The Mariposa Creek Parkway restoration project is a priority project for the Mariposa County, drawing together critical community partners including the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, Sierra Foothill Conservancy, the Mariposa County Planning Department and the Arts Council.
This project involves:
- The removal of invasive plant species which created a hazardous fuel load for wildfires using Cultural Burning
- The restoration of the native riparian environment through 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 2024, 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.
The Arts Council supports 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.
Current Projects
Led by a professional filmmaker, Amanda Law, the Arts Council is collaboratively supporting a documentary about the Mariposa Creek Parkway restoration contextualized within the contemporary indigenous experiences of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation. Filming will wrap-up in early 2024 with a final documentary forthcoming.
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.
