Living Water, Living Legacy and Living Resistance: September in the Gullah/Geechee Nation

Gullah/Geechee Nation ♦ September 1, 2026 ♦ Leave a comment

September begins with prayer, but prayer must move our feet, strengthen our voices and guide our hands into action. Throughout this month, the Gullah/Geechee Nation will be filled with opportunities to worship, celebrate, learn, remember, organize and defend the sacred Sea Island homeland.

World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

On Tuesday, September 1, 2026, people of faith around the world will observe the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. At noon Eastern Time, Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, will deliver the keynote address for Creation Justice Ministries’ virtual Season of Creation program. Participants can obtain details and join the online gathering through Creation Justice Ministries.

The 2026 Season of Creation theme is “Living Water,” inspired by Ezekiel 47:9-12. In the prophet’s vision, water flows from the sanctuary, deepens into a river and brings life wherever it goes. Barren land is restored, damaged waters are healed, fish multiply and fruit trees flourish. The World Council of Churches reminds us that we cannot simply stand on the banks and watch this healing river pass. We must immerse ourselves in the work of ecological restoration.

Queen Quet’s keynote will bring this global call home to the Gullah/Geechee Nation, where living water is not an abstract symbol. The Atlantic Ocean, salt marshes, tidal creeks, rivers and wetlands have sustained Gullah/Geechee fishing, farming, foodways, spirituality and community life for generations. Protecting these waters means protecting the people whose culture flows from them.

Freedom Through Entrepreneurship

The learning continues on Thursday, September 3, from 6 to 7 p.m. at 913 West Street in Beaufort, South Carolina, with the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park presentation “Freedom Through Entrepreneurship.”

Park Ranger Dr. Chanda Powell will examine the transformation from enslavement and coerced labor to wage labor and independent enterprise during the Port Royal Experiment. Formerly enslaved people did far more than enter the wage economy. Many built businesses, provided essential services and transformed the streets of Beaufort into a center of Black entrepreneurship during the 1870s.

This history is especially meaningful within the Gullah/Geechee Nation. Land ownership, farming, fishing, craftsmanship, transportation, market trading and cooperative economic practices were—and remain—essential instruments of self-determination. Economic empowerment was never separate from freedom. It was one of the ways freedom took root.

Celebrate at the 21st Lands End Woodland River Festival

On Friday and Saturday, September 4-5, journey to the Lands End Woodland community on historic St. Helena Island for the 21st Lands End Woodland River Festival, presented under the banner “Honoring Our Heritage—Protecting Our Legacy.”

Friday’s activities will run from noon until 10 p.m. and include chicken and fish dinners, a live DJ and dancing. At 7:30 p.m., Beth Inabinett and For the Funk of It will take the stage for an evening of live music.

The all-day River Festival will take place Saturday from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. with music, entertainment, local seafood, food vendors, community vendors and family activities. Festival admission is $5, and children ages 12 and younger enter free.

The festival takes place at Lands End Woodland Beach, approximately six miles south of Penn Center on St. Helena Island. Supporting this festival supports a native Gullah/Geechee community that continues to honor its heritage beside the river that has sustained generations.

Continue to journey down the coast to Amelia Island after celebrating on historic St. Helena and join the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Community Trust for the first “Coastal Cultures Convening” on Saturday, September 12, 2026:

Hunnuh Show Up and Protect St. Helena Island!

Celebration must be joined by vigilance.

Pine Island’s destructioneers are still seeking to destroy the St. Helena Island Cultural Protection Overlay District. The CPO was created through community organizing in the late 1990s and has protected St. Helena Island since 1999 by prohibiting destructive land uses such as gated communities, golf resorts and barriers to traditional waterways and culturally significant places.

The Pine Island/St. Helenaville properties also contain historic structures and archaeological resources represented by two National Register of Historic Places listings. This is not disposable land awaiting somebody’s destructionment scheme. It is culturally and archaeologically significant Gullah/Geechee land within one of the most important surviving Sea Island cultural landscapes.

Legal proceedings concerning Pine Island and the CPO have not run their full course. One federal dismissal is under appeal, while a newer federal challenge filed in April 2026 has been stayed pending the appellate decision. The central legal issues have therefore not been fully heard and decided on their merits. The current procedural history confirms that two related federal matters remain part of the continuing legal battle.

Beaufort County Council members and planning commissioners should not entertain another attempt to carve Pine Island out of the CPO while these matters remain unresolved. The court process should be allowed to proceed before any further local hearings or actions concerning this property is addressed at that county level.

