SALEM COUNTY, N.J. (KYW Newsradio) — A Native American land conservation nonprofit has purchased a church and 63 acres in Salem County — and in doing so, is returning the land to its roots.
Burden Hill Forest in Quinton Township is where Tyrese Gould Jacino’s grandparents grew up and where their ancestors lived. Her father, former Chief Mark “Quiet Hawk” Gould, walked the grounds as a boy.
“When we first had access to the land, we could feel the fact that we were home,” she said.
Her family sustained themselves with its abundant natural resources — that is until the government took the land away for failure to pay taxes, she said.
“We lost a lot of land to taxation.”
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Gould Jacinto is CEO of the Native American Advancement Corporation, which recently acquired the former Morningstar Fellowship church and the adjoining acres, now called Cohanzick Nature Reserve, for $820,000.
“And the church is just absolutely pristine. It’s well cared for. The land is untouched. The land is absolutely beautiful.”
She says they are looking for donations to help them renovate the church into a cultural and environmental education center to teach visitors the indigenous ways of conservation. She says they plan to host class trips and summer camps so they can change the narrative around Native American people.
“That we’re not something of the past, that we still exist,” she said.
Gould Jacinto says she believes the opportunity to buy this property came from a higher power. She recited a line from her grandmother about the land:
“This is the dust of my ancestors, and one day this will be my dust as well.”
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