Meet Lauren Peters: Healing Land, Healing Community

For Lauren Peters, healing is inseparable from land, lineage, and community. A member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, her work brings together ancestral growing practices, yoga, and community care to support healing for both people and place.

As part of Kripalu’s Amplify Voices of the Global Majority series, Lauren shares a deeply personal story of loss, resilience, and restoration—one rooted in the belief that when we heal the land, it heals us in return.

Rooted in Land and Lineage

I was born and raised into my Mashpee Wampanoag tribal community on what is now known as “Cape Cod,” under the guidance of my elders and alongside my sister-cousin Danyelle. We were inseparable; we paddled canoe, tended to gardens and knew every trail and tree in our woodlands.

Today, our land, water and people are being threatened by overpopulation, pollution and gentrification. In my short lifetime, I have seen species dwindle and some completely disappear. We have been in simultaneous housing and opioid crises for ten years, because when our people can no longer afford to live on our ancestral homelands they turn to substances and suicide.

Loss and the Beginning of Healing

After losing Danyelle to suicide following an opioid addiction in 2012, I had been looking for the right vehicle to do the necessary healing work for our women and children.

In 2020, when the King Philip Corn seeds came to us after almost 400 years, I started working with it and experienced incredible healing. At the time, I was shelterless, living in my car with my two young sons going through a difficult divorce.

It was selfish to keep this to myself as our corn was traditionally tended to by our community of women and children in a singular garden. It was the perfect vehicle for healing our people and the land.

Rebuilding Through Community

In 2023, I started Yoga Teacher Training with Native Strength Revolution and brought yoga back to my community to add to the work we do in the gardens. I weave in postures to honor our ancestors and align the practice with our relationship to Mother Earth.

We serve our Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal community, as well as surrounding tribal communities and allies because we know we are stronger together.

When we heal this land, it heals us and the generational traumas we carry. We bring hope, movement, healing, food and regenerative growing practices to our land and water ways.

What Guides Her Work

I was taught by my grandfather, Supreme Sachem of the Wampanoag Nation, John “Slow Turtle” Peters, that love is the most important thing we can arm ourselves with.

We must understand how to love each other again and remember we are all connected through Mother Earth. Hate can destroy everything but love can bridge our differences.