Indigenous Leaders Share How We Can Reclaim Our Past, Present, and Future
Our country, this stolen land, harbors generations of white supremacy and oppression. Yet it also contains the medicine for moving forward. What if the best times are not behind us? What if they are ahead?
Indigenous communities are putting the “home” back in homeland by reclaiming what was stolen from them and practicing traditional culture, art, storytelling, agriculture, and language. Rematriation and landback movements acknowledge that ancestors lived spiritually with the land for thousands of years, and their descendants have a sacred duty to maintain that relationship for the benefit of future generations.
[Also read “A WDN Member’s Look At Landback”]
In our series Land and Legacy: Reclaiming Stolen Lands, WDN, Resource Generation, and Women’s Foundation California, came together with five Indigenous leaders working towards rematriation and landback:
- Tiny Gray-Garcia, Co-Founder of POOR Magazine
- Corrina Gould, Executive Director of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust
- Marcus Briggs-Cloud, Co-Director of Ekvn-Yefolecv
- Krystal Two Bulls, Director of NDN Collective’s LANDBACK Campaign
- Lynette Two Bulls, Founder and Executive Director of Yellow Bird Life Ways Center
Reconnecting with the earth, reminding ourselves of its history, and connecting with the communities whose ancestors came before is vital for healing. Indigenous leaders are calling on us all to listen, learn, and take action.
Indigenous Leaders Share How We Can Reclaim Our Past, Present, and Future
Tiny Gray-Garcia, Co-Founder of POOR Magazine
“Remember that [we] all come from somewhere and that you can get in touch with your own ancestral journeys, even if that ancestral journey is one of terror and genocide, and in that, there is healing…Healing is an extremely important part of this work.” – Tiny Gray-Garcia, Co-Founder of POOR Magazine
- Sign up for PeopleSkool to heal from and combat the violence of capitalism.
- Watch “Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tour Marin County 2017” and learn more about POOR Magazine’s Homefulness and Stolen Land Tours.
Corrina Gould, Executive Director of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust
“We invite people to be good guests on our land. We ask that if you want to help us do this work, pay Shuumi. Shuumi means a gift in our language and ensures that you are part of this work going forward… Create relationships with those of us and people in your home areas to change the world in ways that we want our grandchildren to live.”
- Calculate your land tax and give Shuumi.
- Watch KQED’s “Indigenous Sovereignty: One Land Plot at a Time” to see how Sogorea Te’ is facilitating the return of land in the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Learn about the Indigenous communities in your area, and explore Sogorea Te’s recommended readings.
Marcus Briggs-Cloud, Co-Director of Ekvn-Yefolecv
“Try to identify folks that want to or live in regenerative integrated space with the land. Steward funds to acquire land [and] live simply so that others may simply live.”
- Read about how Ekvn-Yefolecv uses traditional knowledge, agroecology, and language to preserve culture and build a post-colonial community.
Krystal Two Bulls, Director of NDN Collective’s LANDBACK Campaign
“I refuse to acknowledge [settler colonization]. So I don’t. I say ‘so-called United States’ – and that is the story I tell. That is how I frame things and how I move forward.”
- Disrupt propaganda, narratives of fear, and the normalization of white supremacy through storytelling and acknowledging places and spaces by their original names.
- Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Address the truth of landback with hard conversations around the dinner table, with family, or within your networks. Check out Resource Generation’s Land Reparations & Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit and Women’s Foundation California’s blog “Hey Colonizers” for ideas on how to start.
Lynette Two Bulls, Founder and Executive Director of Yellow Bird Life Ways Center
“Remind. Reconnect. Reclaim. This is a journey we can all take. It’s a journey from our heads to our hearts.”
- Unlearn the white supremacist narrative. Learn about the land you live on, the history of colonization, and the treatment of Indigenous communities.
- Decolonize your giving.
- Invest in local, grassroots organizations, and develop close, meaningful relationships with organizers and Native communities.
Donate to Their Work
POOR Magazine, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, Ekvn-Yefolecv, Yellow Bird Life Ways Center, and NDN Collective are working to end white supremacy, revive their cultural practices, rematriate land from the hands of colonizers to the hands of stewards, and create a society where all have the opportunity to thrive. Support their work using the links below.
- Contribute to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust
- Contribute to POOR Magazine
- Contribute to Ekvn-Yefolecv
- Contribute to NDN Collective
- Contribute to Yellow Bird Life Ways Center
A special thanks to Resource Generation and Women’s Foundation California for co-hosting Land and Legacy: Reclaiming Stolen Lands with us.
