Ali Meders-KnightSeeding a landscape claimed by European American settlers during the California Gold Rush, Meders-Knight repopulates this land with native plants and Indigenous land tending. Verbena Fields is an emerging model of what decolonizing land can look like, supported by partnerships between Native and non-Native communities. For them, Verbena Fields is an example of what land around Chico might have looked like before colonization. As they see it, “There aren’t that many things in the world that really make a difference, but planting and tending to native plants does. We’ve seen a restored forest, that it works.”Yet the return of native plants and Native people to Verbena Fields is not without conflict.