692 B Route 206
Andover, NJ 07821
Sussex
(973) 903-9560
Food sovereignty and food justice are at the forefront of our efforts to help heal and to rebuild the sense of community that has almost all but vanished from mainstream life in America, especially in indigenous and people of color communities. In 2019 the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm was founded. The farm was created with the intent to be able to realize food sovereignty in our Turtle Clan community who for the last 56 years has lived and still does in a toxic federal superfund site known now as the Ringwood Mines “Community” Superfund Site.
Our goals are to provide clean healthy traditionally grown food that we then would distribute throughout our community at no cost to them. We also looked at this as a means to create funding to bring justice to our people in the form of holding those accountable for their actions, as well as their inactions. The Turtle Clan has endured untold deaths from cancers, and live with a plethora of health ailments as well as loss of culture due to the lack of clean land in which to farm, hunt, fish, and gather upon.
This has led us to create a 501(c)(3) non-profit called The Ramapough Culture and Land Foundation, which through a partnership with Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm could take on multiple challenges at the same time, from food sovereignty to the creation of jobs for the community to healing of the spirit and the physical through medicinal foods and rebuilding of our culture and traditional ways. This then led us to reach out to and to partner with land conservancies to protect our ceremonial stone landscapes, burial grounds, village sites, and to also eventually acquire these sacred lands to hunt clean deer, and forage for wild edibles as well as medicinal plants. All of these things also led us to realize that food justice for underprivileged communities should also be a high priority for us as we understand that most if not all of these community’s are people of color, including indigenous people.
We also are fighting to protect the waters of the Wanaque Reservoir from the toxic waste disposed on and in our community allowed by the municipality of Ringwood NJ, to the permitting of dumping the industrial waste by the State of New Jersey. This reservoir delivers sacred water to 4 to 6 million people a day. We are also lifting those people up by promoting food justice as well as our inherent responsibility as the original inhabitants of this land.