What if the land could teach you everything you forgot you knew?

In this episode of Calling in the Healers, Nick Pineda sits down with Courtney Eddy King—Indigenous scientist, cultural steward, and greenhouse manager at Haskell Indian Nations University—for a conversation about the work of healing land, memory, and self.

Courtney shares her journey into ecological restoration and her relationship with the land—as someone reclaiming cultural knowledge that colonial systems sought to erase. Together, they explore what it means to rebalance ecosystems and why public land care serves as a mirror for how much we truly value the land and sovereignty of the other-than-human species that live on it.

With honesty and reverence, Courtney invites us to move beyond theory and into the practice of care—starting with plant identification, accountability, and deep listening to the beings who have always been here.

In this conversation, we explore:

• What it means to restore not just prairie ecosystems—but cultural memory

• How the land can become a teacher when ancestral knowledge is missing or broken

• The tension between progressive environmentalism and lived Indigenous realities in Lawrence

• The emotional and ancestral depth of working with plants as material and kin

This episode is for anyone hungry to feel rooted again—anyone looking to begin, or begin again, with the land beneath their feet.

📍 Recorded on ancestral Kaw, Osage, and Shawnee land, at the Lawrence Public Library.
🔗 Show notes include resources on restoration, land care, and local action in Douglas County.

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
💬 Follow along @leadwithkapwa for more reflections and community conversation.