Kì:li (Yésa:sahį: “come home”) is an Indigenous-led effort to gather stories, concerns, and priorities about the land and waters that continue to guide us in our relationships with land, particularly across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic & Ohio River Basin.

Every acre and square mile of land, water, and seascape is the homeland and ancestral domain of the many Tribal First Nations and Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern Woodlands and Seaboard, or the eastern door to what many Tribal Nations refer to as Turtle Island.  Our Nations and Communities witnessed and adapted to profound environmental and climatological changes such as the melting of continental glaciers, rising sea levels, and the migrations of animal and plant relatives over the course of thousands of years as recorded in our oral histories. 

This eastern region of Turtle Island/North America sustained the first impacts from European contact in the 16th century enduring land, water, and resource exploitation, wars, and invasion by the European nations, and then what would become the United States.  Our Nations and Communities endured further attacks, encroachments on our homelands, forced removals, and disestablishment of trust lands in the 19th,  and 20th, and 21st centuries. 

Despite centuries of wars, forced removal and land dispossessions, many Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities in the East continue to live and self-determine our futures. This self-determination is rooted in our oral traditions,  instructions, and prophecies on how to live in our homelands, relate to one another, and ensure healthy lands, waters, and oceans for our future generations. 

In rematriating lands, waters, and seascapes we are reclaiming our rights and responsibilities as the first caretakers of Eastern Turtle Island per Creation’s original instructions.