Category Archives: Human Rights
Queen Quet of the Gullah/Geechee Nation Honored as a Mother of the Environmental Justice Movement
Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation and Founder of the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition, has been honored as one of the “Mothers of the Environmental Justice Movement” whose lives, leadership and legacies are being preserved by the Environmental Justice Oral History Project.
Gullah/Geechee Nation Coastal Challenge Update
On the South Carolina Coast: A Tree Saved, a Cultural Overlay Challenged, and Data Centers Given a Path Forward
Monday, September 14, 2026 brought a flood of consequential local-government action along the South Carolina coast. The outcomes were not as simple as “win” or “loss.” The Beaufort County Council did not vote on St. Helena Island’s Cultural Protection Overlay, but the latest Pine Island challenge is moving toward the Planning Commission. In Charleston County, a redesign kept the Sol Legare witness tree standing, but the approved driveway will still enter its critical root zone. In Colleton County, Council did not approve construction of a particular data center; it adopted the comprehensive-plan, zoning-text, and zoning-map changes that make future data centers much easier to permit.
Here is what happened, what did not happen, and what you can do next.
HEADS UP! Protect the Gullah/Geechee Nation’s Coast!
Two counties. Two critical meetings. One coast to defend.
Monday, September 14, 2026, is a critical day for the future of the Gullah/Geechee Nation’s coast!
While Beaufort County Council prepares to discuss yet another attempt to remove Pine Island from the Cultural Protection Overlay District protecting St. Helena Island, Colleton County Council will consider regulations that could determine whether massive data centers gain a foothold in the rural ACE Basin.
These meetings overlap. Therefore, we need the Gullah/Geechee famlee, environmental justice advocates, landowners, preservationists and everyone who values the South Carolina Lowcountry to divide forces and fill both council chambers.
We cannot sit silently while destructioneers repeatedly attempt to wear down the laws that protect our land, water, culture and quality of life.
Living Water, Living Legacy and Living Resistance: September in the Gullah/Geechee Nation
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.
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.
Black Philanthropy and Sowing into Gullah/Geechee Land and Legacy
Here in the Gullah/Geechee Nation from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida, our ancestors transformed the Sea Islands and coastal lands into places of cultural continuity, spiritual grounding, economic independence and self-sufficiency. After centuries of enslavement, they purchased land, built praise houses and schools, established farms and fisheries, and created family compounds in which Gullah/Geechee traditions could thrive.
Today, the same land that sustained our ancestors is under tremendous pressure from escalating taxes, heirs’ property disputes and partition sales, destructionment, climate change impacts, cultural exploitation and displacement. When Gullah/Geechee land is lost, we lose more than acreage. We lose access to sacred burial grounds, fishing and farming traditions, family compounds, community gathering spaces, native foodways, linguistic landscapes and the living environment in which our culture has endured. This is why Black Philanthropy Month must move us beyond celebration and into action.
Gullah/Geechee Nation Appreciation Week 2026: Hunnuh Mus Tek Cyare de Root fa Heal de Tree
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.
Gullah/Geechee and SCELP Fighting Racial Discrimination Case to Protect Cultural Protection Overlay District
Queen Quet continued, “I have reviewed the complaint brought by the Plaintiffs in this case and recognize that they seek to destroy and invalidate the CPO so that their “destructionment” can move forward. The lawsuit is being made under the guise of claiming that the CPO is a race-based law. This is inaccurate and a misrepresentation. That accusation is legally unsound, historically inaccurate, and sociologically reductive. It collapses Gullah/Geechee culture into race and thereby erases the very heritage, land-use traditions, spiritual practices, language, kinship structures, ecological knowledge, and settlement patterns that the CPO was designed to protect. No one of any race or culture can violate the CPO law! We have the right to protect the environment and to continue to peacefully exist as native Gullah/Geechees and anyone that has come to St. Helena Island to live benefits from the healthy environment of our beloved island. We binya and ain gwine nowhey!”
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!
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.