This feast under the stars is not only a gathering to honor visionaries and leaders, but also a celebration of the integration of art and nature, as we proudly showcase our second Artist-in-Residence, this time featuring a Youth Artist-in-Residence cohort.
This gathering is both a homecoming and a horizon: a moment to root into the soil of our shared struggle and rise toward a future we design together. This will be one night rooted in joy, justice, and imagination.
This September,
we celebrate
WILD! Miracles
On behalf of the artists, storyweavers, creators, goddesses, healers, witches, and conjurers, we invite you to our second annual gala, 2025 WILD! Miracles: A Feast of Gratitude in the Woods on September 13.
This celebration comes at a critical moment for both people and the planet. Now more than ever, we must center our healing. Restore Forward and The Reconciliation Center serve as a sanctuary, a place for the world to come to recover.
This year’s festival continues our bold capital campaign to transform 453 acres of land in Upstate New York into a healing and The Reconciliation Center, stewarded by Black and Native American women. It also honors the sheroes and heroes who stand on the frontlines of global and local crises.
WILD! Miracles: A Feast of Gratitude in the Woods is a sacred celebration of resilience and restoration, honoring the luminaries and allies who stood beside Black Women’s Blueprint, now The Reconciliation Center, through years of adversity, culminating in a transformative victory that breathes new life into 453 acres of reclaimed land in Ava, New York.
As WILD! Miracles approaches, these luminaries will be honored for their courage and commitment. This is not just an event, it is an honoring of miracles, a sacred gathering, a moment of celebration, remembrance, and profound gratitude.
It is where the forest itself will bear witness to generosity. Where tables will be set in wild splendor. Where we come together not just to share a meal, but to lift up those whose hands held firm through the storm, whose voices rose in defense of the right to exist, to dream, to build.
Our WILD! Miracles MC:
ADAKU UTAH
Adaku Utah is MC for WILD! Miracles 2025! Born in Baltimore and raised in Festac, Nigeria, Adaku is a proud Igbo queer, non-binary visionary, healer, and movement-builder. They conjure transformative magic through social justice, leadership, and liberation work—co-creating spaces where movements and communities thrive.
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Adaku currently leads Movement Building Programs at the Building Movement Project, hosts the Solidarity Is This podcast, and has built organizing power across the globe as former Organizing Director at the National Network of Abortion Funds. Adaku has been featured in Mothertongue Monologues, a feature annual production of Black Women's Blueprint (2011-2017). For nearly a decade, Adaku has co-facilitated Harriet’s Apothecary, an all-Black collective of healers, organizers, and artists embodying radical freedom and healing justice.
Join us as Adaku guides us through the magic, energy, and wonder of WILD! Miracles 2025—you won’t want to miss a moment!
Our Youth Artist-In-Residence
at WILD! Miracles:
FREEDOM FUTURES COLLECTIVE
From the heart of Washington, D.C., the Freedom Futures Collective emerges as a dynamic force of visionary artists, activists, and dreamers. United by a shared commitment to Black liberation, they craft immersive experiences that transcend traditional performance, blending music, film, and ritual into a tapestry of resistance and joy.
Our WILD! Miracles Youth Artist-In-Residence Ritual Performance—a night where art becomes ceremony and ceremony becomes liberation. This is no ordinary performance but a spell, a summoning, a collective act of dreaming. Our resident youth visionary will guide us through movement, sound, poetry, and ancestral frequencies that blur the boundary between audience and altar, calling us into a future of infinite possibilities.
This night is a threshold, a homecoming, a miracle unfolding before us. Come dressed as your most radiant self; come ready to clap, cry, dance, witness, and release.
Join us for an evening where art becomes action, and every moment is a step toward a liberated tomorrow.
WILD! Feast
​Prepare for an extraordinary culinary adventure at WILD!, where the menu, artfully designed by our talented chef, highlights the rich flavors and natural bounty of our surroundings.
Also included in the menu:
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Sweets
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To satisfy your sweet tooth, indulge in decadent dark cakes infused with dark liquor and local sweets featuring maple, dates, honey, fruits, and berries.
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Teas and Elixirs
Complementing the feast, we will have an herbal tea station with an assortment of soothing teas, as well as a variety of wild cocktails and mocktails featuring flavors of maple, honey, and local ingredients. A curated selection of local cheeses and wines will also be available to enhance your dining experience.
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The Bar
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The bar will showcase a cocktail menu reflective of Restore Forward's spirit, blending traditional favorites with innovative creations using local and wild ingredients.
Join us at WILD for an unforgettable evening of gourmet delights and natural beauty, where every bite and sip celebrates the essence of our land.
