Last year our organization made a big move. We bought 63 acres of former strip mine land in Letcher County, Kentucky. This wasn’t about property; it was about stopping a cycle of harm that has defined Appalachia for too long. Our $169,000 investment disrupted plans for a $505 million federal prison complex that would have caged over 1,300 people. This would have become the fifth federal prison in eastern Kentucky, part of a pattern that treats incarceration as economic development. We know that Black, brown, and Indigenous people are incarcerated at disproportionate rates when compared to white people charged with the same offences. From data collected in 2021 by The Sentencing Project, we can see that Black people are incarcerated at five times the rate of white people and Indigenous people are incarcerated at 4.2 times the rate of white people. This proposed facility would inevitably continue the pattern of carceral racism.
As co-executive director of the Appalachian Rekindling Project, I’m proud that we saw a different future – one where this land could heal and Indigenous peoples could come home. We chose to invest in Indigenous return and ecological restoration rather than allow another prison to be built on land that has already been stripped, scarred, and exploited.
Racism in Appalachia operates through mechanisms of erasure and confinement. When we pretend Indigenous peoples never existed here while simultaneously building prisons that disproportionately cage people of color, we perpetuate white supremacy. Appalachia has always been treated as expendable by those in power – through Indigenous removal, extractive coal mining, a dumping ground for environmental hazards, and now through prison construction. Fighting the prison means demanding that Appalachia be seen as a place of value, beauty, and home.
The Appalachian Rekindling Project acknowledges historical harm, centers Indigenous sovereignty, and builds true community safety through restoration rather than incarceration.
Our immediate plans for this Letcher County land center on ecological restoration – bringing back native species to land that has been strip-mined and degraded. This isn’t just about conservation; it’s about reversing extraction and returning life to places that have been treated as sacrifice zones. Reintroducing bison, animals that are relatives to many Indigenous peoples and integral to pre-colonial ecosystems, is both practically restorative and symbolically powerful.
Our larger vision: establishing an intertribal Indigenous center on our other piece of land in central Appalachia where Native peoples can physically return to their homelands. This center will provide space for our Indigenous communities to gather, practice traditional ways of life, and care for our land collectively. This intertribal center will be a free space available to Indigenous people from any tribal community, not a museum or tourist site, but a living place of Indigenous presence and practice.
We particularly look forward to welcoming Indigenous peoples who have been forcibly removed from this region back to their ancestral homelands, land that holds their history, culture, and ceremonial sites. Creating pathways for return is about healing through that truth and acknowledging that Indigenous peoples have every right to be here, this is our home.
We plan to hire local workers to help build and maintain restoration projects. These are jobs that heal rather than harm, that restore land rather than extract from it, that build community rather than separate families.
We’ve established a voluntary land tax system that creates a meaningful pathway for anyone living in Appalachia to support Indigenous justice and land restoration. If you want to see Appalachian land be cared for, believe in climate justice, want to prevent further exploitation, or seek reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, this is a concrete way to contribute.
Mitch Whitaker, a neighboring property owner, told reporters that our purchase gives “folks an alternative choice” and is “a much better solution.” His support shows that community members recognize the false choice between prison jobs and poverty. Joan Steffen, an attorney with the Institute to End Mass Incarceration, framed this moment perfectly: we’re at a pivot point as a nation, deciding whether to continue pouring resources into systems of incarceration or start investing in genuine community wellbeing, healing, and restoration.
Our vision is for Appalachia to become known as a place of return. A place where Indigenous peoples return home, where ecosystems return to health, where people return to a right relationship with land. Rural communities like ours have been told we should be grateful for prisons because we don’t deserve better economic opportunities. We reject that. We deserve investment in restoration, in Indigenous justice, in healing land and relationships, in meaningful work that doesn’t require us to profit from others’ suffering. This is what real reconciliation looks like: not just words, but land, resources, and the material conditions for Indigenous peoples to come home and thrive.
Through her multifaceted work and drawing from her rich heritage as a member of both the Comanche and Caddo Nations, Taysha Devaughn is a powerful voice for environmental protection, social justice, community empowerment, and Indigenous rights in Appalachia. Her work with the Appalachian Rekindling Project stands as a testament to her commitment and vision for a future that honors and integrates Indigenous wisdom and practices.