there's a place for them to stay. You don't need a five bed household just so that you have rooms for people when they want to visit.

That's the housing dream and I also want to emphasize those spaces for healing. I don't practice any organized religion, but I think that anyone with a spiritual practice or has a spiritual component, there are ceremonies, there are songs, there are places that you gather, and just like how our ancestors came up with ceremonies, we can come up with new ones.

We can also practice ceremonies that perhaps feel more in line with our current values and want to make sure that there's spaces for coming of age or for the moments in life that people want to celebrate and honor. So that's the physical vision of the village and then people.

Let's talk about the people.

This is a Black-centering village and thinking really specifically about our most marginalized Black folks, our folks that have experienced unstable housing or have been a part of the prison industrial complex. Our elders, our children, our folks with disabilities, we want to be intentionally centering their experiences because there's so much diversity within the Black experience.

The beauty of identifying as Black is both a political and a shared identity, but also there's so much diversity within that. And if you're going to be truly liberatory, It's important that the folks at the margin are actually centered in your work. So thinking about that, I also want to throw in artists.

Artists are really the visionaries for community futures. And if we look after the Great Depression, Franklin D Roosevelt put a lot of money into artists, big murals and a lot of investment in parks as well.

I know many artists in my life that have to do other work to make a living. And wouldn't it be great if there were artist residencies or if everyone just paid a third of their income? If you make $600 a month because you're an artist, you're not going to get kicked out because there's also someone else that's making more money.

[00:19:24] Emily Race: Can I just clarify there, because this feels super important. I totally hear you on designing a space that is not just inclusive, but centers those on the margins. I love how you put that in terms of how you design that space. This is a great example you just shared around structuring rent or the pay based off of a, almost like a growing sliding scale.

It's a third of what you make, but are there other things that you're finding in this design process that are important to help center those folks on the margins? 

[00:19:51] Danielle Jones: The simple thing is marketing. When I'm making things on Canva for Instagram, thinking about the bodies and having various shades of brown, having different body sizes. Not all disabilities are visible, but showing visible disabilities, being inclusive in that way as the most shallow but also applicable way to show people that they are invited. There's a lot of work to be done, for sure. When we had our stakeholder meetings, there weren't a whole lot of elders.

Not all disabilities are visible, but there wasn't anyone with a wheelchair or who had a cane. There is definitely room for some more intentional partnering with organizations that serve those specific populations. We’ve done some research on organizations that are working with folks that have recently been released from prison, and I know from a structural point of view, depending on the kind of crime, you may or may not have access to EBT, to food stamps, or to affordable housing and thinking about that and while we're trying to make progress with the people that we have and be as inclusive as we can. Also really aware that there was no one over the age of 60 in any of our stakeholder meetings, and that we definitely need to have maybe a specific meeting where we go to a retirement home because maybe everyone can't drive. Or folks that are 70 maybe aren't on Instagram, and maybe that's not the best way to meet them where they're at.

[00:21:25] Emily Race: So I mean, it's a yes/and, because what you're sharing is how can we grow with the community that we have and also then be aware of what perspectives are missing.

And it's not like you're going to halt any progress that you're making because there's so much to be done. But even that awareness is in many ways additive, just to have that awareness and have those conversations. Was there anything else you wanted to share? The types of people or what the community members would be like, how they would engage with one another, things like that?

[00:21:53] Danielle Jones: As we're chugging along and people are investing their time and their energy and helping to develop the project, that will really shape how things are done. Conflict will happen. Conflict is good. In an ecological system, we may think of a fire as a bad thing, but forests do need fires. We do need disruption in order for communities to stabilize and shift.

We can't just stay static. We need to be able to shift. So one of the things that will have to happen is some shared agreements around harm reduction and around conflict resolution, restorative justice work and processes that are already set in place so that when that conflict or disagreement happens, we know how we're going to work through it and still care for each other, even though maybe we don't agree. But we have a process of 70% or everyone has to agree. We have those rules set in place so that we can stay together as much as possible through the conflict.

