Greenwood Stands with Indigenous Communities
By Cheyenne Rainford | Board Secretary & Pagan Pride Day Committee Chair
Although it is not a brick and mortar establishment, Church of the Greenwood primarily operates in the Central New York region. Accordingly, our organization owes recognition and thanks to the six sovereign nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, who have been caretakers of the lands and waters of this region since time immemorial.
Through violence, genocide and forced removal, European colonizers stole this land and these waters to extract resources for profit using stolen people and their stolen labor at the expense of local ecosystems. Many of us who live and work in CNY today are the descendants of those colonizers, and our lives here and now were made possible by the injustices our ancestors committed.
Less than a mile from the sacred Onondaga Lake, where the Peacemaker brought the warring nations together under the Great Tree of Peace, Greenwood hosts its annual CNY Pagan Pride Day at Long Branch Park in Liverpool. As denizens of this land, we have a responsibility to honor its spirits, its original steward, as well as the treaties between the Onondaga Nation and our own governing bodies.
In 1794, President George Washington signed a treaty promising 2.5 million acres of land to the Haudenosaunee, of which Onondaga Lake is a part. But of course, that treaty has long since been shattered. In 2011, the Onondaga County Legislature passed a resolution to return Maple Bay, located along the northwestern shore of Onondaga Lake, to the nation but they have yet to make good on it.
On Oct. 15, 2025, CNY Pagan Pride Day donated 10% of our merchandise proceeds, equating to $200, to the American Indian Law Alliance to support their efforts to restore Indigenous sovereignty, not least of which is the return of Maple Bay into the care of the Onondaga Nation. We proudly add our voices to the Lake Back campaign and call upon the county legislature to fulfill their commitment.
This Indigenous People’s Month, we invite you to join us in support of Indigenous sovereignty by visiting LakeBack.org.
