Our Worldview

We are thrilled to share with you how we have represented our Roots & Routes worldview in our logo: from the compass design, guiding us with "sustainability from the heart" as our North, to the diverse rivers and forests, which we defend together. 

The roots of the tree of life come together as veins in our hearts. Our heart's arteries spring forth into river paths that nourish and connect us all. 

The tree of life represents R&R's work of responsibly stewarding a flourishing living world both present and past, near and far. Today we are humbled to be based in Santa Cruz, California, nestled among redwood forests, the southern end of the Pacific Temperate Rainforest. These are the homelands of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band with whom we are forming relations and learning a great deal from.

We also acknowledge the Pacific Tropical Chocó Rainforest of Ecuador, ancestral territory of the Chachi, Awá, and Afro-descendant peoples, where decades ago the first seeds of the R&R vision took root: an educational space in which Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities could teach one another and the world about how to take care of the Earth.

The mountain is Taita Imbabura, a volcano at the heart of Imbabura Province, Ecuador, the homelands of the Karanki and Otovalo Indigenous peoples. Imbabura is the birthplace of our organizational processes to bring to fruition the vision that was conceived in the Chocó and incubated for twenty years. In 2019, Roots & Routes IC Board of Directors first gathered from across the Americas and the Pacific Ocean in San Clemente, Ecuador, in the house of another one of our Co-founders. 

The compass represents Indigenous cartographic practices since time immemorial, a nod to the rousing work of our Kanaka Hawai’i Co-founder, who lives in Hilo on the Island of Hawai'i. The Maya cardinal directions–red in the east, yellow in the south, black in the west, and white in the north–are to honor our Co-founder and Aj’qij’ab, Mayan Daykeeper, as well as the K'iche' communities in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

We, at R&R, join one another from all four corners of the globe and the ring of people around the mountain represents us and what we collectively do in the world: intercultural collaborations.

Roots & Routes is about building bridges and expanding community to learn from one another and to share in our passion and culturally specific ways of knowing to nurture and protect Pachamama and all people. We hope the new logo reminds all who see it of the wealth inherent to our interconnectedness.