[00:22:54] Emily Race: Yeah, that's such a big point around intentional communities. And I'm not an expert in this by any means, but I've always had that question around if one were to live in an intentional community, how is conflict addressed?

And maybe on a similar note, how do you make the decision on who enters the community to begin with? So is there thoughts you have around that process

[00:23:17] Danielle Jones: Right now the only thing that I've really been saying is that you have to self-identify as Black. I imagine that the folks that are investing their time and energy and maybe the community collaborative grows probably not more than seven people just for progress of decision making, but the folks who are present will probably be making those decisions.

That's not going to be just me deciding, Do we want half of the people to have a current income that is under the poverty level? What are those requirements? Do we want a third to be builders? Do we want a 10th to be artists? What is the mixture that we're trying to get? As we get further in the legal structures of things, there's this teeter tottering that is going to have to happen, and that is already happening of, Okay, we do want a third to be low income, maybe half, whatever the decision, that our legal structures will have to flex on what we want. So there's some rules. If you're a nonprofit, you may not be able to discriminate based on certain categories. And so if we do want to say that we want half to be low income, we may not be able to run the housing with a nonprofit. It may have to be an LLC that has limited equity, or some of the homes are run by the limited equity LLC and the others are run by a regular LLC. So there's a lot about legal structures that I've tried to do a lot of learning, still have a lot of learning to do, and also it's going to have to be refined based on whatever decision making structure that we have, who's going to determine who is the specific people that are trying to live here and adjust the legal structures based on those priorities.

[00:25:04] Emily Race: And then what about exiting the community? Have you talked about what that part of the life cycle would look like? 

[00:25:10] Danielle Jones: All those details depend on what folks want in. I do feel clear that the land needs to be owned by a community land trust, which is a kind of nonprofit, and so that protects the land from being bought by a developer.

If the land trust dissolves, it has to be passed on to another nonprofit, so it can't just be sold to the next high rise developer. And so it could be a community land trust that owns land and gives 99 year leases to families on particular plots of land, or it could be a housing cooperative where people buy into the cooperative.

So there could be cooperative members that own a bigger portion because they're living on the land. And there could be cooperative members that have a smaller portion because they're a part of the cooperative, but they don't live on the land, and maybe they get different kinds of voting rights for different decisions.

But there's so many different ways to decide what the entrance and what the exit could be. Because I am thinking about generational wealth, and that's one of the points that I've been pushing since 2021, I would think that being able to pass down your 99 year lease and the lease will be renewed, that you could pass that down to your family, but that they must agree on keeping the gray water system updated or paying however much monthly fee it is to upkeep the grounds or whatever it is.

So there might be some stipulations as someone inherits the home. They have to stay in line with the values of the community. Because we are here for intention. I'm not quite sure yet, but there's a lot of different ways that intentional communities plan out that exit strategy because it will happen. It doesn't just have to be because of conflict, it could just be, Oh, someone got an awesome job that they couldn't pass up in New York, and you know, they've gotta leave.

[00:27:01] Emily Race: I even think of life cycle changes if someone got married and wanted to move with their partner to a different country and have children closer to their family, whatever that might be. Anyway, a tangent again, but I think because there's like, the big vision, right? And then there's almost these minutiae of details that help uphold that vision.

And so I know we didn't even cover everything in terms of what Sankofa could look like and feel like, and what all your senses would be activated with. So I'd love to also ask you about that closed loop system that you're out to create environmentally and economically. You've spoken a bit about it. What would that look like?

[00:27:36] Danielle Jones: I'm not a prepper. I could be, but I'm not. But I think that having the capacity for the community to potentially be off-grid is intriguing for me and some of the other folks that I've spoken to about this project. There's so many things that we don't have yet because we don't have the foundation of people that are ready to live here.

We don't have that quite yet, but I imagine some things that would be important if you do want to have that potential to live off grid, it would be to have a water source, to have solar panels. And I'm not the community, but for me, I imagine two different versions. There's this urban village where you are pretty connected into the systems, but maybe you have solar, maybe you have rainwater catchment, and you have a greywater system that is recycling your laundry water and your sink flushing water to water the plants.

