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We're all told balance is important, we strive for it in our lives, our work, our perspectives.

Well, hopefully in our perspectives.

That's something we learned a little about in our last episode on Richmond, Virginia.

We met some amazing people trying to bring balance to the historical perspective through art, technology and action.

We soon discovered those battles don't end inside the city limits.

Not far from Richmond, on a flooded Peninsula is an example of a struggle and balance and equity across all fronts that's been going on in one form or another for over 400 years.

This is the historic capital of the Monacan nation and its future is in peril.

[music playing] About an hour West of Richmond is Rassawek.

Rassawek is the historic capital of the Monacan nation.

A Native American tribe that occupied the area West of the fall line of the James River, all the way to the Blue Ridge mountains for countless generations.

We're headed through the mud and rain to this flooded Peninsula to see this historic site for a good reason.

It may soon be destroyed.

The water pumping station to support development is slated to be built on the land where Rassawek once thrived.

And even though Rassawek was recently named one of America's 11 most endangered historic sites, the future is unknown.

Our guide Chief Kenneth Branham, the current chief of the Monacan nation and with him his legal counsel, Greg Werkheiser.

Greg runs a law firm along with his wife Miriam.

Devoted to preserving and protecting culture, art and heritage through legal advocacy.

Chief tell us, it looks like we're about to drown.

Tell us where we're headed right now?

This is the location of the Monacan town of Rassawek it's surrounded by two major rivers, the James River and the Rivanna over here.

And we've had a lot of rain the last two weeks.

So the river is quite high.

So it's not normally like this?

No, this would be dry land.

The point behind me would be where canoes and stuff would be landing.

This was we believe one of our major trading cities.

And it was lived in by Monacan people up to the 1730s.

John Smith visited it, it's documented it ever since 1607.

We got to preserve this spot.

It's the history of the Monacan, but it's also the history of Virginia.

This is Greg and him and his wife started helping us with this.

And without them, we wouldn't be here today.

My wife and I, we run a law firm, and our specialty is trying to help society strike the right balance between historic preservation and development.

And unfortunately the tribe had been lied to about whether or not there were viable alternatives.

No people were lying to them.

I know, it's shocking.

It's shocking.

We live in a modern age now where you can do things like submit freedom of Information Act requests.

And when we did that, we found a ton of documents that showed that the proponents of this project have 13 or 14 other options in which to draw water from the James to fund development.

The tribe is not anti-development, the tribe is just anti-development at the cost of digging up their ancestors and destroying the archaeological record.

To put it in context, that a lot of white people who love history can understand Jamestown was smaller than this.

This lasted many, many centuries more than Jamestown did, and yet we have been excavating Jamestown carefully for over 80 years.

The plan here is to spend three months digging up the chief's ancestors, putting them if you'll excuse me for saying this in cardboard boxes, and then putting a pump station in.

If we were having this conversation 25 years ago, it never would have been a conversation.

What different is the federal recognition now, you know because there are federal laws, and some of these laws were just passed in the 1990s.

Not 1890s.

No 1990s, protecting graves of native people.

Well, would you want your great grandparents dug up and removed and disturbed.

You know, I've went through that one time with a site that was dug up and there was over 150 skeletons full skeletons.

We had a mass free burial, and that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

You know I don't want to go through that again.

I don't know if I could really because it took such a toll.

If we can't protect this spot, there's no place in Virginia safe.

There were 12,000 people in organizations that wrote to the Army Corps of Engineers saying, no this is not right, this is too much.

The vast majority of them were not native.

And most Virginians virtually nothing about American Indian history.

It's sites like this that when preserved, and over time you have a plan to interpret.

That closes the gap in understanding and it's only through education by bringing people out and showing them hands on where people lived and how they live, that you're going to close the discrimination gap.

We have a powwow every year.

We've been doing it for 28 years.

We expanded all over about 20 different states.

But you know it's one time of year where we can all get together, we celebrate, we connect and again as family members.

And we also teach in our young people, and we teach in the community because it's open to the community.

Some of the things we believe in.

And you know I tell people Yeah, you look at me you look at a lot of the Monacan, we could blend in with most any other group.

