
The Mariposa Creek Parkway restoration project is a priority project for the County of Mariposa that draws together a number of critical community partners, specifically, the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, Sierra Foothill Conservancy, the Mariposa County Planning Department and the Arts Council.
Central to this restoration project is the removal of invasive plant species (which created a hazardous fuel load for wildfires) and restore the plant diversity of the native riparian environment using Cultural Burning and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), a land management strategy that utilizes traditional practices to respond to the unique relational composition of specific ecological sites.
This restoration is currently underway, and will continue throughout 2022, creating the conditions needed to return traditional first foods, medicines and cultural materials to the landscape and the Southern Sierra Miwuk people as well as mitigating wildfire risk and making space for public active transportation assets.
Taking this one step further, the Arts Council will be supporting this restoration process through documentation and site-specific artistic interventions and cultural programs that:
- Recognize and validate the trauma the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation have experienced;
- Nurture the re- indigenization of the physical environment, and;
- Amplify the contemporary indigenous voices, lifeways and practices central to this process.
Partners
Sierra Foothill Conservancy
Mariposa County Planning Department
Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation
CALFire
Mariposa County Fire Department
Funded by the California Arts Council Innovations and Intersections Grant.
Press + Related Work
- “Transformation – Work Set to Begin on the Mariposa Creek Parkway” – Greg Little, October 2021
- Mariposa County Arts Council Awarded California Arts Council Innovations + Intersections Grant – Sierra News, October 2020
- Well Enough to Dream – California Arts Council DREAM Magazine, July 2021
- Weaving Place – Landscape Architecture Magazine, Jan. 2021
- 2022 ASLA Northern California Chapter – Award of Excellence. ATLAS Lab, Sept. 2022
- Mariposa County Creative Placemaking Strategy Planning – ATLAS Lab
- Mariposa Creek Parkway Master Plan – WRT Design, 2019