On November 13, The Natural History Museum and The Descendants Project will bring together more than 40 frontline environmental justice leaders from the Gulf South, Appalachia, and beyond for a descendant-led solidarity tour through Louisiana’s River Parishes.

Known to many outsiders as “Cancer Alley,” the region is home to one of the country’s densest concentrations of petrochemical facilities, many built on former plantation lands. But this is also a landscape of emancipation, rebellion, Maroon communities, cultural invention, and generations of organizing to defend land, community, and collective freedom.

Led by Jo and Joy Banner of The Descendants Project, the tour will travel through the region’s industrial corridor and historic Black communities, exploring the connections between the plantation economy and contemporary industrial development—and the long histories of resistance and liberation that continue to shape the land.

Along the way, participants will encounter Mapping Freedom, a new public art intervention developed through The Natural History Museum’s Words Are Monuments initiative. A series of street signs and a hand-painted town welcome sign reclaim the commemorative landscape, making visible the histories, cultural legacies, and collective victories that are too often absent from official maps and place names.

The journey will culminate in Wallace with food, live jazz, and a community gathering. Together, participants will exchange stories and organizing strategies, build solidarity across regions, and explore how reclaiming history, culture, and place can strengthen struggles for environmental justice and community self-determination.

Presented by The Natural History Museum in collaboration with The Descendants Project, as a companion program to the 2026 Community Sentinel Awards.