Place Based
The Region
The Four Corners Food Coalition is a placed based organization, meaning that where we work informs how we work.
We are part of the Four Corners region where Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado meet, a land characterized by vast open spaces and deeply rooted Ute, Dine’, Pueblo and Apache communities where mountains and mesas descend into canyons and deserts.
This region is home to some of the longest continuously practiced agricultural and food ways on the entire continent. Deep food and farming traditions stemming from many cultures are prevalent across the region, but today we lack infrastructure to develop our current food systems to a place where our people can thrive. This equation reinforces depleted economies and furthers the deficit narratives of our communities.
Food Apartheid
Despite the vast agriculture of the area, the majority of the region is a “food desert” although we prefer to use the term food apartheid to more accurately describe the conditions created through the systematic marginalization of specific peoples resulting in depleted natural and community resources and a lack of food and subsequent health disparities.
There is a pressing need for community ownership of the systems that impact our lives.
Equity
The Coalition was founded with equity and regional solidarity at the center. Our vision of thriving food systems across our region again is made possible with that foundation. We are passionate about food, deeply rooted in our communities, with extensive backgrounds in community organizing and food systems work.
We partner with farmers, food workers, community organizers, small organizations and grassroots efforts across the region to build that future. Collectively, we are: Indigenous, LGBTQ+, low wage & working class, people with disabilities, people aging in place, immigrants, people of color, living with chronic illness, young people, formerly incarcerated, parents, anti-racist activists, farmers & food justice organizers.
Our Team
We are a worker led non-profit that operates under a 501c3 structure and in accordance with Indigenous values. We are accountable to our communities and all the communities we serve through partnership and relationship.
Amber Lansing- Board President and Indigenous Food Access Organizer
Amber Lansing is an Indigenous woman from the Dine’, Aa’kumeh and Sawanooki tribes. (Navajo, Shawnee and Acoma). She was born and raised in Dinetah in a small town called Fort Defiance. She has lived in the town of Dolores, Colorado for 18 years with her husband and 4 children. Amber is the Director for the Dolores Family Project and the Dolores Community Garden. She is a Co-Founder of the Four Corners Food Coalition and currently serves on the Nourish Colorado Advisory Board. Amber is passionate about strengthening Indigenous food systems through building supportive networks, funding sustainable projects, and bringing traditional foods and medicines to tribal members who struggle with food insecurity. She strives to support reconnection to tradition and cultural values that may have been lost or misguided throughout the years. Her work is dedicated to building sustainable systems so that her communities are no longer reliant on outside resources. Amber was recently named the Citizen of the Year in Dolores.
M. Karlos Baca- Board Secretary and Farm Organizer
M. Karlos Baca (Diné/Nuchu) is an Indigenous Foods Advocate, educator, and writer.
They are a co-founder of the Indigenous Food organization, www.icollectiveinc.org , which uses Indigenous Foodways as a medium to combat structural white supremacy and continued warfare against Indigenous people. He is also the lead writer of their project “A Gathering Basket Cookbook”, a monthly multimedia publication looking at traditional foodways through the lens of food warfare and colonization.
Co-founder of 4th World Farm, which is focused on pre-colonial foodways, education, agricultural, and water systems in the high desert of the 4 Corners region. Looking at the landscape as a means to heal from colonization, the farm practices land based healing by looking at the mirror images of our plant relatives' experience and our own.
And a co-founder and board member of the Four Corners Food Coalition.
Most importantly he is a son, father, uncle, and grandfather.
Stephanie Dressen- Board Treasurer
Yah’teh’ shi’ ke’ do’ shi’ kiis. Chishi' nishli'. Tl'aaschi'i' bashichchiin. Kinyaa'aanii da shi' cheii'.
To'tsohnii' da shi' naali'.
Hello my relatives and my friends. I am Apache born for Red Cheeked People. My maternal grandfather clan is Towering House People. My paternal grandfather clan is Big Water People. My name is Stephanie Benally Dressen. My family is from Fort Defiance, AZ and Littlewater, NM. I have lived in southwest Colorado for 20+ years. I am currently a non-traditional college student, graduating Spring 2025 with an accounting major and writing minor. I work full-time at Durango Fire Protection District in the finance department.
My biggest role is mother to three adult children. I am also a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a spousal partner, a relative. We must acknowledge our kinship in a sea of colonialism through the actions of community food ways and sovereignty, centering Native voices and presence.
Gretchen Groenke- Grant Writer and Admin
I am a mother, a food grower and medicine maker, a seed saver, a birthworker, a poet, and a student. I grew up in the industrial agricultural foodscapes of Washington State where i learned that injustice was inherent to a globalized food system. My whole life has been dedicated to learning ways to tend to land, food, family and community that heal rather than extract and exploit. I care for the land at 4th World Farm, organize with Four Corners Food Coalition, and work within the nonprofit sector to move resources from areas of concentration to areas of forcible extraction. As a writer, i self-publish tiny books which so far include People’s [PLANT] Medicine: Considerations in Herbalism, Foraging, and Wildcrafting for White Folx and Original (Mis)Appropriations: A Brief Introduction to the Colorado River Crisis (English/Spanish). I am passionate about liberatory practices that honor the land and its people, while addressing the pervasive harms of living under the chronic violence of white supremacy, capitalism, racism, sexism, and patriarchy.
Our Community
We work in partnership directly with community members and small grassroots organizations located in rural and isolated communities that operate autonomously and are accountable to and led by their community members.
