
Marnin Robbins, a former employee, reflects on his time at UIHS and the beginnings of Potawot.
I was the first Garden Manager at the UIHS Potawot Community Garden (1999-2003). When I started, the main clinic was still based out of Trinidad and the site where the Potawot Health Village is now was an empty cow pasture. During that first fall/winter, UIHS contracted with Humboldt Water Resources to develop the 40-acre site, including both the construction of the clinic as well as restoration of the 20-acre Ku’wah-dah-wilth conservation easement.
In addition to overseeing the work of setting up the garden (new irrigation, fencing, greenhouses, organizing volunteers, planting cover crops, harvesting vegetables for market, etc.), I also helped lead volunteer work crews to plant many of the native plants that now grow throughout Ku’wah-dah-wilth.
Potawot is a visionary place. I often think of the Traditional Resource Advisory Committee and the UIHS Board who believed Potawot would one day become a place of healing for the Indigenous community, the non-Indigenous community, and for the environment too. Today, I see that reality made manifest throughout the site: healthy forests, wetlands and meadows, a beautiful vegetable garden and orchards, the newly built traditional house, dance pit, sweat house and Ag building, and of course the UIHS clinic with a native plant garden at its center. All these places are reminders of the power of nature to heal and of the crucial role that Native people have had and continue to have in stewarding North West California landscapes.
In my current role as California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s statewide manager for outreach and education, I am incredibly grateful for my work 20+ years ago as Potawot Garden Manager. The motto of Ku’wah-dah-wilth (Health of the Individual = Health of the Community = Health of the Environment) is the same motto that I carry forward in helping connect all Californians with the natural world. By safeguarding the environment, we can help heal people and communities too.
It is wonderful to see Ku’wah-dah-wilth and the Potawot Garden in such good hands. Now more than ever, UIHS is building a landscape of resilience and abundance for the future.
Marnin Robbins is the current Statewide Interpretive Services Manager, California Department of Fish and Wildlife