land transfers, transitions & reparations
While we cannot hold our breath for wholesale reparations from the federal government, we can encourage conscious individuals in our community to take reparations into their own hands.
Leah Penniman, “Farming while black”
Exploring opportunities and narratives within the acknowledgment, sharing, and passing on of land among different communities in response to deeply rooted histories.
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food & land sovereignty
for Black farmers & communities
BFF is a community investment fund focused on black food systems entrepreneurs in NY State, as well as building financial education & investment literacy.
Coalition of Black-led org’s aimed at developing Black leadership, supporting Black communities, organizing for Black self-determination, food sovereignty & liberation.
Afro-Indigenous centered community farm committed to uprooting racism & seeding sovereignty in the food system, and raising/distributing life-giving food as a means to end food apartheid.
Future Harvest stands beside and works to amplify the voices of Black farmers and organizations. They offer this list of Black-owned & operated farms and organizations.
Utilizes an asset-based approach in linking the vast resources of historically African American congregations in rural & urban communities to advance food & land sovereignty.
The Federation is a non-profit cooperative association of black farmers, landowners, and cooperatives.
FARMS is a legal nonprofit, committed to assisting Black farmers and landowners in retaining their land for the next generation.
Responds to the unprecedented losses of Black-owned land in NC with legal services & tech support to limited resource & financially distressed farmers and landowners.
A network of Black farmers in the Southeastern U.S. committed to culturally relevant, ancestrally guided, and ecologically sustainable agricultural-based living.
Navigating the winds of change. Grassroots organization that has worked for more than 40 years to empower African American families in Southwest Georgia and advocate for social justice.
Reimagining land access and stewardship; manifesting a community vision that uplifts Indigenous, Black, and POC relationships with land, skills, and lifeways.
Committed to building networks and community support for growers in both urban and rural settings, nurturing collective Black leadership to ensure we have a seat at the table.
Strongly rooted in New York City and committed to engaging rural and urban communities through food and farming. Run by owners who are women, intergenerational, multi-racial, & LGBTQ.
Ensuring people of color regain community control of land and food, to secure access to the resources necessary to determine how the land is used, address community health concerns, grow food and improve the environment.
Ensures that Detroit’s African American population participates in the food movement through urban farming, youth education & the Detroit People’s Food Co-op.
Collaboration hub for Black and Brown communities to confront the systemic barriers that make food, place and economic opportunities inaccessible to us.
Community members can rent a farm plot and grow nutritious & cultural foods, for consumption or as an enterprise development. Priority to families living in apartments, mobile homes or identifying as low-income.
Pan-African power institution based in Baltimore, serving as a think tank and collective action network that addresses food apartheid, working collaboratively in pursuit of Black land and food sovereignty.
NBFA’s education & advocacy efforts focus on civil rights, land retention, access to public & private loans, education & agricultural training, and rural economic development for Black & other small farmers.
Supporting entrepreneurs & coops from low-income communities; opportunities for at-risk residents to earn sustainable, family-supporting wages & build wealth.
Black Farmers Index
Ark Republic had delivered on a much needed, warmly welcomed resource: “the largest, free, most comprehensive directory of Black Farmers. The Black Farmers Index is a guide directly connecting you to traditional and non-traditional farmers. Please take your time, look around, and know your food.“
If you are a Black farmer, fisherfolk, crabber, shrimper, winemaker with a vineyard, own an apiary, a forager, or sell seeds, please register today. If we left you out, register and get seen. – Ark Republic.
returning land to its relatives
Mending relations between people and land, forging new kinship among neighbors. Below is a budding collection of resources, stories and voices gathered around the acknowledgement, reclamation, and peaceful transferral of land originally stewarded by Indigenous peoples.
For tribal organizations throughout the U.S. addressing sovereignty, environmental justice and agricultural support, have a look over on the tribal communities page.
#LandBack is Climate Justice
Lakota People’s Law Project, August 2020
With every passing month, the Land Back movement — an effort to restore stolen territory to Indigenous nations — sets new bold precedents, making it all the more realistic as a policy platform moving forward. On July 9, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that 3 million acres of land, nearly half of Oklahoma, is Native American land. In July, the Esselen tribe was able to reclaim a 1,200-acre ranch near Big Sur on CA’s north central coast. A year before, [Eureka, CA] returned stewardship of Duluwat Island to the Wiyot tribe.
In Historic First, Nebraska Farmer Returns Land to Ponca Tribe Along “Trail of Tears”
Bold Nebraska, June 2018
In a first-of-its-kind ceremony on June 10th near Neligh, a Nebraska farmer signed a deed returning ancestral tribal land back to the Ponca Tribe — sacred land that lies on the historic Ponca “Trail of Tears.”