We don't walk around with signs on our backs and with Monacan, but we're proud of that fact.

And my grandmother, I asked her one time how come she didn't teach me more about being a Monacan and then she said, son if the wrong person would have heard me talking about being an Indian, we might not have had a place to live tomorrow.

I wasn't allowed into public schools in Amazon County until 1963.

7th grade that was it, weren't allowed in the public high schools white or Black.

And so you went you got a job.

If you want to keep a people down you keep them uneducated.

My father worked on apple orchard his whole life, and he was killed in a farming accident, when I was a senior in high school.

And his dream was that myself and my three sisters would graduate from high school, not a big dream.

In the 1920s, they passed a law, The Racial Integrity Law.

And it was based on eugenics, which was a pseudoscience.

Basically, it stated there was two races in Virginia white and everybody else.

And you know we had midwives, my grandmother was one.

She delivered over 140 Monacan babies.

And she put Indian on every single one of them.

And they sent a letter from Richmond, and the state told her to cease doing that.

And she looked at it and read it and showed it to my grandfather, who was the last non elected chief and he looked at it and laughed.

And she ripped it up and threw it in the fireplace.

And she said, if they won't stop me come and get me.

She lived long enough to see the first five of our powwows, and she loved them.

What did the river mean specifically to the Monacan?

Well, think about it, we had no horses, travel, food, life itself.

And is there a spiritual component to that?

Being part of nature, we always try to leave a place better than what we find it.

And that's why we were able to have the powwow for 27 years in the same place because we always left it better than we found it.

I read where John Smith who lead an expedition up the James River, and was getting close to dark and he hadn't stopped and hadn't hunted so they took a basket and just scooped it through the water, they got enough fish to feed 12 people.

You got to one point where you afraid to eat anything out of the James.

Yeah.

Because the pollution.

Progress but had a heck of a price.

So you know we always tried to live with nature and respect it.

Only time will tell if the cost of progress will include this sacred Monacan site.

Progress and development have claimed many victims in the fight for balance.

However, it is also produced champions and advocates.

If you keep going West from Rassawek you'll meet one such advocate at Yogaville.

.

Yogaville is a spiritual center and Yogic Retreat nestled in the beautiful Virginia countryside.

One of its leadership members was inspired by the threat of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and the danger it posed to the ecosystem.

She protested the pipeline and after it was defeated became an advocate for nature and our planet, more specifically she strives for balance between progress and environmental impacts.

Meet Swami Dayananda.

This is a land that I inherited from my mother.

She was a healer, an artist and lover of the nature.

And so I felt that we should do something to show our love and respect for the nature.

And to receive from her or that she gives.

That's why we have here yayeko's healing garden, which is full of medicinal herbs.

And butterflies.

Yes and bees.

And bees, I love it.

And vegetables and flowers.

We wanted to share the benefits of medicinal herbs with low income people or homeless.

So we want to say buy one and give one free.

So anybody who buys from our grown for good, will be giving.

You'll make a donation.

Yes.

Such a great model.

Yes, that's tea tree oil their, country.

This is so good compress.

Comfrey.

Comfrey.

I don't know if you've ever seen Comfrey's flowers?

It's really beautiful.

We did about 50 hemp plants, when it became legal, really the inspiration was because I heard that hemp plants can absorb five times more carbon than the trees.

It was an environmental decision?

Yes it was, and they grow within four to six months rather than trees that grow in 15 to 20 years.

This was all because of Atlantic Coast Pipeline which was threatening our air, water and ground.

Because I took a climate training with Al Gore last year in March.

Really I've heard of this guy.

Yeah, he really, really have given his life toward this.

And when we took the training I truly understood how important it is for each one of us to do whatever we can to work toward climate change issue.

And then I realize how beneficial hemp for flowers is for healing.

Now that with hemp roots did you know that it can absorb toxins?

Oh, does it?

In Russia radioactive place, what the famous place?

Yes.

they planted hemp to clean up their soil.

They leave their place better than what they found.

There's an answer a solution that God or higher consciousness provided for us.

Water is really one of the most important element in our life.

It makes up a large part of our body?

