Name: Footsteps Ahead of Ours
Start: 2025-09-26T17:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-09-27T19:00:00-04:00
Location: Avila Center for Community Leadership

Join Beverly Scarlett for a transformative overnight retreat exploring the history of the land, water sources, and the first occupants of Orange and Durham counties, filled with live music, movement, and storytelling. Together, we’ll learn about the lives of Indigenous, Maroon, Slave, and Free People of Color who occupied land along the Historic Indian Trading Path now called Mason Road, and how that history shapes the place many of us call home today. Footsteps Ahead of Ours is an opportunity to gain knowledge that has been erased and rewritten in familiar historical narratives, in a way that you’ve never experienced history before.
Register here: https://peacehillavila.org/event/footsteps-ahead-of-ours/
As part of the retreat, participants will have the opportunity to visit sacred burial spaces maintained by Indigenous Memories, including several likely ancient Indigenous burial mounds, disrupted burial mounds, a Maroon cemetery where Indigenous and Free People of Color are buried in the same space, and the Hardscrabble Slave Cemetery. During a 3-mile historical hike, Beverly will share the art of dowsing, instruction on identifying Indigenous burials and slave burials.
Participants will also learn about and have the opportunity to take part in the The Hillsborough Legacy Project, which explores the genetic and historical stories of the Hardscrabble/Pleasant Grove Plantation in Hillsborough, North Carolina, as well as how this history impacts the modern health of descendants.
The retreat begins at 5:00 pm on Friday and ends at 7:00 pm on Saturday. The registration fee of $249 will cover lodging, meals, and the retreat program. A limited number of commuter tickets are available, and a discounted rate will be available to those opting to share a room. Scholarship assistance is available to those with financial need. To request a scholarship, please email [email protected]