Category Archives: Uncategorized
Gullah/Geechee Get Your Life! Honoring Our Roots on St. Helena Island
On Saturday, October 24, 2026, from 9 a.m. to noon, Earth People Farm, Soil Stewards, and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition will come together for “Gullah/Geechee Get Your Life!” in celebration of Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Awareness Month. Hosted on St. Helena Island, the epicenter of Gullah/Geechee culture, this gathering invites us to celebrate our heritage through the work of tending the land.
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.
Celebrate Gullah/Geechee Art, Music and Living History from Charleston to Beaufort County, SC!
De Gullah/Geechee riddim gwine caah we frum Chucktown ta Hilton Head Island and Port Royal, SC! As September turns to October, de Gullah/Geechee Famlee waan hunnuh fa jayn we! Gather with us in celebrations of art, music, foodways and remembrance throughout the South Carolina Lowcountry of the Gullah/Geechee Nation. Each gathering is an opportunity to support native Gullah/Geechee people who are keeping our cultural traditions alive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.