Who Owns Appalachia? Property, Extraction, and Land Liberation

Central Appalachia has been a key site of the extractive economy for two centuries. In recent decades, landscapes reshaped and abandoned by the coal industry have been repurposed for prisons and, now, AI data centers.

How did this region become a target for repeated cycles of extraction and abandonment?

How are communities using land ownership data not only to stop new extractive developments before they take hold, but also to break with the property regime that underpins them? And what can these struggles teach us about resisting extractivism elsewhere?

SPEAKERS:

• Tiffany Joy (Pyette), Founder and Co-Executive Director of the Appalachian Rekindling Project

• Sharon Fisher, President of the Clinch Coalition

• Mary Cromer, Environmental Lawyer and Deputy Director of Appalachian Citizens Law Center (Kentucky)

• Lindsay Shade, Environmental sociologist, Red Natural History fellow, convenor and co-founder of the Appalachian Land Study Collective

• Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Professor and organizer

PLEASE NOTE: This event will not be recorded. This event is part of a new programming series organized with the 2026–2028 Red Natural History Fellows with the Natural History Museum.