LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The Intervale Center is located on the unrelinquished lands of the Abenaki people, who know it as Winooskik, land of the wild onions. The Abenaki have suffered tremendous violence and harm through land theft, genocide, systemic erasure, and racism. They continue to suffer the effects of settler colonialism and its capitalist and white supremacist legacies to this day.

The Intervale Center is committed to the survivance and resilience of the Abenaki. We work to build authentic relationships with the indigenous people of the Winooskik and strive to take care of the land in ways that support the ongoing practice of their culture here. 

Intervale derives from the old English word for “in-between”

The Intervale’s location in between the Winooski River and Lake Champlain have made this floodplain an important agricultural, natural, and cultural resource for thousands of years. This land was farmed by Abenaki indigenous people and then European settlers following colonization, including the Calkins family who ran Burlington’s last operating dairy farm until 1991.

 After centuries of farming, the Intervale became home to a city dump from the 1930s to 1990 and became an undesirable place for most to farm with the rise of industrial agriculture. In the early 1980s, Will Raap founded his growing business, Gardeners’ Supply Company, on Intervale Road and envisioned the area coming back to its agricultural roots. He and his team led a community cleanup and then established the Intervale Center (originally called the Intervale Foundation) as a nonprofit in 1988. Our first initiatives were to restore the health of the soil here, which led to the founding of organic farms, gardens, and this area as a beautiful agricultural and recreational resource in the heart of Burlington.

Like its soil, the land history of the Intervale is incredibly rich. Click on a story below to learn how our programs and enterprises have grown from this significant place.