Land, Loss, and Power

It was the first 100-degree day in March.
The kind of day that clings to your skin and makes you slow down whether you want to or not.

I was sitting in a community center at Gila River. The walls were bare—no photos, no art, no color. Even the paint seemed to mute itself. The building, much like the land surrounding it. Functional. Quiet. But not peaceful.

Across from me sat a Gila River Indian Community elder.

We weren’t in a formal meeting. We were in conversation. And then she said something that cut through the dry air.

“It feels like an internment camp.
Like the Japanese internment camp they built here without permission.”

She wasn’t being dramatic. She was naming truth.

She described what happened when the rivers were dammed—how it choked off water from her people’s farms, how their food systems were replaced with government-issued commodities, how her ancestors couldn’t feed their children. Not because they didn’t know how, but because they weren’t allowed to.

“They dammed the river,” she said, “and they left us to starve.”

There was no rage in her voice. Just clarity. The kind of clarity that comes when you’ve spent a lifetime watching the same story repeat: relocation. resource extraction. silence. erasure.

“And now they’re erasing us from federal websites,” she added. “Pretending we were never here.
But they couldn’t move us to Oklahoma. We’re still here.”

As someone who operates in planning, policy, and systems design, I find myself in a lot of rooms that talk about “equity” and “inclusion.” But rarely do those rooms center voices like hers—voices that carry the full weight of history and the wisdom to guide what comes next.

This conversation reminded me why I started SISU Consulting in the first place.
To create space for stories like this.
To support community-led work that does not look away.
To practice a kind of planning that is honest, rooted, and accountable to lived experience.

SISU is a Finnish word that reflects my heritage. It means grit in the face of the impossible. The kind of courage that doesn’t ask for permission. The kind of strength I saw in her that day.

She and her people have endured forced relocation, stolen water, starvation, bureaucratic neglect, environmental degradation, and now—climate crisis. But they are still here. Organizing. Healing. Planting. Leading.

“They couldn’t separate us from our land,” she said. “They tried. They failed.”

This is the heart of what social impact must become:
Listening with humility.
Following the leadership of those whose survival is already a blueprint.
And acknowledging that no solution is truly just if it doesn’t begin with truth.

If you work in government, philanthropy, design, or development—and you’re ready to reimagine your process—I invite you to begin here.

Start with the land.
Start with the story.
Start with the ones who stayed.