Rolling Ridge Property

Friends Wilderness owes a deep debt of gratitude to all those, known or unknowable, who came before, who cherished and labored on this land. We are further indebted to the following generations who must entrust us to steward this space for the future.

Indigenous peoples traversed and hunted in the land occupied by Friends Wilderness for millennia, guided perhaps by the natural navigational contours of river and ridge, relying on the mountain streams and artesian springs. 

Friends Wilderness honors the memory of the Manahoac people, who were identified as inhabitants of this land on maps drawn by early European explorers. We carry the burden and grief that their people did not survive to the time of colonial expansion. 

Many of their language group, Souian, shared the wider region as seasonal hunting grounds, transit routes, and trading areas for generations with peoples of the Algonquin and Iroquoian (Haudenosaunee) language groups to the West and North. We hold profound gratitude for the legacy of earthcare and cooperation lived by the generations of indigenous peoples who valued this land before us.

Friends Wilderness appreciates that the land we have the privilege of occupying was not–nor could be–ceded to our colonial predecessors, who imposed a European construct of property ownership to unfairly claim indigenous territory. Although our circumstance is unearned, we humbly accept our role and responsibility within this continuum to share the land to honor the memory of its past caretakers and steward its gifts for the generations that follow. 

Friends Wilderness further expresses sorrow for the unnamed men, women, and children who were unjustly claimed as property by colonial settlers and forced to labor on this land without compensation, freedom, or personal autonomy. We lament their trials and suffering and mourn those who succumbed while enslaved and may lie at rest on this land. In meager recompense for their unjust subjugation and the generational injury inflicted by disadvantage perpetuated in  our social, cultural, and economic systems, we share our privileged circumstances on this land, welcoming all freely and openly as equal benefactors to its gift