Join us for a 90-minute conversation exploring the living wisdom of Indigenous agriculture and its vital role in restoring the health of the Appalachian forests.

Featuring Lyla June Johnson, Indigenous scholar and advocate for food sovereignty; Judy Smith, elder of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), sharing teachings around local foodways; and Chris Parker (EBCI), co-founder of The Forest Farmacy, whose work bridges traditional ecological knowledge with regenerative mycology.

Together they’ll explore how people once cultivated abundance in these mountains through relationship and reciprocity—and how those practices can guide us again today.

This event invites farmers, forest stewards, and community members alike to reimagine the forest not as wilderness, but as a tended garden sustained by care, memory, and connection.

Together we’ll:

Debunk the “pristine wilderness” myth and restore the story of the forest as a tended garden.
Explore Indigenous agricultural practices that shaped—and can help renew—Appalachian forest health.
Consider practical ways to participate in right relationship with land and community today.

Your Guides
Lyla June Johnson
Dr. Lyla June Johnston (aka Lyla June) is an Indigenous musician, author, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. Her multi-genre presentation style has engaged audiences across the globe towards personal, collective, and ecological healing. She blends her study of Human Ecology at Stanford, graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions. Her doctoral research focused on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.

Judy Smith an elder of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Christopher Parker
Christopher Parker is co-founder, along with his wife Katherine, and an instructor at The Forest Farmacy. He is a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and a self-taught mycologist who started cultivating mushrooms at a young age. He has continuously expanded his knowledge of mycology, botany, agriculture, permaculture and ecology, with over 30 years of experience in mushroom cultivation, wild harvesting, and herbal medicine making. He is passionate about food sovereignty, resilient local food systems, and the use of fungi in innovative applications such as myco-remediation and myco-regeneration.

Donations go to Lyla June’s non-profit and the Cherokee-led Center for Native Health
-> The IINÁH Institute who teach Indigenous lifeways to native youth, native communities, and non-native communities who are willing to sincerely learn and apply the knowledge appropriately and
-> Center for Native Health who support balanced well being of southeastern Native communities through the preservation and respectful application of Native knowledge to empower the people, land, and culture.