Located among pristine woodlands in the Ryerson historic home in Riverwoods, Il., Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods promotes the importance of nature for nurturing personal and community wellbeing, cultivating creativity, and inspiring learning.
March 31 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Initiatives
Health Equity and Nature AcceleratorThe Woods as Freedom: Hidden Black Nature Stories
The Woods as Freedom: Hidden Black Nature Stories is an interactive virtual webinar that uncovers powerful, often untold stories of how the natural world shaped Black survival, resistance, and liberation.
While the woods are often remembered as sites of danger during slavery, they were also places of strategy, nourishment, spiritual refuge, and coded communication. This session explores the layered meaning of the forest through history, folklore, and cultural memory. This webinar invites participants to reimagine nature as a living archive of resilience and resistance. It is both an educational and healing-centered experience that helps participants reconnect with land as a source of identity, strength, and freedom.
Participants will explore:
-The role of the woods in slave narratives and escape routes
-Folklore traditions such as the Drinking Gourd and High John the Conqueror
-Nature as source of survival knowledge, medicine, and direction
-How ancestral relationships with land inform modern healing practices
Special thanks to support from Healing Illinois.
Healing Illinois is a racial healing initiative of the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) in partnership with the Field Foundation of IL.
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