Community members and supporters should:

• Contact Beaufort County Council and insist that the existing CPO boundaries remain intact.
• Demand no carve-outs, special exceptions, gated communities or golf resorts within the CPO.
• Attend the Beaufort County Council Caucus on September 14.
• Attend the Beaufort County Planning Commission meeting on October 5.
• Monitor the official agendas for meeting times, locations and public-comment procedures.
• Encourage Beaufort County to allow the pending litigation to run its course before considering anything else concerning Pine Island.
• Keep standing in protection of the CPO!

Prayer without action will not stop destructionment. Hunnuh hafa fight on! Stand with the native Gullah/Geechee community and defend the law that the people created to protect their homeland.

What the Water Witnessed

On Thursday, September 17, from 6 to 7 p.m., the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park will present “What the Water Witnessed: From Revolution to Reconstruction” at 913 West Street in Beaufort.

Park Ranger Samantha Mischke will examine how Patriot leader John Laurens advocated for the recruitment of Black men along the Combahee River into the Continental Army during the American Revolution. The presentation will connect that earlier struggle with the 1863 Combahee River Raid and the Reconstruction era that followed.

The Combahee is living water carrying the memory of resistance, military service, liberation and the determined pursuit of freedom. This program offers another opportunity to place Black courage—and the waters that witnessed it—at the center of Lowcountry history. View the event details.

Queen Quet Takes the Save the Sea Islands Tour to Climate Week NYC

On Monday, September 21, Queen Quet will continue the northeastern leg of the 30th Annual “Save the Sea Islands Tour” during Climate Week NYC.

From 11 a.m. until 9 p.m., the Environmental Justice Oral History Project will present “Stories that Move: Where Story, Data and Place Converge to Build Narrative Power” at 327 West 36th Street in New York City. The day-long program will unite journalism, documentary film, visual media, oral history, geographic storytelling and environmental justice organizing.

The program will culminate with the “Celebrating the Mothers of the Movement” reception and exhibition from 6:15 until 9 p.m. Queen Quet will be honored as one of the women in the Mothers of Environmental Justice Collection, which preserves the leadership, lived experiences and intergenerational wisdom of women who have carried environmental justice movements forward. Queen Quet will participate in the reception, deliver remarks as one of the featured narrators and hold a book signing.

This recognition is especially significant during the 30th Annual “Save the Sea Islands Tour.” For three decades, Queen Quet and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition have connected land retention, cultural continuation, water protection, environmental justice and human rights. The 2026 tour theme—“Hunnuh Mus Tek Cyare de Root fa Heal de Tree—Celebrating Gullah/Geechee Land & Legacy”—expresses the truth that communities cannot be healed while their cultural roots are being excavated, displaced or destroyed. Learn more about the anniversary tour.

From the sacred waters of the Sea Islands to the halls of New York Climate Week, Queen Quet will carry the story of a living Gullah/Geechee Nation that refuses erasure and continues to defend its land, water, culture and future. She will be doing a book signing during the event so that people can walk away with some of the authentic history as they go back to do their work to protect Mother Earth.

The road from NYC will lead Queen Quet back to the Moja Celebration in Charleston, SC for the annual “Gullah Moja Art Celebration:”

Queen Quet will close out the month with the University of Lynchburg. The University of Lynchburg will host a virtual presentation by Queen Quet Marquetta L. Goodwine, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 29.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled, “We de Land and de Land da We: Sustainable Solutions of the Gullah/Geechee.” It is co-sponsored by the University of Lynchburg’s Office of Inclusive Excellence and School of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The Zoom meeting can be joined here.

Queen Quet is a lecturer, historian, columnist, preservationist, environmentalist, environmental justice advocate, mathematician, computer scientist, and film consultant. She is the elected Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, a cultural heritage region that stretches from Jacksonville, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida.

She is the author of numerous books and founder of the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition, which has been described as the “premiere advocacy organization for the continuation of Gullah/Geechee culture.” Queen Quet was the first of her people to speak on behalf of the Gullah/Geechee Nation at the United Nations in Switzerland. She continues to carry the voice and vision of her people to different parts of the world. She looks forward to bringing people together this month to share the soul, spirit and songs of her people.

September is calling us to pray, study, celebrate, organize and act. Join these gatherings. Support Gullah/Geechee businesses and cultural institutions. Contact public officials. Fill the meeting rooms. Protect the Cultural Protection Overlay District. Stand with the people whose ancestors transformed the Sea Islands into places of freedom.

Cum jayn we een SC and NYC fa celebrate and sustain de Gullah/Geechee!