OUR GUIDING ETHOS
Each element of New Seneca Village is designed using our definition of Right Relationship to ensure that all of our offerings and how we work are in alignment with our mission.
​We develop our organizational structure, governance models, offerings, partnerships and funding relationships within the following principles in order to practice creating a just future today.
INTERCONNECTION
Everything on this planet is inextricably and intimately connected.
Our interconnection reinforces our deep understanding of the rightness of justice and of the necessity of intentional community.
Our interconnection proves that resources are for all and that there is “enough” for everyone.
RESTORATION
The intentional reclamation and return of a person to their Self and their purpose, to their community and to their humanity, is a contribution to society.
Restoration honors the sovereignty and contribution of an individual so that they live out their purpose in life and work from a resourced place.
RESTORATION
EVOLUTION
Endowed with infinite potential, humanity is fully capable of creating a future wherein all beings on this planet are free to live with dignity, agency and access to resources in abundance.
About Us
New Seneca Village (Village) centers Black, Indigenous, women of color working toward justice and is intentionally inclusive of trans, gender expansive, and queer folks of color within our broader community.
In solidarity with transgender and queer communities, the Village has had iterative conversations around gender and trans-inclusivity. We know that language is evolving, and want to be explicit that the Village is a community that welcomes trans women, trans femmes, demigirls, trans men, trans masc people, masculine of center people, studs, butches, fems, two-spirit people, nonbinary folks, genderqueers, agender folks, genderfluid people, gender-expansive people of color, intersex people, etc.
While this is not an exhaustive list, we hope that we are clear that we are building a world where cis-heteropatriachy, and by extension the gender binary, is no more – where all of us are free to express and explore our authentic gender(s) and selves without discrimination.
Continuing in the legacies of Black feminisms, Indigenous wisdom, and women of color organizing, New Seneca Village is a space that will continue to center BIPOC cisgender women and be intentionally inclusive of trans, gender expansive, and queer people as practice and we work toward collective liberation.
We invite you to explore what this means for you and to be in relationship with the fullness of our communities.
People + Place Acknowledgement
National
As a remote organization whose pilot model includes travel to natural settings across the country, we acknowledge that we find ourselves on various stolen lands that are sacred to a number of Indigenous Peoples, including but not limited to Tribes, Nations, and Peoples such as: Coosati, Muskoke, Ohlone, Snohomish.
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We are grateful to the Indigenous Peoples who have cared for and stewarded these lands in Right Relationship from the beginning. We are clear that our ongoing presence on this land is egregious.
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Global
We also want to acknowledge all people who have been forced from their own indigenous lands, practices, ancestors and relationships due to de-humanizing economic, political, violent or climate related transgressions of others. As well as those whose labor and life force have been extracted and used in service of others before themselves.
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Labor
We acknowledge the legacy of slavery and the enslaved African people whose life force and labor was exploited for generations to help establish the economy of the United States and many other nations across the world.
By recognizing the land that was taken from First Americans, the forced labor that was provided by enslaved Africans and black people, and the ongoing extraction foundational to many of our systems and societies, we acknowledge that we understand the source trauma that has shaped our collective present.
New Seneca Village is named in honor of Seneca Village,
a community founded and led by free Black people
in New York City in 1825.
Seneca Village grew to boast 3 churches, a Black grade school and the highest rates of home ownership in NYC. It was also one of the only integrated multi-racial communities in early NYC, welcoming Irish and German immigrants.
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This thriving village was destroyed
in order to build Central Park.
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New Seneca Village is designed with the intention to care
for one another as if we are all residents of a prosperous, inclusive and living community.
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Because we are.
