One helpful response to the last post was an objection to using the term “stolen land.” How could land be stolen from a people who don’t believe in land ownership?
That way of looking at it shows what was stolen were the “commons”, the land and water that supported and were cared for by the whole community. The Statute of Merton in 1235 gave lords of the manor in England the right to enclose parts of the common “waste,” as long as they left enough pasture for their tenants. The largest wave of enclosures occurred between about 1750 to 1850 was referred to as Parliamentary enclosure, when Parliament passed thousands of individual enclosure acts, essentially leaving no commons.
This meant that increasing numbers of the people in England no longer had access to land for shelter and to grow their own food. The main driver of immigration from England to this country was this economic desperation. The immigrants wanted to have their own land, and brought that concept with them to this country.
Many ways were used to dispossess Native people of their land.
The Dawes Act of 1887 was used to take Native land by creating parcels of land, leaving some to the Native people, and selling the “excess”. Thus the idea of private property.
In 1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation, the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills had been taken illegally. The Lakota have refused the money ever since, because they want the land, not payment. So “stolen” isn’t an Old World idea projected onto Native people. It’s the US government’s own judgment of its own conduct.
Every treaty the United States entered into with Native people was broken, which I thought meant that the property transfers in those treaties were no longer valid. That the land returned to the Native people. However, when the Kiowa and Comanche challenged the federal government’s unilateral breakup of their reservation as a blatant violation of the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress has “plenary power” (absolute authority) over Indian affairs. The Court decided that Congress has the constitutional authority to unilaterally break treaties with Indian tribes at will, and the courts cannot invalidate congressional acts for doing so. Plenary Power and Treaty Abrogation (Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 1903).
Indigenous peoples use the phrase “stolen land”. A fundamental concept in justice work is to respect the terminology and language used by those who are oppressed.
There is a misconception that these discussions about Land Back and property are about returning all the land in this country to Native people. That is not the case. It is about centering Native voices in guiding how the land and water are repaired and treated now.
That does not mean non-Native people would have no power. It means that the power will be returned to us, all the people, to be shared.
Besides being the right thing to do, we desperately need Indigenous help in repairing and restoring our environment and ourselves. Its about hope.
There are a rapidly growing number of instances of returning land to Indigenous peoples and ways. I’ve been writing here about my work with the Great Plains Action Society’s Indigenous-led Urban Resilience Hub in Iowa City, Iowa. All of this on one acre of land downtown. This is a model that your community can adapt to help you prepare for disruption.
(See: https://www.honornativelandfund.org/decolonialrepairnetwork )
Great Plains Action Society’s Urban Resilience Hub
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