Yesá:sahį Language and Sacred Places Project
The Yesá:sahį Language and Sacred Places (YLSP) Project is a collaboration between the Yesá:sahį Language Project, Indigenous East, 7 Directions of Service and the Virginia Tech Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education. Led by Desiree Shelley, Board Representative of the Yesa:sahį Language Project and Virginia Tech graduate student; Alexa Sutton Lawrence, Ph.D, Executive Director of Landberry and the lead founder of Indigenous East; and Donna Westfall-Rudd, Ph.D, Virginia Tech professor, the project is creating a series of public monuments in support of ongoing collaborative, intertribal, Indigenous community-led efforts to revitalize the Monacan/Tutelo/Saponi language (Yesá:sahį) and the connections of contemporary Indigenous communities to ancestral homelands in Appalachian Virginia.
Through online education and public storytelling, the Yesá:sahį Language and Sacred Places (YLSP) Project seeks to encourage visitors and learners to reframe their understanding of American history, recognizing the on-going presence of Indigenous people in this area (the Ama:i Yesą́). Through Yesą́ stories, art, and traditional ecological knowledge, the YLSP will highlight the deep relationship that Yesą́ peoples (the Monacan; Occaneechi; Haliwa-Saponi; Sappony; Ohio Saponi; Tutelo; and other Eastern Siouan tribes) hold to their sacred places and traditional territories across Appalachia.
Project Collaborators
Desiree Shelley (Monacan Indian Nation)
Desiree is a graduate student and research assistant in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education at Virginia Tech. Her current research focuses on the nexus between Indigenous language revitalization, traditional foodways, and environmental conservation. As a graduate assistant, she supports the Community Agency and Engagement for Native Students project. Desiree graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.S. in Environmental Science and Natural Resources Management and a Minor in Spanish Language. Desiree began her community-based ecological restoration work in Baltimore where she grew up in both the non-profit sector and with the Baltimore City Parks and Forestry Department through partnerships with the USDA Forest Service and Baltimore Ecosystem Study. In these roles, she designed and implemented natural resource management plans, conservation education programs for city schools, professional development for teachers, and training programs for community volunteers. In recent years, Desiree has served as a Regional Organizing Manager with Sierra Club and Organizer at Mother’s Out Front where she supported environmental and climate justice initiatives in Virginia and the Northeast.
Desiree moved to Roanoke area in 2017 and loves being able to call the Monacan ancestral homelands of the Blue Ridge HER home. She has a small homestead farm with her husband, three kids, furry friends and lots of feathered farm animals. She now serves as a Board Member for the Yesa:sahį Language Project and the Southwest Virginia Agrarian Commons. She is an alumni of the Women’s Earth Alliance Grassroots Accelerator Program and a dedicated seedkeeper of heirloom Yesah (Tutelo/Monacan) seeds.
Alexandra Sutton Lawrence, PhD (Saponi Nation of Ohio)
Alexa Lawrence currently serves as the Executive Director of the Landberry Foundation , and the founder of its project, Indigenous East. She is an enrolled member of the Saponi Nation of Ohio, and an M.A. student in the Department of American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, where her research focuses on the migration histories and preserved cultural-ecological knowledge of Yesàh (Saponi/Occaneechi/Monacan/Tutelo) families who were forced to move from Virginia and North Carolina to the Ohio River Valley between 1805 and 1860.
Her reflections on Afro-Indigenous and Aframerindian experiences can also be read in the October 2021 compilation zine To Our Future Afro-Indigenous Kin, as well as in Ribbons of Color Along the Eno River (Feb 2021, Vol 10, No. 1 of the Eno Journal).
She holds a Ph.D. in Environment from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, an M.S. in Wildlife & Fisheries Science from Texas A&M and a B.S. in Biology from Howard University. She previously held the roles of the Vice President of Conservation, Justice & Equity at Ocean Conservancy; and Senior Regional Director, Southeast at The Wilderness Society. She is a member of the Green Leadership Trust, and a Board Member of NDPonics. You can see more of her academic work on Google Scholar.
