Island nonprofit Sassafras Earth Education Inc. has received a $50,000 grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), which will be reinvested in the local community through the expansion of educational programs that promote sustainable living using indigenous practices and connection with the land.
Sassafras has operated in Aquinnah for over two decades as a nature educational resource for people of all ages across the Island. The nonprofit is dedicated to reconnecting people with nature through indigenous ways of life and ancestral skills mentoring. Some initiatives offered include youth and homeschool programs, summer camp for children, indigenous awareness training, and earth knowledge. .
With this grant, Sassafras plans to expand all of its education programs, with a focus on their youth programming through staff training for mentors and new hires.
“This grant is just a partial piece of the puzzle that we need to create our programs and develop the mentoring capabilities of ourselves and the staff. We are taking all that into consideration as well as our ability to take on new staff and new projects” Sassafras founder and executive director David Two Arrows Vanderhoop, a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), told The Times.
MassCEC is a statewide economic development agency designed to grow clean energy and climate technology usage. This year, MassCEC’s EmPower Massachusetts Innovation and Capacity Building Award invested $2.9 million in donations to support over 30 organizations, including Sassafras, in community-driven projects that aim to diminish barriers to clean energy adoption and reduce energy costs through climate awareness. The awards were announced in late July.
The program’s funding aims to support historically underserved populations by providing economic and environmental benefits of clean energy through innovative projects.
“Some of the most impactful work happens at the local level, where community organizations understand the challenges families face in accessing affordable heat pumps, solar, storage, and clean appliances,” CEO of MassCEC Ben Downing said in a press release.
Vanderhoop said that he and his spouse and Sassafras co-founder Saskia Vanderhoop decided to apply for the grant because MassCEC’s mission statement aligned well with the goals of their organization.
“I think that the partners that we have been successful with understand what we do here at Sassafras, and how important it is for the children and families to understand what’s going on with themselves, with our community, and with the bigger community of the Island, so that we can make good choices in the future [about climate],” he said.
For MassCEC, awarding Sassafras with funding was sparked out of an understanding that traditional practices serve as the foundation for climate action.
“Even though, in some ways, you imagine climate tech can be sort of the next solar panel or the next innovative technology but really at the forefront of all of this has already been indigenous practices and those ecological practices,” Lisa Dobbs, senior program manager overseeing MassCEC’s EMpower project, said to The Times. “So we’re basically here to help support that and spread it across the Commonwealth.”
At Sassafras, climate action is addressed via traditional Indigenous practices, such as ecosystem restoration, traditional food security, and decolonized environmental education, through connection to the land and a profound understanding of the environment around them.
“Understanding the natural ways of not only humans but everything outside of the cool walls that we’ve become used to living. Understanding how human life has to live within nature and the balance of that,” Vanderhoop said. “We have progressed in this colonial system that has swayed everyone to capitalistic behaviors including extraction from the land, and [how] the land can benefit humans without giving anything back to it.”
And so, Vanderhoop added, Sassafras connects people “to nature and what’s happening in nature.”
