Current & Past Projects
CURRENT PROJECTS
Paradise Valley Farm
In 2021 Indigenous Regeneration was awarded a COVID Food Relief Grant through The San Diego Foundation to grow and give away food to elders and community members in need from The San Pasqual Tribe. IRG partnered with The Foodshed to bring 40 families free weekly food boxes for 6 months while we installed a new 1-acre production farm named Paradise Valley Farms, just 10 minutes from Mata’Yuum. To date, we have served over 1000 food boxes to our San Pasqual community and provided two tribal paid apprenticeships. This installation was in partnership with Sea + Soil and managed and designed by farmer Greg Reese. We continue to farm and serve the San Pasqual community with free boxes. We plan to expand the apprenticeship program and use this location as the new “farm school,” maintaining an ability to feed our community for free while providing land-based education and training. We hope to graduate as many Tribal Farmers as possible while feeding as many tribal community members at the same time.
Bird Song Documentation
The MAT Access Points Project is funded through the Department of Health Care Services’ California MAT Expansion Project and is administered and managed by The Center at Sierra Health Foundation. Tribal and Urban Indian Community-Defined Best Practices funded Indigenous Regeneration and Waipuk Agency to create a digital platform of Kumeyaay cultural traditions as a way of preserving resources and knowledge and explore the use of Kumeyaay Bird Songs in substance use disorder programs to increase treatment engagement and retention in San Diego County.
This project supports the work of Bird Singer Chris Alvarado, San Pasqual, Waipuk Clan and amplifies the work already created through his master's program at SDSU, where he lectures. Chris’s documentation and creation of a language learning software allows anyone to sign up for free to access Kumeyaay Bird Songs, their phonetic breakdown, and to learn the story behind the song. In addition to the Bird Song project, this funding also supports the creation of a video series documenting Kumeyaay elder knowledge and storytelling (coming out 2022).
Kumeyaay Ethnobotany Board Game
The Kumeyaay Ethnobotany Board Game with Richard Bugbee is an exciting historic project documenting deep cultural history, language and indigenous knowledge in San Diego. Richard Bugbee and Indigenous Regeneration founder Lacey Boyer Cannon are creating an interactive, educational, cultural revitalization board game with a goal of releasing to the public in 2022 with a spin off mini deck Memory game coming out by late 2021.The board game includes original tribal territories in San Diego and Baja, the original trading trails and seasonal traveling directions of the Kumeyaay, traditional plant knowledge, gathering times, traditional primitive skills, original Kumeyaay names of significant locations in San Diegoand Baja, Kumeyaay numbers, colors and animal names. The game serves as a teaching tool of the true History of San Diego and Baja as well as a fun interactive way for kids and adults to learn the Kumeyaay language, ethnobotany and rich cultural history of the Kumeyaay Nation.
Richard Bugbee, a Payomkowishum Elder from San Diego, California, was a renowned Kumeyaay ethnobotanist with over 35 years of knowledge passed down from his esteemed teacher, Jane Dumas. Richard dedicated his life to preserving the cultural and ecological wisdom of his people. As an instructor at Kumeyaay Community College, he shared his deep expertise in Ethnobotany and Ethnoecology with future generations. Richard's influence extended far beyond the classroom, serving as an advisor to the Oakland Museum of California, the Phoebe Hearst Museum at UC Berkeley, and as Curator of the Kumeyaay Culture Exhibit at Southern Indian Health Council.
His leadership roles included serving as Indigenous Education Specialist at the San Diego Museum of Man, and board memberships with organizations such as the Native American Advisory Council for California State Parks, the California Indian Basket Weavers Association, and the Elders' Circle for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A long-standing board member and former chairman of the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, Richard also served on the board of Indigenous Regeneration. His lifelong dedication to cultural preservation is honored through this game, where his knowledge lives on.
Lacey Cannon, a Chickasaw and Cherokee descendant, is the founder of Indigenous Regeneration. She spent seven years studying under Richard Bugbee, documenting his 35 years of ethnobotany knowledge. Lacey was married into the Waipuk Clan at San Pasqual Reservation for 17 years and has two Kumeyaay sons. She has led 28 acres of restoration projects both on and off the San Pasqual Reservation, focusing on regenerative agriculture and native plant use. Lacey also runs Paradise Tribal Farm, a six-acre farm school dedicated to food sovereignty and land stewardship. Through this game, Lacey continues to honor her teacher's legacy, sharing the cultural wisdom of the Kumeyaay people.
PAST PROJECTS
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Elders Medicine Path
In 2018/2019 Indigenous Regeneration (IRG), The San Pasqual Environmental Department and The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services partnered on a restoration installation on The San Pasqual Indian Reservation titled “The Elders Medicine Path,” designed by Lacey Cannon and Richard Bugbee.
The installation is a trail surrounded by 400 plants traditionally used for medicinal purposes, with signage in Kumeyaay and English. It is handicap-accessible so that tribal elders from San Pasqual may forage easily.
