CORRECTIONS: An earlier version of this story improperly identified the Cohanzik Nature Reserve as affiliated with the Nanticoke-Lenni-Lenape tribe. The reserve is not affiliated with a particular tribe; it is owned by the Native American Advancement Corp., Bridgeton, N.J. The meaning of Cohanzik also was misstated in the original article. The name means “a bend in the river where you cross.”
A few miles from New Jersey’s southernmost tip, the Cohanzick Nature Reserve is an important nature reserve and sanctuary for South Jersey’s Indigenous community. It also serves as a testament to the sustainable practices that have been a foundational philosophy of Indigenous communities for generations.
The reserve is owned by the Native American Advancement Corporation (NAAC), an Indigenous, women-created, and operated nonprofit founded in 2010 to address needs in the community. While not affiliated with a particular tribe, NAAC organizes at the reserve nature events, workshops, and educational programs rooted in Indigenous knowledge and environmental stewardship.
The reserve was established in 2023 on the 63-acre site of a former church in Quinton Township. Aside from the former church’s building, parking lot, and an outdoor wooden pavilion, most of the land at Cohanzick is untouched forest. There are plans to incorporate a garden and efforts to clear walking trails throughout the property, although most of the work on the reserve is focused on preservation so that future generations can also enjoy the land and embrace their culture, avoiding what can be seen as the exploitation of the land.
“Everything we do affects every generation in front of us, we believe that we have to be responsible for everything… the earth, the land, and the water, because it’s not just for us and we don’t own it,” said Tyrese Gould Jacinto, president and CEO of NAAC. “These things are gifts, and we are here as gifts, so therefore we have to take care of it because it’s not just us, it’s our children and grandchildren into the next seven generations.”
The reserve was established in 2023 on the 63-acre site of a former church in Quinton Township. The site’s purchase was a collaborative effort between the Native American Advancement Corporation (NAAC), the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s (NJDEP) Green Acres Program, and The Nature Conservancy.
The name Cohanzick roughly translates to “a bend in the river where you cross.”
The conservationist philosophy that Jacinto describes is called seventh-generation thinking or seventh-generation sustainability. This is a philosophy that is often associated with or attributed to indigenous groups in the area. Many of the ongoing projects at Cohanzick adhere to this philosophy.
However, some of the ideas often associated with mainstream nature conservation are at odds with the traditional lifestyles and practices of Indigenous groups.
A few Indigenous traditions, like raised-bed gardening and foraging for berries and mushrooms, have become commonplace among home gardens and high-end restaurants across the country. But the reality of practicing some of these traditions for Jacinto and her community is at odds with the state’s idea of conservation.
“So you want to preserve the forest, which is great, but then it makes you look like you can’t use it because of conservation efforts,” Jacinto said. “Even in New Jersey, they don’t let you do foraging, which is crazy.
“Conservation also has its downfall, and what happens with our communities or communities just like ours, we become collateral damage,” she added. “We are in the middle because we don’t want to exploit and we don’t want to conserve, but we want to live one with.”
Some of the more culturally oriented traditional practices were on full display during a pre-Easter “EggStravaganza” celebration held at the reserve in mid-April.
Part of the celebration featured arborist John Barry helping the younger community members to gather wood from a white pine tree that had fallen during a recent storm to make a traditional staff for the spring solstice, which the Easter Holiday usually lines up with.
Barry is the founding director of the Cohanzick Climate Corps and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Registered and Approved Arborist Apprenticeship program. Barry is a Rutgers University-certified public grounds manager and is accredited by the International Society for Arboriculture (ISA), where he is an ISA-certified arborist.
Barry has been involved with the NAAC for the past 15 years and credits his family of farmers and foresters for sparking his interest in the field.
“My grandfather used to come in and clear each section of the forest, and the burnt material from the clearing would be organic fertilizer for the soil,” Barry said.
The practice, known as prescribed burning, has been used for centuries by Indigenous groups in the area to maintain the forest and facilitate travel between wooded areas. Barry later added that it’s become more common in the last few years for people to spend a lot of money on the charred material from controlled burns to get a better pH value in their soil.
Aiding Barry in some of the more laborious preparations for the April event was Sean Torres, the 24-year-old grandson of former Chief Mark “Quiet Hawk” Gould. Torres has served as the field manager for Cohanzick for the past year and a half since it opened, and plans on pursuing a future career in the arborist industry.
One of his proudest achievements since the work at Cohanzick began has been clearing and reopening horse trails on the property that haven’t been touched since horses were a primary mode of transportation in the area.
(Photo courtesy of the Cohanzick Nature Reserve)
“This is something that I love to do. I come out here during my free time when I’m not even on the clock, just to get peace of mind,” Torres said.
NAAC, however, has faced a few challenges in living one with nature in the face of climate change.
Certain weather conditions, particularly extreme heat in the summer months, threaten events like camping retreats and other primarily outdoor cultural activities. The community’s historic fishing practice has also been threatened in recent years by a combination of increased regulations on fishing by the state and a decrease in publicly available fishing waters due to the privatization of lands in the southern tip of the state.
“I think the toughest part is we can’t control Mother Earth, right? So all we can do is grow with it,” said Ellis.