A Theatrical Ceremony of Magic and Miracles
September 13, 2025
The Story:
In a world unraveling, something divine has taken root. WILD! Miracles is not merely an event; it is a summons, a sacred rite, a ritual of remembrance and rejoicing. Beneath ancient canopies and across consecrated soil, we bear witness to a year that defied gravity, a year when the impossible became flesh.
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In this theatrical piece, we tell the story: Through the smoke of hatred, through scattered screws and slurs, amid a town’s resistance and a nation’s forgetting, warriors rose. Shoulder to shoulder, with steady hands and unshaken spirits, they guarded a dream, shielding a vision: the reclamation of land and destiny for The Reconciliation Center.
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And then, a miracle.
When all expected yet another battle, the town of Ava turned. A new path unfolded: acknowledgement, permission, possibility. This was the turning point, the divine breath that broke through stone.
Now, we name the protectors.
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These are not mere names; they are conjurers, shield-bearers, light-keepers. Their brilliance, legal power, spiritual grounding, and uncompromising love shaped a future once thought unreachable.
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So, on this Fall Equinox, in the heart of the woods, we gather for a feast not just of food, but of gratitude and miracles. The trees will remember. The wind will carry their names. A table will be set in wild splendor, and we will dance, cry, laugh, and bow in honor.
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This is not just theater. This is testimony.
This is the spell-work of justice.
This is WILD! Miracles.
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Come ready. Come reverent. Come radiant.
As part of our $10 million capital campaign to develop this land, we are committed to donating a percentage of all funds raised to the local community in Ava.
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Last summer, against all odds, the town of Ava approved the Open Development Plan, granting us the ability to move forward, building by building. After years of struggle and legal battles, expectations were set for yet another fight. But instead, the town board chose a different path, a fresh start, a new relationship.
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They acknowledged the wrongs of the past and signaled a desire to stand on the right side of history, at a time when the world is in turmoil, when wars fracture communities and divisions seep into daily life.
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Because of the unwavering dedication of our Luminaries, this victory became possible.
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Their brilliance, legal and strategic counsel, and steadfast belief in justice have paved the way for this moment.
When the world said “no,” love carved a path through the forest.
Event
Co-Stewards
Maria Motolla
Huong Nguyen
Ingrid Benedict
KC Wagner
Bonnie Collins
Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes
Gina Belafonte
Kelli Stidiman Hall
Leah Penniman
Kimberle Crenshaw
Honoring WILD! Visionaries & Luminaries
During our dinner in the Woods, we will announce sacred spaces that will be built on the land at Restore Forward in honor of supporters and partners of The Reconciliation Center, and women whose extraordinary work and enduring legacies enrich our lives.
Robert Burgdorf
Legacy Library
Carolyn Nussbaum
Women's Freedom
Lounge
Stephen Fantuzzo
Fountain of Equality
Nan Stolzenburg
Peaceful Edge
Minnie Garrow
Forest of Herbs and Botanicals
Rebecca Minas
Universal Design Lab
Cheyenna Weber
Cooperative Trails
Jim Johnson
Cooperative Trails
Greg Lesniak
Guardians of
Hidden Waters
Robinson Lynn
Clearing of Infinite Pathways
Women of the NBFJA
Seed and Food Ceremonial Space
Kalliopeia
The Kalliopeia Foundation Pond
H.O.L.L.A
Radical Healing and Resistance Camp
Restore Forward
Founding Cooperative Board
Restore Forward Board
Host Committee
Dailisha Eve Rodriguez
Maria Neve
Alicia Luhrssen-Zombek
Cathline Tanis
Geraldine Deese
Dr. Yaa Elombe
Kim Waldon and Rhonda Waldon
Rosemary Didi Jordan
Whitney D. Smith
Alisha Santiago
Natalie Jeffers
Dawn Ramsey and Chekasha Ramsey
Monica Dennis
Karen Tronsgard-Scott
ML Daniel
Ed Heisler
Annika Gifford
Kelly Miller
Ann Duckett
Coleta Walker
Lorna Hines-Cunningham
Korea Kelly
Savannah Shange
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Johnnetta B. Cole
Dara Cooper
Tarana Burke
adrienne maree brown
Autumn Brown
Ariel Jacobson
Sean Ridley
Delethia Hughes
For More
Information
​For sponsorships, capital campaign & fundraising questions, contact:
Sevonna Brown
Event Co-Chair
wildgala@restoreny.org
For FAQ and Logistics, including planning your stay
and how to get there contact:
Natalie Jeffers,
Interim National Director
info@restoreny.org
Made possible by:
