Week 11: Land Back

“Land back”

When we say “Land Back” we aren’t asking for just the ground or a piece of paper that allows us to tear up and pollute the earth. We want the system that is land to be alive so that it can perpetuate itself and perpetuate us as an extension of itself. That’s what we want back: our place in keeping land alive and spiritually connected

“The Red Paper”, The Yellowhead Institute

the project of land back is about reclaiming Indigenous jurisdiction: breathing life into rights and responsibilities. This red Paper is about how Canada dispossesses Indigenous peoples from the land, and in turn, what communities are doing to get it back.

Interpretation of these statements:

• The system that is land to be alive

• Our place in keeping the land

• Breath life into rights and responsibilities

• Entitlement to land

• Maintaining a good relationship

  • inherent responsibilities

• self determined purpose

• perpetuate/ system/ cycle

• living with

#landback in action

• Land Back emerged in late 2010’s as a decentralized campaign (no leader) among Native people on Turtle Island who seek to re-establish Indigenous sovereignty, with political and economic control of their ancestral lands

remember…

• These actions are not new.

• They grow from a history of direct action events that support Indigenous land defense and support for Indigenous rights

The OKA crisis 1990

• Native people blocking the highway

• 78 day standoff

• tensions were very high

Idle no more (2012)

• Calls on all people to join in a peaceful revolution which honours and fulfills Indigenous sovereignty and which protects the land, the water, and the sky

• Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage and harm to all our relations.

• We must repair these violations, live the spirit and intent of the treaty relationship, work towards justice in action, and protect Mother Earth.

standing Rock (2016) and #NoDAPL

• HUGE direct action event

• No Dakota Access Pipeline

• Opened an international campaign to protest the pipeline

• the movement was successful and the pipeline wasn’t built

Lakota People (2020) Black Hills

• Mt Rushmore

• The day Trump arrived at the Black hills, the Indigenous people shut down the event for 3 hours.

Decolonization is not a metaphor

• Indigenous academic paper

• very famous

Key message from Tuck and Yang

Decolonization is a profound and urgent process that goes beyond symbolic gestures.

It is not a placeholder or an approximation for other forms of social change (e.g., environmental protections, for example)

Decolonization is a critical challenge to the structures of settler colonialism and their impact on Indigenous land and life

Repatriation of Indigenous Land and Life

Decolonization aims to restore Indigenous sovereignty by returning land and life to Indigenous communities.

It is not a metaphorical concept but a concrete action that seeks to undo historical injustices.

• Indigenous sovereignty is key

• Indigenous leadership in these movements is key

• Reparations and actions that undo historical injustices

Do the actions always have to be so big? How can everyday practices support Indigenous sovereignty and protection of land and rights?

• important to take a step back and listen

• the first step is to make yourself uncomfortable before you can do anything

• understand your own privilege and position

• hearing is easy, listening is hard

• Taking the time to learn and educate yourself and then taking that knowledge to others.