Prairie Heritage Institute, Inc.

Our mission is "working to preserve the tallgrass prairie and its heritage; working to preserve the heritage of African-American settlers and other prairie communities; educating people about the natural and social history of prairie areas; offering opportunities for people to make connections between ecology and society; and creating occasions in which people can experience the spiritual refreshment and artistic inspiration which the prairie provides."

Prairie Heritage, Inc., is based at Bird Runner Wildlife Refuge, a 320-acre native-prairie preserve in the Flint Hills of Kansas--part of the largest (5 million acres) remaining remnant of unplowed tall grass prairie in North America. The Flint Hills were also the location of several African American settlements dating from the 1870s. Unfortunately, the Flint Hills were also the location of white-supremacist pogroms--eruptions of racist violence that created "sundown-towns," from which African Americans were expelled, and which over time (together with other forces) "whitened" the rural areas and blocked access to prairie experiences for people of color. Prairie Heritage, Inc. was founded in 2001 by Ustaine Talley, who grew up in one of the Flint Hills African American settlements, the Dunlap Farm Colony, in Morris County, Kansas. She was joined by board members as committed as she was to restoring access to prairie experiences for all ethnicities and to adding the missing color from a bleached history. Today, we at Prairie Heritage enjoy creating Bird Runner Wildlife Refuge as a multiethnic space for encounters with the tall grass prairie, inviting people in. We also give information out--through history programs, book awards, author talks, and nature information, shared through social media and (hopefully post-Covid) in in-person programs once again as well.