• "To Live and Thrive on New Earths"The Earthseed Land Collective and Black Freedom
• Danielle M. Purifoy (bio)

photographs by Jade Wilson

Earthseed Land Collective members, left to right: Santos Flores, Courtney Woods, Justin Robinson, Tahz Walker, Zulayka Santiago, Corre Robinson, and Cristina Rivera Chapman. All photographs at the Earthseed Land Collective, Durham, North Carolina, September 2020.

[End Page 78]

from an old wooden swing, Zulayka Santiago heard the over-revving of another truck speeding down the main road in front of her house. It was a not-too-warm day in May 2020, and we were at the tail end of our nearly hour-long interview. We tried to escape the noise by sitting near the treehouse where she hosts meditation classes. Taking coronavirus precautions, we couldn't go indoors, so we kept our distance outside, masks off.

Her eyes widened at the truck's roar and she interrupted what she was saying to turn toward the busy road. Ever since she and her family landed here at Earthseed Land Collective, forty-eight acres in Durham, North Carolina, co-owned by herself and six other Black and Latinx people, Zulayka said she's been taking opportunities to embrace not only the challenges of building deep, lasting collaborations with fellow Earthseed members, but also confronting mundane disruptions of her mostly quiet life here.

"It is so important to me to choose what I focus my attention on," she said, turning back towards me, "so even in the midst of all that noise and chaos, [Earthseed] continues to be a sanctuary for the frogs, for the dragon flies, for the birds, for me."

The frogs are particularly vocal. Their songs—at least four, by Zulayka's count—pitched loud and steady through each of my conversations with Earthseed's members.

In Octavia Butler's two-part novel series, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, Earthseed is a religion established by the young Black protagonist Lauren Olamina in the midst of the social collapse of the United States. This dystopia corresponds with ecological devastation, slavery, serial epidemics, and mass privatization, which results in cities made up of separate walled communities. Earthseed as a religion, and Acorn as a community cofounded by Olamina after the collapse, represent an attempt not only to survive dystopia, but also to build the relationships to other people, to nonhumans, and to the land itself necessary for survival beyond Earth.

If Butler's fictive religion wants its adherents "to live and thrive on new earths," Earthseed Land Collective is committed to developing the relationships and practices necessary for thriving lives here, on renewed earths. Earthseed took its name from the Parable series because of the [End Page 79] members' mutual love for Butler's work.

"We knew that we wanted to have land, that's the one thing in the beginning that we were sure of," said Justin Robinson (pronounced Robison), a member of Earthseed. "We all sort of had that aspiration separately, and then, coming together, we were able to look at this fictionalized future [in the Parable series] and be able to see some parallels for us. And even if nothing about that future comes true, this [land collective] is still necessary."

The Earthseed Collective was founded in 2012, and besides the land itself, its members had different personal reasons for its creation. For Justin, a teacher, botanist, and musician, it was, at least in part, a way to figure out Black people's relationship to land in the US. For Zulayka, a nonprofit consultant and mindful outdoor experience guide, it was community building. For Courtney Woods, a public health scholar, professor, and capoeira practitioner, it was building better relationships to land and sustainability. For Santos Flores, a youth educator and capoeira practitioner, it was the desire to move away from a farming system where Black and Brown people were still being used to build white wealth. For Corre Robinson, an investor and research consultant, it was building an alternative to individual wealth. For Tahz Walker and Cristina Rivera Chapman, both farmers, it was an opportunity to cultivate healthy, nourishing land that couldn't be taken...

• “在新地球上生存和繁荣”地球种子土地集体和黑人自由
• 丹妮尔（Danielle M.Purifoy）（生物）

杰德·威尔逊（Jade Wilson）的照片

土种土地集体成员，从左至右： Santos Flores，Courtney Woods，Justin Robinson，Tahz Walker，Zulaya Santiago，Corre Robinson和Cristina Rivera Chapman。2020年9月在北卡罗来纳州达勒姆市的Earthseed Land Collective上的所有照片。

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祖拉卡·圣地亚哥（Zulayka Santiago）从一个古老的木制秋千上听到，另一辆卡车在她家门前的主要道路上行驶时过速行驶。到了2020年5月，这不是一个非常温暖的日子，而我们正处于将近一个小时的采访的尾声。我们试图坐在她主持冥想课的树屋附近，以逃避噪音。采取冠状病毒预防措施，我们不能进入室内，因此我们与外界保持距离，戴上口罩。

她睁大眼睛看着卡车的轰鸣声，打断了她说的转向繁忙的道路的声音。自从她和她的家人在北卡罗来纳州达勒姆市的48英亩土地上登陆地球，并由她和其他六位黑人和拉丁人共同拥有以来，祖拉卡说，她一直在抓住机遇，不仅接受建筑方面的挑战与其他地球种子成员进行了深远而持久的合作，但同时也面临着她在这里平淡无奇的生活的平凡打扰。

她说：“选择我关注的重点对我来说非常重要，所以即使在所有喧闹和混乱之中，[土]仍然是青蛙的避难所，为了龙飞，为了鸟，为了我。”

青蛙特别发声。在我与Earthseed成员的每次对话中，他们的歌曲（按Zulayka的数量计，至少有四首）响亮而稳定。

在Octavia Butler的两部分小说系列中，《播种者的寓言》和《人才的寓言》中，地球种子是由年轻的黑人主角Lauren Olamina在美国社会崩溃中建立的一种宗教。这种反乌托邦与生态破坏，奴隶制，一系列流行病和大规模私有化相对应，导致城市由独立的围墙社区组成。崩溃后，地球种子作为一种宗教信仰，橡果作为一个由奥拉米纳（Olamina）共同创建的社区，代表着一种尝试，不仅是为了生存反乌托邦，而且是为了与其他人，非人类以及与地球以外生存所需的土地建立联系。

如果巴特勒的虚构宗教希望其信徒“在新地球上生存和繁荣”，那么地球种子土地集体致力于发展必要的关系和做法，以在新地球上繁衍生息。由于[End Page 79]成员对巴特勒的工作的共同爱意，Earthseed从寓言系列中得了名。

Earthseed的成员Justin Robinson（发音为Robison）说：“我们知道我们想拥有土地，这是我们一开始就确定的一件事。” “我们都有各自的抱负，然后，聚在一起，我们可以看到这个虚构的未来（在寓言系列中），并且可以为我们看到一些相似之处。即使关于那个未来的任何事情都不成真，这个[土地集体]仍然是必要的。”

Earthseed Collective成立于2012年，除土地本身外，其成员还有不同的个人原因创造土地。对于教师，植物学家和音乐家贾斯汀来说，至少在某种程度上，这是弄清楚黑人与美国土地的关系的一种方式。对于非营利顾问兼注意户外体验指南的Zulayka来说，这是社区建设。对于公共卫生学者，教授和卡波耶拉从业者考特尼·伍兹（Courtney Woods）而言，它正在与土地和可持续发展建立更好的关系。对于青年教育家和卡波耶拉从业者桑托斯·弗洛雷斯（Santos Flores）来说，它是一种希望摆脱农业制度的愿望，在该制度下，黑人和布朗人仍被用来建立白色财富。对于投资者和研究顾问科雷·罗宾逊（Corre Robinson）而言，它正在建立个人财富的替代品。