Category Archives: Gullah/Geechee Sacred Areas

Honoring the Peaceful Rest of Our Gullah/Geechee Ancestors: Queen Quet Leads the Gullah/Geechee Sacred Site Protection Project

Approximately 3,200 individuals have now been identified within 50 of the 52 known burial sites on St. Helena and Warsaw Islands. Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, is undertaking the enormous work of researching these individuals through the “Gullah/Geechee Sacred Site Protection Project,” a collaboration between the Beaufort County Planning Department and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition.

This is far more than a cemetery survey. It is an act of remembrance, cultural preservation, historical restoration and sacred responsibility.

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

Volunteers planting reeds in a riverside wetland near homes

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.

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Gullah/Geechees Flow into Living Water and Sacred Responsibility: World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

This year’s World Day of Prayer observance carries particular significance for the Gullah/Geechee Nation. At Noon Eastern Time on September 1, 2026, Queen Quet, Chieftess and Head-of-State of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, will provide the keynote address for Creation Justice Ministries’ online World Day of Prayer and Season of Creation webinar. Queen Quet will share the spiritual and cultural relationship that Gullah/Geechee people have maintained with water from generation to generation.

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From Combahee to Angola: A Gullah/Geechee Journey in the Footsteps of a Souljah

We gathered. We protested. We poured libation. We demanded that the ancestors be properly acknowledged, studied with dignity and returned to the earth. We fought against allowing another building to erase them beneath concrete and steel.

As I stood beside the African mother, father and child represented there, I felt protected. I felt a throng of ancestors standing with me as I touched the baby’s hand.

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Gullah/Geechee Nation Appreciation Week 2026: Hunnuh Mus Tek Cyare de Root fa Heal de Tree

Gullah/Geechee Nation Family invitation to come to event.

Throughout the Gullah/Geechee Nation stretching from Jacksonville, North Carolina down to Jacksonville, Florida and inland to the St. Johns River, lies a rich cultural legacy that has endured for centuries. Every year during late July and early August, communities across the region come together to celebrate Gullah/Geechee Nation Appreciation Week.

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Saving de Gullah/Geechee Witness Tree at Sol Legare

The center of the Gullah/Geechee Nation’s flag is embossed with a Gullah/Geechee family tree that consist of human bodies that are intertwined and rooted in the soil of the Sea Islands.  The oak tree is a powerful symbol within Gullah/Geechee culture—mirroring the sacred tree rooted at the very center of the Gullah/Geechee Nation’s national flag. Protecting it represents a refusal to allow the physical markers of our heritage to be erased. “Save James Island” folks have made it clear: “You can’t replant history.” The historic live oak tree at Sol Legare cannot simply be replanted either.  It is truly a witness to what our ancestors of Sol Legare went through and now it is a witness to the encroaching destructionment no longer in the distance across the creek from Mosquito Beach but right under its own branches.  However, like native Gullah/Geechees, webe de tree planted by de rivers of wata.  We shall not be moved!

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Gullah/Geechee Musical Environmental Journeys

Whenever I have an opportunity to stand on the shoreline of the Gullah/Geechee Nation my spirit gets renewed. It is not only the warm Sea Island breeze laced in salt with its unique smell, it is also the rustle in the trees and the sway of the salt marsh that a dancer like me finds kinship with. I can hear an ancestral choir singing to a polyrhythmic beat that tends to be punctuated by the rhythms of crashing waves or the ripples in the river. Tenk GAWD fa de Sea Islands!

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De Gullah/Geechee Nation’s Queen Quet Announces 30th Anniversary “Save the Sea Islands Tour”

Queen Quet, Chieftess and Head-of-State of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, officially announces her 30th Anniversary “Save the Sea Islands Tour,” a multicity initiative celebrating Gullah/Geechee heritage and advancing the mission of land preservation, cultural continuity, and community empowerment. The tour, themed “Hunnuh Mus Tek Cyare de Root fa Heal de Tree — Celebrating Gullah/Geechee Land & Legacy,” underscores the enduring wisdom that community restoration and sustainability begin with caring for the roots of our culture and heritage.

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Gullah/Geechee Nation Celebrates Black History Month

Gullah/Geechee Nation Family invitation to come to event.

In the Gullah/Geechee Nation, celebrating sustained identity and land ownership happens 365 days of the year. So, the Gullah/Geechee Nation is actively engaged in Black History Month celebrations and will host numerous events throughout the coast. Cum fa jayn we!

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HEADS UP! Protect Gullah/Geechee Sacred Burial Areas!

HEADS UP Gullah/Geechee Nation Famlee! STAND UP on Tuesday and protect our sacred Gullah/Geechee burial areas!

Join us at the BIg House Cemetery Court Hearing

on Tuesday, December 16, 2025, at 9:30 am at

the Beaufort County Courthouse
102 Ribaut Rd, Beaufort, SC 29902
Room 208

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