The 2022-2023 North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship is focused on housing cooperatives, land trusts, and other community-owned land models.
The North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship is proud to announce our 2022-23 cohort:
House of Culture
Jayanthi RaJaSa, Yonci Peaceful Jameson, Kenna-Camara Cottman
- House of Culture is a cooperative manifestation based in the oral tradition and griot skills that form the foundation of Voice of Culture. www.voiceofculture.org has more information about that work.
- Mission: To create more Black spaces for the practice of cultural arts, ways of knowing and caring for each other in community
- Vision: A physical location in North Minneapolis to hold space for House of Culture: recycled, thrift, vintage, cultural REappropriation, community altars, the work of Voice of Culture, The RaJaSa Family, #QueerSounding and more
A Farm Called Home
Cal Adeboye, Lane Brown, Mari Fitch, Izzy Vielman, Mo Hanson, Jai Jami, Sun Kai
- Mission: A Farm Called Home invests in Black and Indigenous future farmers by providing access to land-ownership and housing stabilization through cooperative development, education and environmental stewardship.
- Vision: We provide an educational retreat center for Black, Indigenous and people of color to find respite. Our education and skill sharing programs are crafted with a trauma informed and antiracist lens. The profits from our education and hospitality program help fund more Black and Indigenous future farmers.
Lupine
Olivia Nichols, Sophia Nichols, Syreeta Sevé
- Mission: The mission of Lupine is to restore relationship with the land, animal, human, and plant kin in our home of Mni Sota Makoce. The only path to restoration is community care and love. We intend to build a world on this foundation of love through sustainably living in a tiny house community, using only what we need; reconnecting to our own and Indigenous food and medicine traditions through sustainable farming and growing practices, and permaculture design; offering QTBIPOC folx in need of respite with opportunities to build this world and live with us in short-term and long-term transitional housing through and beyond trauma; and taking care of one another in a good way. We believe that all beings are connected and this Earth is our home together, and only together will we be able to survive and thrive. The group intends to work directly with the first peoples of the land we seek to settle on, respecting any decisions made with regard to the stewardship of the land.
- Vision: Lupine is a restorer, a native Minnesota plant that establishes itself quickly after natural disasters, contributing to recovery and the transition to a thriving and diverse ecosystem.* We envision our work in tandem with this protective plant and will provide a window and door into a thriving world built on community care and love. This is a way of living that begets hope and the promise of a good life. *Details on the perennial wild lupine provided by MPD 150.
The Black Prosperity Cooperative
Alicia Clerk, Chakita Lewis
- Mission: To develop a sisterhood based on mutual respect, collaboration, inclusion, and shared economic opportunity. We come together to create opportunities for building wealth for women of color through real estate investment in residential and commercial properties and land ownership. We will promote ownership and leadership within the communities where these women are currently thriving.
- Vision: To create a clear pathway homeownership and wealth for women of color through collaborative economics.
Cultural Crops Cooperative
Mujahid Layton, Tenille Foreman
- Our vision offers sanctuary to those seeking freedom from systems of exploitation and oppression
- My cooperator and I steward 20 acres of land in GA. We seek to provide sanctuary to those seeking freedom from oppressive systems by modeling our ancestral agrarian & natural lifestyles. This looks like operating a nursery where we grow heritage, heirloom, and diasporic vegetables, herbs and dye plants; husbanding heritage animal breeds of goats, chickens and rabbits; and offering local honey from our hives & artisanal items made with our hands. We would like to put our land in a trust so that the successive stewardship of our land can be set for our progeny.
Boston Black Market and Enrichment Center
Jihan Thomas
- We strive to be a place where Black people can gather to ideate, share the joy of the day, and just be. We incorporate the principals of the Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles of Kwanzaa) in how we approach topics concerning our community. Through visual arts community programming, storytelling, and cultural events; we co- develop our own definitions of Black Spatial Liberation. We want to be a part of the fabric that continues this legacy and offer a space that serves our community through collective economics, Black resourcing, unrestricted creativity
