Healing Indigenous communities from the ground up

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 23:46:02 +0000

Healing Indigenous communities from the ground up Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/23/2025 - 17:46

Sarah Kuta

Mushroom mycelium can clean up the soil. Can it also help Indigenous people reconnect to the land? ��ɫ��Ƶ researcher Natalie Avalos aims to find out

Fungi are powerful and versatile organisms. They’re being used in a variety of beneficial ways, from degrading hard-to-recycle plastics and purifying contaminated water to developing new medicines and restoring forests after wildfires.

Now an innovative project from the ��ɫ��Ƶ will explore fungi’s ability to remediate urban soil and, in the process, reconnect Indigenous families to the land.

The project is being led by Natalie Avalos, a ��ɫ��Ƶ assistant professor of ethnic studies and core faculty member of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies (CNAIS). She’s working in partnership with Carissa Garcia, a Denver-based writer, educator and combat veteran with Picuris Pueblo heritage.

��ɫ��Ƶ researcher Natalie Avalos, an assistant professor of ethnic studies, is leading a project to explore fungi’s ability to remediate urban soil and, in the process, reconnect Indigenous families to the land.

With grant funding from CNAIS, the duo plans to use mushroom mycelium to clean up the soil at various locations in Denver and Commerce City. They hope to inoculate small farm plots and garden beds on properties that are owned or rented by Indigenous people.

Soil remediation will allow Indigenous families to grow their own foods and medicines and may even lead to the revitalization of ancient crops. But, beyond that, Avalos and Garcia hope their land-based healing project will help Indigenous people restore and strengthen their sacred relationship with the land.

“We talk about decolonization as land repatriation, or the return of Indigenous lands to Indigenous people,” says Avalos. “But this is a form of rematriation, thinking about land as mother and returning to this relationship where you are tending to the health and well-being of the mother so that she can better attend to your health and well-being in return. Restoring that symbiotic relationship is profoundly impactful for families.”

The power of fungi

Mycelium is the name for the network of dense, fibrous, root-like threads that make up the body of a fungus. It’s typically hidden underground, often out of sight and out of mind until it produces mushrooms, which grow above the soil and help fungi reproduce.

In the wilderness, mycelium acts as nature’s clean-up crew. It plays a vital role in decomposition, breaking down dead plants and returning essential nutrients to the soil.

But researchers have also come to realize that mycelium can be a powerful ally for combating pollution. The process, known as “mycoremediation,” harnesses fungi’s natural abilities to remove or break down harmful contaminants in the soil. Scientists are using fungi to clean up everything from heavy metals and pesticides to petrochemicals and other hazardous substances.

Avalos and Garcia want to use mycelium to create healthy and resilient soil for Indigenous families, including some that live in heavily polluted areas on Colorado’s Front Range. They plan to take detailed measurements before, during and after inoculation, to see how the mycelium affects the soil, as well as the plants that will eventually grow in it. Based on these initial results, they hope to expand their mycoremediation work to other Indigenous farms and gardens—and, possibly, even to tribal lands.

They also want to use the soil remediation project to create hands-on educational opportunities for Indigenous communities, particularly Indigenous youth.

Garcia will spearhead the soil remediation work, which is slated to begin later this year. Then, after the mycelium works its magic, Avalos will investigate how the project is affecting Indigenous people.

“I’ll start collecting some oral histories, some ethnographic testaments about what this means to them,” says Avalos. “How is this confirming their relationship to land? How is it speaking to or shaping their religious life, their sense of identity, their Indigeneity? How is it that having restored soil is supporting their health and wellness and contributing to human flourishing?”

“We talk about decolonization as land repatriation, or the return of Indigenous lands to Indigenous people. But this is a form of rematriation, thinking about land as mother and returning to this relationship where you are tending to the health and well-being of the mother so that she can better attend to your health and well-being in return. Restoring that symbiotic relationship is profoundly impactful for families.”

Sovereignty and self-determination

Avalos is also curious to learn how soil remediation might contribute to sovereignty and self-determination for Indigenous people, especially those living in cities. Today, roughly 70% of American Indians and Alaska Natives live in urban areas—but this population is often overlooked.

“How is it that Native people can act as stewards of land, even though they often have less control over that land?” Avalos says. “They may be renters, they may be living in very polluted areas. But just to have that little bit of agency.”

Denver sits on the ancestral homelands of the Arapaho, the Cheyenne, the Ute and other tribes. But, today, the city is home to Indigenous people with a wide array of tribal backgrounds. This diversity largely stems from a federal program that pushed Native Americans away from reservations and into urban areas in the 1950s and ‘60s, as part of the government’s broader attempts to force Indigenous people to assimilate. Denver was one of nine relocation sites located across the country.

“For folks living in cities that have been impacted by displacement and disconnection, I want to document, how are they reconnecting? How are they re-Indigenizing?” Avalos says.

As the world grapples with pressing environmental issues, many Indigenous people are now looking to their sacred ways of life for answers. Long displaced from their lands and separated from their traditional cultural practices, they’re returning to ancestral medicines, deepening their relationships with all living creatures and opening themselves up to the knowledge that’s embedded in the land.

Avalos and Garcia hope their soil remediation project might play a small role in that broader work.

“We can’t count on the treaties, we can’t count on our federal leadership or even our state leadership to really protect us and protect land,” says Garcia. “My generation is looking at a grim future. We’re at a place where many of us are asking, how do we embody the Indigeneity and our sacred ways of knowing and being, and mesh that with an Indigenous futurism that will heal the planet and our people?”

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Mushroom mycelium can clean up the soil. Can it also help Indigenous people reconnect to the land? ��ɫ��Ƶ researcher Natalie Avalos aims to find out.

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Top image: mycelium growing on a log (Photo: iStock)

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Healing Indigenous communities from the ground up

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