About Us

7 Directions of Service (7DS) was founded by frontline activists Crystal Cavalier-Keck and Jason Campos Crazy Bear Keck on Crystal's ancestral Occaneechi-Saponi lands, the rural Piedmont region of North Carolina.

7DS began as a culture class and youth program, and has grown into a regional grassroots mobilization platform, focused on environmental justice, cultural revitalization and Indigenous rights.

Everything changed in 2018, when Crystal and Jason learned that the MVP Southgate fracked gas pipeline was slated to go through Crystal's hometown and tribal grounds. They began dedicating their lives to resisting and supporting the working-class and farming families located along the route. Thanks to our coordinated opposition, MVP Southgate has never moved forward, and 7DS continues to organize against it, along with a slew of new fossil fuel infrastructure proposals.

7DS is also focused on fostering Indigenous leadership and youth empowerment, cultural and land reclamation, and advancing Rights of Nature, which seeks to encode in law the inherent rights of rivers and ecosystems to flourish. Through media campaigns and public programs like our annual “Truthsgiving” event and the Southeastern Indigenous Coalition Environmental Conference, 7DS is a leading force in engaging our region in transformative cultural and community-building experiences that build bridges and spark paradigm shift.

"The destructive force of racial capitalist economies continues to harm all life and sacred kinship systems, beginning with our beloved earth, and extending all the way into our intimate family relationships. We are living in uncertain times, and yet the moment is ripe with opportunity to make a radical change. Now is the time to look to the leadership, wisdom, and experience of those who ARE the frontlines."

-Crystal and Jason

CORE INITIATIVES

Protect Sacred Places from Polluters

Despite the urgent necessity to transition to clean energy sources, the Southeast is facing an onslaught of methane gas expansion projects, including the Transco SSEP, Enbridge's T-15, MVP Southgate, and Buc-ee’s 120-pump gas station.

7DS is helping to build an educated, leader-full grassroots movement of impacted community members across race and class differences to stop these disastrous projects from moving forward.

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Advance Rights of Nature Laws and Policies

We are leading a long-haul effort to bring the Indigenous-led Rights of Nature Movement to NC.. We will start by advancing Rights of Nature legislation for the Haw River in the NC General Assembly, as well as at the municipal level. By fostering cultural shift towards the Indigenous and Earth-honoring values at the heart of the movement through advocacy, outreach, media campaigns and education, we know we will build the base necessary to achieve our goals.

Visit our Rights of Nature page to learn more and get involved.

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Nurture Yesa Culture

Throughout the year, 7DS offers youth programs, rites of passage and Yesa culture classes to our community members. Our developing community hub at YESA Farm serves as a space for re-establishing Indigenous agricultural and cultural practices and teachings, and hosting opportunities for youth healing and leadership development.

Our relational, cultural and land work are intwined with environmental justice and slowing the climate crisis, as it's well understood that the solutions we seek already exist within the foundation of Indigenous cultures. For these practices to take root again, we need to put LandBack into Indigenous hands.

Support YESA Farm + Rematriation

The 7 Directions Teachings

The 7 Directions teachings are at the core of every campaign, community project, education program and partnership we choose to nurture. These teachings have a multitude of interpretations across Indigenous cultures. For us, they proclaim the sanctity and vitality of each direction: children, women, men, elders, the earth, the sky (which is also symbolic of culture and the mind) and finally, the direction within. While we refer to the binary of “women” and “men”, we recognize the spectrum of gender (a fact of life well-known to our ancestors), and honor the sacredness of our nonbinary and 2-spirit kin.