That's right exactly, Yes.

And we did a worship service to the river, it's called puja in Hindu tradition.

And we did what we call arti which is offering of the light, praying to mother nature and the divine in the water, to protect the water, Yes.

And part of protecting the water is some of the environmental action things that you all-- Of course, and that is the cry of indigenous people, how long, how many hundreds of years they have been trying to protect their land, their water, their air.

And this whole land you know certainly was a Monacan people's land, indigenous people.

Swami, why is it so hard for people to understand, it's important to protect and conserve?

Well, I don't know the answer to it.

But I know that I myself was not really aware of the value of the nature until recently, until it was threatened by the pipeline.

In the name of progress and profit, we can lose ourselves, and the greed can take over, and harm the land to the point where we might really not have the right climate for us to survive.

You know this environmental issue, it is a moral issue, it's an ethical issue.

Because it can harm and more disadvantaged just people, minorities and the environment itself and all of us.

So the climate justice, environmental justice, racial justice it's all now come to surface, that we must really unite together to care for our health, our well-being of body, mind, and the spirit.

And do good, protect serve each other, come together, love one another, care for each other.

Swami Dayananda has a beautiful perspective on finding balance in life, nature and community, that permeates into the way she lives.

Back in Richmond we spoke with a group of African-American entrepreneurs and thought leaders about the summer of racial unrest and the protests inspired by the murder of George Floyd and so many others.

What is the path forward in a society where extreme economic imbalance and racial injustice have dominated for so long?

We jumped right in with Ace Callwood, Zane Gibbs, Dontrese Brown and Rasheeda Creighton.

There's this tenor I think to what we see the inequity, the injustice, the police brutality this time.

Yeah.

Started with George Floyd and the protests the activism.

And Yes, some of the riots which I'm sure we'll get into it but I think a requisite, a major movement, arguably the largest civil rights movement in human history is happening now, and part of that is here in the former capital of the Confederacy, that's interesting.

For me there's a quote on the Lee monument, it says, "this time is different."

I don't know if you guys have seen that.

There's couple of other quotes we're not talking about.

I think everybody had to be quiet and shut in the house because outside was closed, in order for this to actually work.

It's a perfect storm.

It was the perfect storm though because you now don't have a distraction, everyone is facing the reality that we've been living for 100 plus years.

And I think what's happening now, is there is a new generation of young folks I'm like, Oh y'all look-- y'all are not playing like, you are calling people out, and you do not care, and I love it.

Something that comes with that gets our generation to say, Yes and we are here for you.

Because we have the brand equity, we have the dollars, we have the ability to then move substantive change forward.

Y'all are all thought leaders because you're entrepreneurs here in Richmond.

And each of you has your kind of own slice, while there's an activism, there does seem to be a positive look forward.

Yeah.

This moment in time has sort of separated from an entrepreneurial perspective, sort of the old Richmond from the New Richmond.

Richmond was the home of Maggie Walker, who in the early 1890s became the first African-American female banker.

Her legacy is strong in this town.

And especially in Jackson ward before its undoing by I-95 in the 1950s.

My co-founders, when we talk about Jackson we're collective like, we think about Maggie Walker.

To have such an amazing inspirational person.

I mean it was Black Wall Street.

Is Black-- and the birthplace of Black capitalism.

Yeah.

I would love to be back in that era Jackson ward when it was just hopping with that culture that we were bringing to this city, as the Harlem of the South was ridiculous-- But is the business that you see, right.

You had insurance companies, you have financial services, like Jackson Ward was actually kind of first name Black Wall Street, it was the destruction of Tulsa that elevated that name.

But it was 95 cutting straight through Jackson Ward, that destroyed Jackson Ward.

Yeah.

I mean this is systemic racism.

Yeah it's taking away.

The building of highways through communities is not unique to here.

It's happened everywhere.

And like, when we think about what our goal in our mission is for Jackson Ward collective, it is actually to just support Black business owners, it's learn, grow, and own in the Black community.

Let me use spent time in my previous building, how many Black founders, not employees did you see?

But a handful.

Right, maybe and that's a stretch.

Maybe that-- When you looked in the mirror-- but like there are not there.

