Maria Cristina Moroles, known now by her ceremonial name Águila, is an Indigenous curandera, shaman, and landyke who has lived at Santuario Arco Iris, rugged women’s land in the Ozark Mountains near Ponca, Arkansas, since 1974. The land offers over a hundred acres of sanctuary for women and children, especially women and children of color. In 2000, she founded the Arco Iris Earth Care Project, a nonprofit that preserves 400 acres of neighboring wilderness land.

It’s a very complex thing that I’ve taken very seriously as a sacred responsibility. Our mission now is to heal our community, our local community, our Ozark community, and our indigenous community; and to bring all the colors into sacred union again.

Diana Rivers in the home she built at OLHA

Divorced and alone in 1972, Diana Rivers paddled her way from New York to Arkansas with an unbridled fever that turned the local landscape upside down.

Since 1991, Lesbian Natural Resources (LNR) has supported North American women’s land communities in many ways. Lesbiannaturalresources.org

Check out these interviews with women who started or participated in lesbian-feminist land groups, safe places to develop new lesbian culture in the South.