Or if you look on YouTube at Earth Homes, you use greywater four different times and filter it and I am really excited about composting toilets. I know everyone is not, but I think having a choice or maybe some facilities where people can go to the restroom and use their wood shavings and composting with human waste is a very multi-year process, but people are doing it.

There's probably laws that have to be made in order to make that legally possible. They're doing it in California, they're doing it actually here in Portland at Reed College, so it's not impossible. So yeah, I'm thinking about water, thinking about sunlight and electricity. But also everything doesn't have to be tucky, and so being able to fix things. One housing structure I didn't mention are earthen dwellings, cob homes and things that. It doesn't take a whole lot of skill. You definitely need to learn and probably someone needs to teach you or you do many hours of YouTube studying, but having the dirt on the land and maybe sand and mixing it together, and if you can make a home with that, and then when there's a crack, you just make up a little mixture and you fix it.

Also, thinking about what are the ways that we can build and also easily maintain? I love the idea of electric cars, but I think a lot of folks are using that as a bandaid solution to our climate crisis.

Electric cars require a lot of different components, and you have to take it to someone with that expertise to fix it. The materials are coming from China. For me, as simply as we can live and be able to fix things on our own, then being really smart about sharing resources and energy, having a place to grow food and having a place to grow medicine. I imagine there's an apothecary on the site where people can get their teas and their herbal remedies.

I'm not anti-Western medicine at all, but I think it is very symptom based. You go to the doctor and you're like, I'm having chronic headaches. They might just prescribe you a pill for your headaches. They're not necessarily asking you, when did this start? What's going on in your life? What are you eating? What's your work life like? And so as we're thinking about holistic health and holistic healing, working with plants that you're not just extracting that one little thing from the willow tree for your aspirin, you're getting all of these other benefits as well.

[00:31:14] Emily Race: I feel like a space like this, like Sankofa, it would be very inspirational to live there. I'd imagine that people who live there would learn a lot, as well as contribute a lot. You'd be bringing your gifts and your skills, but you would also be learning from those of others, and there's something really beautiful about that closeness and proximity to that experience. On the healing part, I want to go back to that and just see, is there anything else you want to highlight in terms of the healing aspect of your vision and how that's really built into the core mission of Sankofa?

[00:31:41] Danielle Jones: Yeah, healing is a huge part. I don't know that I was focused on healing in my internal compass until I was doing research for graduate school.

Actually, I wasn't even doing research yet. I was just at a talk with an organization called Black Parent Initiative, and they had a guest speaker, Joy DeGruy, and she was talking about post-traumatic slave syndrome theory, and I'd never heard about it before, but the stories that she told when she was doing this resonated so much.

Just some of the patterns that we see in the Black community that really came from the trauma of slavery and practices that we developed to survive. One of the examples that she gave was, if someone gives your Black child a compliment, you follow up with saying, Well, oh, you can have them. Or, Oh, they're not that great.

And I observed that a lot when I was in elementary school. Luckily my parents didn't do that, but a lot of other parents that couldn't seem to take that compliment for their child and give some praise. And when she told that story and connected it to during times of enslavement, if someone complimented your child, that was a risk for them being taken or for them being raped or for harm or separation to come.

And so a strategy to prevent that was to talk down about them so that they weren't valuable. And so there's a lot of different examples that she gives in that book of these are strategies that we needed to survive during enslavement, but they're not currently beneficial to us. They're causing our individuals in community harm, and we need to start to extrapolate what is not useful, and let's start to thank you for the time that you served us and we don't need you anymore.

[00:33:31] Emily Race: What you're sharing is just mind blowing, to be honest. Without bringing that awareness to it with any kind of trauma response, it's one of those things that's unconsciously running in the background until we bring that loving, kind awareness to it and whatever else.

So is that what the role Sankofa would play, bring awareness? How do you see that?

[00:33:53] Danielle Jones: I think there's some awareness building, some co-teaching, some workshops, some parenting workshops for sure. There's a person that I'm connected with, her name is Yolanda, and she runs an organization called Decolonizing Parenting.

