Serviceberry Circle: Exploring abundance and reciprocity in our community and everyday lives.

Join us for this important panel led community discussion on how to apply the ideas of abundance & reciprocity presented in Serviceberry, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, to our community and in our everyday lives.  Join Carole Nash, Victoria Ferguson, of the Monacan Indian Nation, and Meghan Williamson, in conversation exploring the abundance and reciprocity we can find and contribute to in the Shenandoah Valley.

Carole Nash, Ph.D., RPA, is honored to study the archaeology, ethnohistory, and historical ecology of the Appalachian Mountains and is

grateful to collaborate with citizens of Virginia’s Native American communities, especially the Monacan Nation. Professor in the School of Integrated Sciences, she has taught at James Madison University for 37 years. She chairs JMU’s Native American and Indigenous Working Group and is a

founding member of the Virginia Indigenous Nations in Higher Education collective. She and her students maintain a long-term research program in the Virginia Blue Ridge, where she is cooperating archaeologist for Shenandoah National Park. Her interdisciplinary research that joins ecology and archaeology has produced over 175 technical reports, scholarly papers, and publications, including co-author of Foundations of Archaeology in the Middle Atlantic (Routledge 2018). Recent work focuses on the impacts of climate change, especially wildfire, on archaeological sites of the Middle Atlantic uplands. She co-chairs the Society for American Archaeology’s Committee on Climate Change Strategies and Archeological Resources and co-directs the Virginia Archaeological Certification Program. Dr. Nash is President of Mountain Valley Archaeology, a non-profit in Mount Crawford, Virginia, that partners with descendant communities to implement archaeological and ecological research in western Virginia.

Victoria Persinger Ferguson is an enrolled citizen of the Monacan Indian Nation and is a graduate of Marshall University. She has 30 years background in researching the daily living habits of the Eastern Siouan populations up through the early European colonization period. Victoria has been involved with public history as a historical interpreter for over 25 years, participated in educational documentaries, and serves on the Historic Resource committee for her tribal nation. She is the Program Director for Solitude on the campus of Virginia Tech and their Presidential Ambassador to Native Nations.

Meghan Williamson’s work supporting grassroots, non-profit, and municipal projects of land and community connection take her up and down the Shenandoah Valley. She served as Executive Director for the City of Waynesboro, Virginia and currently serves as a professional consultant, grant writer, and editor within many valley-based organizations and acts as a connective tissue among folks involved in local food systems, bicycle coalitions, land stewardship projects, and timberframing guilds. Her goal is to shift resources, attention, knowledge, and support to the place-based organizations and people who are reimagining how to build economies, communities, and ecologies that work for all.

A curated selection of supplimental books will be available at this event.