Publications

This guide is created especially for people seeking to improve their water and wastewater systems - especially addressing issues that arise from increasing extreme weather events - no matter what level of knowledge or involvement they have. It includes information and tips on gathering people together to work for positive change in their communities, such as steps to engage and mobilize your community, planning for a community meeting, questions to ask of your water and wastewater systems, a glossary, definitions, and sources for more information.

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This Water Resilience Toolkit is meant for Harlan County residents - especially addressing issues that arise from increasing extreme weather events - no matter what level of knowledge or involvement they have. Among the topics covered are the basics of how water is brought to your home and returns back to your environment. You can find out about the different types of water sources and water systems of Harlan County, and what stresses or even hinders their operation; what are the types of water pollution and how rising temperatures and extreme weather events impact water systems. We include information on who is in charge of the water quality of water, which are the responsibilities of those in charge, as well as the responsibilities of water ‘customers’, either businesses or households. Also included is information on who to call and what to do when something is wrong with your water, and what to do in case of climate-related water and wastewater emergencies.

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Keynote presentation given by Mary Hufford at "Appalachia, Betwixt and Between: Folkloristic Perspectives on a Region in Flux" held in April 2024 at Harvard University. The talk explored the relationship between the historical practice of forest farming in the coalfields and the present day forest farming movement.

This PowerPoint slideshow is shown during our Free Will-Writing Clinic and Heirs' Property Info Sessions and is designed to clear up misconceptions about heirs' property and provide attendees with straightforward answers to their most common questions.

A presentation given by Kevin Slovinsky, Director of Land & Revenues, at the 2024 Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference in Lexington, Ky. The presentation explained what heirs' property is, how it effects landowners and communities in eastern KY, and how the Appalachian Heirs' Property Coalition seeks to address it. Crossing over from analytical research to a vision of fostering economic justice in Central Appalachia, the presentation’s conclusion sketches out an organizing strategy that positions heirs’ property as the portal through which communities can build a kinship-based cooperative economy that can challenge the existing hegemonic extractive land regime in Central Appalachia.

Kevin presented a seminar on heirs' property for University of Kentucky and Kentucky State University cooperative extension officers in Franklin County in spring 2024. This seminar was one of eight “Navigating Kentucky’s Heirs’ Property” seminars funded by Alcorn State University. Participating cooperative extension agents are eligible to apply for a mini-grant offered by Kentucky State University to organize a community-level information session. Kevin has been working with participating agents in eastern Kentucky to utilize the mini-grant to hold “Free Will-Writing Clinic and Heirs’ Property Information Sessions.”

This report engages Objective Two of a larger collaborative project led by the Southern Rural Development Center/Mississippi State University in collaboration with Cassandra Johnson Gaither (Southern Research Office, Research Social Scientist, US Forest Service), Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation, Dr. Cassandra Gaither Johnson led the team focusing on Objective Two. It was funded by the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, through a subaward from the US Forest Service to LiKEN. The objective of this study is to determine how heirs’ property owners (HPOs) and their communities understand their own personal and communal wealth and their perceptions of opportunities and barriers to building wealth in general, and the impact of heirs’ property in particular.

LiKEN Secures Over $3 Million from USDA Forest Service to Advance Regenerative Agroforestry and Community-Led Watershed Reclamation in Appalachia

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Carol Judy (1949-2017) wove ginseng into a dense and vibrant meshwork connecting human and more-than-human, deep past with deep future, and local with global (some would say intergalactic).