And so there's a lot of Black folks, a lot of parents in general, that are doing work around these parenting styles that I inherited or that my parents did to me was for this reason, but I no longer need to do this anymore. So how can I engage with my child? How can I engage with conflict? How can I engage with community members in a way that is in line with the shifts that I want to be making?

And I think many communities that experience a lot of trauma and don't have a lot of space and resources to stop and critically think about, Why am I doing this and what is the purpose? We just keep doing it.

Part of the healing and the housing that is accessible is so that people can live in– whether it's a third of their income or whatever the sort of parameter is– it's affordable. And so they don't have to work 60 hours a week to afford to live. And so they can work there, hopefully 30 hours or so and have time to chill, to spend their mornings, go on a walk, go to someone's talk, go to a workshop, go to a dance class, and live and heal because we don't have a lot of space when we're having to work a bunch to afford a house, to afford student loan payments or whatever it is, because the current society is very much based on what your individual wealth of your family is. In this country, we don't have a lot of structural support. Now we see other countries, Scandinavian countries where there are more social goods, healthcare is much cheaper. People pay higher taxes. But you know what they get in return? They say that it's worth it. Free education, maybe even getting paid to go to school. And so also thinking about some structures where people that do have more money, they're paying into a little fund where maybe that fund is used for scholarships. Maybe it's used to invite peakers to come and stay or whatever the priorities are. Thinking about how healing happens in many different ways. But to have the space to pause and reflect your housing needs to be affordable. You need spaces to feel welcomed that are supportive. Rooms where there's a circle, where you're sitting in a circle. I don't imagine a ton of lecture hall style rooms where the knowledge is only at the front.

[00:36:32] Emily Race: Something that's so beautiful about what you are collectively building is all these ways of removing some of those barriers and weights that the rest of society has built. But also the fact that if someone was just to walk outside their door, they would then be immersed in this community, in this world where these conversations are happening or this healing and support is so present that that's like an added layer of lifting up versus only having to break through certain barriers.

You have shared the importance of intergenerational wealth and affordable housing, and I know you've spoken about this in other places before around what the GI Bill had done for building that wealthy middle class. Is there anything you want to speak to that you may not have said already, what your vision for housing is through Sankofa?

[00:37:21] Danielle Jones: I've talked about this starting community that is about 35 households, and we're not totally sure on what the legal structure is yet, so it would shift a little bit depending on that. But whatever the legal structure is, folks that have monetary abundance could be paying into a fund to support other ventures perhaps.

Starting other communities or maybe buying for community land trust, and we're focused on Arkansas, we could be buying land in historically Black communities or buying land that is valuable conservation wise or has a lake that has fish. So we could be being strategic about monetary funds and moving those investments along so that there could be more affordable housing.

Or that people that already have housing, we could buy the land underneath them. So that if they've got a house in Conway, Arkansas and there's a new development happening and they know that the value of their house is about to go up and they're worried that they won't be able to afford it, they could pass the land underneath them into the land trust. And so that would no longer be a concern for them. Their taxes would stay based on the value of their house, not the value of the land around it. So I imagine, yes, we're focusing first on this one intentional community, but that we could branch out across the state to support people that are already living in place and have their home to transfer the land underneath them into a land trust so that gentrification cannot kick them out of their homes because of the rising property tax.

[00:39:03] Emily Race: Wow, that is so critical and I'm really inspired by the ripple effect that this one starting village could have on a larger scale. It's not always about larger scale and mass producing everything, but I also feel like there's such a wide need, and so the more that this can serve as either a template or it sounds like you have dreams and a vision for actually expanding beyond just this one location that you're starting with.

And lastly, before we wrap things up, I am curious how you plan to engage with or be in relationship with the Indigenous communities of Arkansas or wherever you're looking to build or start your own community? How does that relationship look?