The installation was paired with weekly outdoor classes for All Tribes Charter School as well as a suicide prevention tribal youth group led by Ami Admire in partnership with Indian Health Council. This installation was supported by Dr. Bronners, The San Diego Foundation, SDGE and The California Rural Indian Health Board.
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Mena Waya Wetlands
In 2018/2019 Indigenous Regeneration (IRG), The San Pasqual Environmental Department and The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services partnered on a restoration and storm drain runoff capture installation on The San Pasqual Indian Reservation titled “San Pasqual Constructed Wetlands Project,” designed by Lacey Cannon, Richard Bugbee and Dennis Sharmahd.
IRG regenerated a ¼ acre man-made drain basin located at The San Pasqual Ball Fields into a thriving wetland and ecosystem, complete with traditional tule for boat making and many other traditional Kumeyaay basket weaving plants. Today, the wetland is home to many birds including the Tricolored Blackbird and Red Shouldered Hawk.
The installation was paired with weekly outdoor classes for All Tribes Charter School as well as a suicide prevention tribal youth group led by Ami Admire in partnership with Indian Health Council. This installation was supported by Dr. Bronners, The San Diego Foundation, SDGE and The California Rural Indian Health Board. An opening ceremony and ribbon cutting was held at the Unite The Tribe Concert in April 2019.
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Housing Prototype
In 2018, Indigenous Regeneration (IRG) built the first low cost, earthen housing prototype for San Diego Reservations. The project was funded by a private donor and Dr. Bronners. The installation provided 3 jobs on The San Pasqual Reservation, a cost analysis for future land-based sovereignty training and building of dome homes on Reservations in San Diego, and an intern's quarters for two summer interns who came and stayed and worked the land at Mata’Yuum in 2019. Indigenous Regeneration intends to teach earth building to Kumeyaay Community College students. With each class, we would love to see a new home built for a family in need on one of the many local Reservations. We are currently in the curriculum and partnership development phase of this vision.
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Unite the Tribe
In 2019 Indigenous Regeneration (IRG) held a community concert on The San Pasqual Reservation for Earth Day. Produced by founder Lacey Cannon and IRG founding board member Nahko Bear in partnership with the San Pasqual Environmental Department, The Rob Machado Foundation, Earth Guardians and Inter Tribal Youth, together we hosted 1,000 people and 30 educational booths about various environmental issues affecting San Diego tribes. Musical acts included Zella Day, Nahko, Iron Sage Wood, The Originators and various youth from the Rez Beats Open Mic group. Unite the Tribe 2023 is in the works.
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Hantak Creek Restoration
Description goIn 2019 Indigenous Regeneration (IRG) partnered with The San Pasqual Environmental Department, The San Pasqual Education Department, and All Tribes Charter School to restore a watershed that stretches through The San Pasqual Reservation titled Hantak Creek. IRG removed two dump truck loads of invasive weeds and trash, then installed 200 native plants to stabilize the natural environment and restore biodiversity. Plants included Wild Strawberry, Wild Grapes, Juncus, Deer Grass, California Poppy, and Yerba Mansa. The installation was designed by Lacey Cannon and Richard Bugbee.
Weekly classes were woven into our land-based programming with All Tribes Charter School and The San Pasqual Education Department. Students learned about our watershed, frogs and their habitats and mating cycles, how to use native plants to reduce and remove invasive plants, and the relationship between native plants and water health.
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6-acre Education Garden - Matayuum
Mata'Yuum is a six-acre outdoor learning campus located on The San Pasqual Reservation in San Diego County, California. This outdoor Tribal Sovereignty Training Center has been under creation since 2017. Mata’yuum is working to inspire and guide tribal communities toward improved self-governance and resource-consciousness. We aim to become a "living classroom" extension for Kumeyaay Community College and San Diego State University, where we will continue to teach Regenerative Agriculture, Kumeyaay Ethnobotany, Earth Building and reconnection to stewardship of land. Our goal is to become an accredited program for KCC and SDSU.
Our curriculum includes earthen housebuilding, regenerative agriculture and permaculture, off-grid power and water systems, trauma recovery, circular economics, ethnobotany, primitive skills, ecosystem restoration, native languages, and music.
Mata’Yuum has a 2.5 acre orchard, and a riparian trail with 1100 culturally significant plants. This installation was designed by Richard Bugbee and Lacey Cannon. Additionally, there is a medicine wheel garden, a Kumeyaay desert scape garden, a pizza garden for our youth education and activation programming, a fire pit that seats 100, a village area where we are building traditional awaas and ramadas for overnight youth campouts, a shaded seating area for 40 people, and 25 campsites.
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Kumeyaay Food Forest
The Ishpaa Kumeyaay Food Forest was an effort to create future foraging of native edible plants that resemble the landscape of precolonization for The San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians. It’s located next to their Cultural Center and under the resident nesting bald Eagles. In January 2020, IRG hosted an event with the help of Sea + Soil, the Ed Center, and 75 volunteers to plant 750 native, edible, drought tolerant, and fire resistant plants.
