The Beaverton Black Parent Union views connecting to nature as an essential strategy to restoring our ancestral wisdom and culture into modern daily life and healing from the racial traumas of the past. Africans were transported to the western hemisphere lands not only as means of labor, but also due to their expertise in agriculture, as is evidenced by the history of wet-rice farming in South Carolina’s gold cost, a method originating in west Africa. “Nature” in west African ideologies holds meaning beyond food production, but also medicinal gifts, spiritual sustenance, provision of materials goods for housing, clothing, and ritual, and of course the foundation of important social and community activities.