Stories from the Water and the Land: Sustaining Communities
Date: Mon, Apr 20, 2026
Time: 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Venue: Main Library – Main Auditorium, Durham
Price: Free
Category: Community
<p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Join our moderated panel discussion to discover how North Carolina’s landscapes—its farms, forests, burial grounds, and waterways—sustain culture, memory, environmental health and community well<span cambria="" math="">‑</span>being. </span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Delphine Godley Sellars is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Urban Community AgriNomics (UCAN), Catawba Trail Farm in Durham. Her passion since 2018 has been the reclaiming of a former plantation into the Catawba Trail Farm. The farm currently has a Youth and Community Garden, high tunnel, bees, walking trails, repurposed buildings and provides an array of programs and services.</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Ryan E. Emanuel is a hydrologist and associate professor at Duke University where he researches and teaches about water, environmental justice, and Indigenous rights. His book, <a href="https://durhamcounty.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S217C348122"><i>On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice</i></a>, explains how Indigenous peoples in North Carolina maintain connections to their homelands despite centuries of social oppression and environmental degradation.</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Beverly Scarlett is a co-founder of Indigenous Memories in Hillsborough. The organization returns the history, culture and legacy of the Indigenous People of this area to its community of origins. It also preserves Indigenous land and burial spaces and the burial spaces of the enslaved. </span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-famil