Churches return land to Indigenous groups as part of #LandBack movement
RNS, November 2020
The returns come as some mainline Protestant Christian denominations have learned about and repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, the justification for European Christians to seize lands already inhabited by Indigenous peoples. […]
“Churches just get to be first in line to show the political system the will and the means for doing it,” said George “Tink” Tinker, an Osage scholar and author. After all, Tinker added, “Name one congregation in the United States that is not located on Indian land.”
A nomadic plumber found mysterious stones on his land — so he became the first person to return land to the Ute Indian Tribe
Denver Post, September 2019
“We’re not talking about real estate. We’re talking about something more fundamental in terms of indigenous worldviews and tradition.” […]
“Our ancestors are there,” Secakuku said of the Utes’ ancestral lands. “Their spirits are still there. Their history is still there. Our medicine, our songs are still there, in the way we believe.”
LANDBACK
Building a movement for collective liberation.
A movement that has existed for generations with a long legacy of organizing and sacrifice to get Indigenous Lands back into Indigenous hands. Currently, there are LANDBACK battles being fought all across Turtle Island, to the north and the South. More than just a campaign, it is a meta narrative that allows us to deepen our relationships across the field of organizing movements working towards true collective liberation. It allows us to envision a world where Black, Indigenous & POC liberation co-exists.
Resource Generation
Land Reparations & Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit
Introductory guide for folks with access to land to support in education and resource sharing around land reparations. We hope these resources can support us in taking collective action towards land repatriation to Indigenous people in the ongoing struggle against colonization.
Professor gives $250K to Ute Indian Tribe to compensate for great-grandparents’ profiting off tribal land sales
The Salt Lake Tribune, September 2017
The retired professor [Christine Sleeter] transferred a quarter of a million dollars to the Ute Indian Tribe in east-central Utah. The money, Sleeter said, came from her family inheritance — generated by her great-grandparents selling off American Indian land more than a century ago and then investing the profits.
A displaced California tribe reclaims sacred land
High Country News, September 2015
The Mountain Maidu return to their valley, but the work of reclamation never ends.
Ute Land Trust
Healing land injustice through relationships, education, and tribal conservation.
Established in 2018 by the Business Committee of the Ute Indian Tribe to assist in the healing of the deep wounds left by the injustice of the violent removal of the Ute Indian Tribe from ancestral lands in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. The hope is that ULT will reconnect the people of these lands by engaging with other tribes, federal, state, and local governments to partner in land stewardship and traditional conservation efforts.
a voice for the land
Videos, interviews, podcast series inviting Native voices to speak on behalf of their nations, the land, and the interconnectedness of the two.
VIDEO: How This Ohlone Elder Reclaimed Sacred Land in the Bay Area| KQED Truly CA (Nov, 2019)
‘In the Land of My Ancestors’ celebrates the legacy of beloved Ohlone elder Ann-Marie Sayers. Sayers has devoted her life to preserving the stories and culture of her Indigenous ancestors. This documentary challenges viewers to consider the perilous impact of colonization on the Ohlone people in the Bay Area. It also follows Sayers as she provides a refuge in the sacred Indian Canyon for Indigenous people to reclaim their culture, spirituality, and heritage. Film by Rucha Chitnis (9min, 33sec)
VIDEO: LandBack broken down by Winona LaDuke, Morning Star Gali, Nick Tilsen (Oct, 2020)
Three notable indigenous speakers explain succinctly and powerfully why the #LandBack movement is about much more than returning land.
PODCAST: Hawaiian Resistance, Tourism & Abolition: For The Love of The Mauna, Pt. III
All My Relations, (Jan, 2021)
*Be sure to listen to Pt. I & II if you can, but this one resonates strongly as a standalone episode.
The Mauna Kea movement has been one of relationships: to land, water, air, kanaka (people), and spirit. […] We recorded this episode the day after the violent insurrection on the Capitol, so we bring in our thoughts about resistance, activism, and overthrow under settler colonialism.
PODCAST: Indigenous Land Rights and Reconciliation Podcast
Competing conceptions of the land and authority over the land intersect with conflicts around resource extraction, the terms of consultation and consent, and the political status of indigenous peoples. Without resolving the conflicts around land in a fair and collaborative manner, real reconciliation will be difficult to achieve. This podcast presents a series of six live panel presentations delivered at the Indigenous Land Rights and Reconciliation workshop at Queen’s University in September of 2019.
VIDEO: Indigenous Sovereignty: One Land Plot at a Time | KQED (Oct, 2018)
The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, in East Oakland is an urban Indigenous women-led community organization that facilitates the return of Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone lands in the San Francisco Bay Area to Indigenous stewardship.
VIDEO: Native Americans seek reparations in different forms: Part 1 | Nightline (Sept, 2020)
From sovereignty to the official recognition and preservation of their ancestors’ land, Native Americans across the country talk to “Nightline” about what reparations mean for them. *Speakers come in at around 01:50 after an animated historical overview.
Bothered Earth 