EMERSON COLLECTIVE LAURENE POWELL JOBS' ORG, LOOKS TO LOCAL LEADERS TO BRIDGE DIVIDES

Francine Spang-Willis wishes the landscape of the Crazy Mountains near Livingston, Montana, could speak for itself. But absent that, the oral historian will launch a new project talking to people with a connection to the land.

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Spang-Willis is one of a dozen new fellows announced this week by the Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs’ philanthropy organization. In partnership with the nonprofit Park County Environmental Council, Spang-Willis will spend the next year interviewing people with unique and deep perspectives on the area in hopes of generating strategies to steward the Crazy Mountains. She said the land has many stakeholders — from ranchers who have been there for five generations to members of the Crow Nation who go there for “some type of fasting or vision quest” to hunters and recreationists.

“How do they connect with the land and have a relationship with the land,” she asked. “And what knowledge can they bring to the table?”

This year, Emerson Collective’s fellows are all local leaders pursuing projects of their own creation through a wide-range of methodologies. Each member of this fifth cohort of fellows will receive $125,000 from the collective and does not need to report back about how they spend those funds.

“They’re all working on a culturally relevant local approach to knitting their communities together, many of them bridging divides and ultimately creating a stronger civic fabric in the place that they live,” said Patrick D’Arcy, senior director of the fellows program at Emerson Collective.