This year’s annual meeting for the Lopez Community Land Trust will feature keynote speaker Enek Hi Šak, a Chumash name meaning woman who is like the turtle, March 26, 7 p.m., at the Lopez Center for Community and the Arts, and all are welcome. The speaker, also known as Jeanette Acosta, will focus her talk on sustainability and indigenous cultures. Acosta lives on Orcas Island, but was raised in southern California in a Chumash household visited by traditional indigenous healers who imbued in her the respect of their sacred traditions, which involved sustainability. A canoe people, the Chumash inhabited a series of islands off the West Coast, including Lemu Island, now known as Santa Cruz Island in the Channel Islands. She and her family have applied their shared experience to preserve their culture and teach sustainability to local communities. She is a certified teacher and designer for permaculture and principles.

Acosta will share her expertise with cultural immersion, specifically as it relates to an indigenous maritime land-use system, including ethno-ecology, such as herbalism, ethno-botany and biodynamic principles. Her sessions introduce what she learned through her ancestry about the knowledge, materials, and resources that exist in our natural environment. Acosta is a spiritual counselor to her people and a certified “Kundalini Teacher Trainer.” She is also a keyboard musician and wrote the music for the CD “Standing Brave.”