Donna Westfall-Rudd, PhD
Donna is an associate professor and undergraduate director in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education, where my work is grounded in an agricultural education community of practice that includes secondary teachers, teacher educators, preservice students, extension staff, as well as graduate students, and teaching faculty in the college of agriculture and life sciences. Her teaching and learning work emphasizes developing inclusive and culturally relevant teaching practices to support and engage all learners to feel comfortable being their authentic selves as they learn.
Donna serves as director for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Graduate Teaching Scholars program, working with doctoral students and their faculty mentors to develop their skills in teaching and learning. Her educational program planning work also includes collaborations with agricultural community educators and university faculty in Senegal. Donna currently serves as the principal investigator for three funded projects: Engaging Secondary Teachers in CALS Research for Agricultural Literacy ($500,000), Native Student Retention Through Experiential Learning and Culturally Competent Mentoring Program ($400,00), and Developing Mutually Beneficial Relationships with Native American Communities in the Commonwealth of Virginia ($48,000).
Marvin “Marty” Richardson, PhD (Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe)
Dr. Marty Richardson is a citizen of the Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe and has spent a lifetime studying and revitalizing the Tutelo-Saponi or Yesa:sahį́ language. At the age of fifteen he began learning the Tutelo-Saponi language and for over thirty years has worked to revive the language among the Haliwa-Saponi and other Yesa communities. His greatest contribution using the language has been providing the words and phrases for powwow songs sung by the Stoney Creek Singers and other singers from the Haliwa-Saponi and other North Carolina communities. He is a founding member of the Stoney Creek Singers, an internationally known contemporary powwow group. With Stoney Creek, Dr. Richardson has traveled all over the country and into Canada sharing their unique contemporary style of singing. Dr. Richardson holds a B.A. in American Indian Studies from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, a master's in anthropology from Indiana University, a master's in history from UNC Chapel Hill, and earned his PhD in history from UNC Chapel Hill. He has shared his vast knowledge of tribal language, customs, history, and singing with Natives and non-Natives alike at various workshops, presentations, and festivals.
Dominique Daye Hunter, Project Coordinator
Dominique Daye Hunter (Black, Yésah (Saponi), Nansemond, Irish, Polish) is an Afro-Indigenous storyteller, author, advocate, and multi-disciplinary artist specializing in poetry and fashion.
The CEO of D. Daye Hunter Designs, LLC, her work explores the complex connections between historical trauma, creating safe spaces, and healing in Black and Indigenous communities. The Program Manager for Indigenous East, Dominique has a BS in Nonprofit Leadership Management with an emphasis on American Indian Studies from Arizona State University.
Crystal Cavalier-Keck, PhD (Occaneechi Band of Saponi Nation)
Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck is a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation and is an Adjunct Professor in the Social Sciences department at Salem College in Winston Salem. Crystal has dedicated the past 5+ years to defending her homelands against the Mountain Valley Pipeline/Southgate Extension. She is leading a campaign to bring Rights of Nature laws to NC to protect the waterways and communities in the pipeline's path. Crystal is the CEO and co-founder of 7 Directions of Service with her husband. Crystal completed her Doctorate at the University of Dayton, focusing on the social justice crisis of Missing Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) tied to gas/oil pipelines. This led her to launch the Missing Murdered Indigenous Women Coalition of NC. Crystal is currently in the 2024 Tribal Professional Cohort at the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona and working towards her Master’s of Professional Studies in the Indigenous Governance Program.
Crystal co-authored NC House Bill 795, the Rights of Nature/Rights of the Haw River, prioritizing environmentally impacted communities around the watershed. Crystal founded and is currently the President of the Native American Caucus of the NC Democrat Party. Crystal serves on the boards of Movement Rights and the Haw River Assembly. She has conducted training along and around the East Coast on Coordinated Tribal/Community Response for emergency management through natural, cyber, or man-made disasters.
Victoria Ferguson (Monacan Indian Nation)
Victoria Ferguson is an enrolled member of the Monacan Indian Nation of Virginia. She is a graduate of Marshall University and has a background in researching science methodologies to support historical information. Ferguson has spent 25 years seeking first-person documentation and archaeological information to help explain and support theories on the daily living habits of the Eastern Siouan populations up through the early European colonization period. She has written and presented work at Virginia Tech, Washington and Lee University, Sweet Briar College, James Madison University, and at a number of archaeological conferences.
Alicia Aldaz (Monacan Indian Nation)
More Info Coming Soon