I'm a big guy so I'm used to that hand full.

It doesn't end, and we're not there because we-- wealth gap.

There's a safety net that's requisite to take the risk, to step into starting your own thing.

The interstates are designed we think they're designed to take people, places let's be real clear about who those people are.

Let's take the white folks through the Black neighborhoods without having to go through the Black neighborhoods right.

Like how do we get them out to the suburbs without having to deal with us?

The redlining to see that in Richmond literally they were red lines on maps but denoting good neighborhoods versus bad neighborhoods.

And that was typically along racial lines?

Where you want to-- where you want to invest, and where you don't want to invest.

Or where you won't let people who came from this area get a loan, make investments, buy new property, or move on the other side of the line.

And so when we think about the way education has been affected by that, the way generational wealth by buying property has been affected by that so on and so forth.

Once you start there and then you think about why we don't see founders necessarily represented in our incubator downtown, it's because most of us, a lot of us have not had the privilege of having that safety net.

There's some movements that are happening now, question is, are we going forward or backwards?

I mean what's the sense, what's the future for Richmond?

I think Richmond is one of those cities that I'm most hopeful about.

This is not a new struggle for us.

As the capital of the Confederacy, this city has really been trying to deal with this history, probably more than I would say any other city.

I'm hopeful because I see a lot of people who were on the sidelines, in that conversation now coming off the bench saying, hey, look I want to be in the game.

There are some people that look like me that think that things are not progressing.

Those people who want to make it great again.

Great was the 50s, where we were segregated, or the 80s the war on drugs, and we were throwing us in jail.

I mean, black folks can't time travel.

All right, it just doesn't make sense for us.

All we've had for a long time is hope, like we can't not be hopeful we think about what that would look like.

Earl and I the only white people at this table right now, we do want to come along.

And we want to help.

Yeah.

Are there things that we need to pay attention to when we try to help?

Listening.

Historically what happens is white folks will say, I want to help.

And then they try to do.

Yeah.

And you're not listening to what we're saying we need, we know what we need, we lack access to something, use your-- Yeah.

Privilege, right.

Open the doors, make connect the dots, make the access and then come alongside.

But don't try to take over and lead.

We need to as Black-Americans start to think about generational wealth because that's the biggest gap, and then action, we have to act.

And what I feel now is our group-- of our generation that's coming up as new emerging leaders in Richmond.

We need to be inspired by the youth that are standing on the monuments, that are demanding change.

And paved the way for them to continue it.

We may not see the change.

But at least we can be part of the change.

As a Richmonder, I'm just so happy to be friends, new friends with all of y'all, you know you guys have such great perspective.

And so thank you so much.

Thank you for-- Thank you.

Thanks, appreciate it.

Great.

Cheers again.

Cheers [laughs] Here in my hometown and across the state.

We've seen people striving to protect and enrich the places and communities they love.

Communities that will all suffer if we don't find a healthy balance between environmentalism and progress.

While the environmental battle impacts us all, we've also seen firsthand how minority communities in their heritage are threatened and repressed by ignorance and racism.

Flying under the same banner of progress.

We can't change the past.

But we do have an opportunity to fight for real progress.

A better and more equitable future for all.

There's so much more to explore and we want you to join us on The Good road.

For more in-depth content meet us on the internet at The Good Road.

TV.

Hear more great stories connect to organizations, and make sure you download our podcasts Philanthropology.

Funding for The Good Road has been provided by-- Every road is a good road when you're behind the wheel of a Toyota Hybrid, from the Toyota Venza and Sienna, the Highlander Hybrid and Rav4 Hybrid.

And with available all-wheel drive, these vehicles are designed to go the distance.

Whether you're driving to work, school, or down the coast of Tanzania.

Proud sponsor of The Good Road.

Toyota, let's go places.

Tomorrow's breakthroughs start with the determination and inspiration of today.

AMD help solve the world's toughest and most interesting challenges, by creating high performance computing technologies.

And by Uncommon Giving, the generosity company.

At Plow and Hearth, we believe that the place you are to become the place you want to be.

Philanthropy Journal, stories about bold people changing the world.

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