[00:39:40] Danielle Jones: This was a little while ago, maybe a couple of months ago, but I sent an email to someone that works for the Quapaw Nation that was not responded to. But I think to be fair, I probably need to propose a presentation to their council. But a partnership with the sovereign nations or tribes that have stewarded the land of Arkansas is super important and depending on what their capacity is and what that mutual beneficiary relationship could look like, there could be set aside days where they come on the land and do a ceremony that feels meaningful for them. Or if we own more acres than we need to for 35 households, maybe there's a section of our land that is reserved for them, to whatever they want with that. And from my experience working with tribes in Oregon, it's a very long-term relationship and both communities have experiences of trust being broken.

So just knowing that what that relationship looks like could take many years to figure out. And just the capacity, there are so many different moving parts right now. And capacity definitely needs to be built organizationally in order to start to make progress on some of these priorities that are priorities, but I haven't followed up on that email. I haven't made that next step with this particular Nation, although there are other Nations whose traditional lands are in Arkansas. So that is definitely an important piece as well.

[00:41:20] Emily Race: So then with that, what action or inquiry would you have for listeners who have been following along with this conversation and something that they could take away from everything that you have just shared so beautifully?

[00:41:33] Danielle Jones: Ooh, can I say two things? I would encourage folks to, if you can, trace your family history to do some inquiry around what have those healing practices been like in your family. You may have to go back further and further, but we have all had relationships with the Earth and just to be curious about what rekindling that relationship could look like if you're not already. What that might mean is that you could start to let go of or start to recenter because none of us are over the long term profiting from this white supremacist capitalist society.

The second thing I'll say is to do some research on what reparations are looking like in your state, what Black led land-based organizations.

You can look up your community land, see what kind of work is being done, and you can give in many different ways. That could be money, it could be time and effort, it could be sharing people's asks and efforts, but I think we all have something that we can give and that we can receive. And being curious about what that looks like, where you live or where you're from, or both.

[00:42:53] Emily Race: Oh, thank you so much for that invitation. I feel like the reparations are something that we could all benefit from diving deeper into in conversation and research and whatnot. So then as the last question of the day, how can we all support you and the work that Sankofa is doing?

[00:43:09] Danielle Jones: You can follow us on Instagram at @SankofaVillageArkansas. You can check out our website, subscribe to our newsletter. By the time that this airs, there should be a link to donate on the homepage, so that will likely be for not a tax refundable donation, but will also have a link to our fiscal sponsor where you could do a tax deductible donation and say that it's for Sankofa Village Arkansas. If you live in Arkansas, or for some reason you're like, this really resonates with me a lot, feel free to email me. I'm at info@sankofavillagearkansas.com. 

[00:43:48] Emily Race: And if you do self-identify as Black, but you don't live in Arkansas, is there space for that conversation or do you have to be from Arkansas?

[00:43:56] Danielle Jones: Anyone can send me an email.

[00:43:58] Emily Race: I was curious if you have to be a native of Arkansas to really engage in this project, but doesn't sound like that's the case.

[00:44:05] Danielle Jones: We're trying to focus on people that have either lived in Arkansas or have direct descendants. Otherwise, you may have to look harder, but many people are doing very similar things all over the United States and all over the world.

So there are certainly expats living in different countries that are trying to start intentional communities. There you can follow the foundation for intentional communities. They have a BIPOC council. And so I would suggest if you are a person of color and you're interested in intentional communities, but you don't know where to start, you should join that group.

They're a Google group. They're also on Facebook. That would be, if you're like, I have a general interest, but I just want to see what the landscape is. That would probably be a better resource.

[00:44:52] Emily Race: Amazing. So helpful. We'll link all of that. Okay. Danielle, thank you so much for your vision, your leadership.

It's just so inspiring and I'm personally looking forward to following all that Sankofa continues to build and dream and supporting the work you're doing. Thank you for being in conversation with us and sharing a bit about this journey so far.

[00:45:13] Danielle Jones: It's my pleasure, really an honor to be on here with family.

[00:45:19] Emily Race: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Founding Mothers Podcast. This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Emily Race, and edited by Eric Weisberg. If you want to support this show, please leave us a rating or share this episode with the important people in your life. We'd also love to hear from you if you or someone you know would be a great guest to share about their vision for the world. You can email emily@founding-mothers.com or visit www.founding-mothers.com/podcast.