Che Jim: How can Native reclaim their stolen land? 

In 2020, members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Six Nations, occupied an area of land in Caledonia, Ontario.

They dug trenches, erected concrete barriers, and even blocked a railroad and a highway. 

The nations were protesting a planned housing development on land they argued was stolen. So, they parked the bus, literally, and renamed the area 1492 Land Back Lane. 

But did it work?

Hi, I'm Che Jim, and this is Crash Course: Native American History. 

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Land Back. It shows up on T-shirts, billboards, flags, and street art across Indian country. 

But what does it actually mean? Is it a political movement, a philosophy, a form of protest? 

Well, it's sort of all of the above. 

Basically, Land Back describes any effort by Native people to reclaim authority over stolen land and resources. 

It's a way of asserting tribal sovereignty that inherent right to self-governance.

Sometimes, Land Back means suing the government to honour treaties. Other times, it means erecting a barricade to keep land developers out. 

But more on that story in a bit. 

The Land Back Movement exists because a lot has happened to Native land over the past few centuries. 

It was stolen in a number of ways, through the legal system, broken treaties, and often outright violence. If you want to know more, you can watch... [checks] basically every episode in this series. 

In recent years, some private citizens and public figures have tried to call attention to this point through land acknowledgements, where a person or institution publicly states the land they're on was stolen from Natives. 

And while a land acknowledgement can be a good-natured gesture, some Natives say it's a hollow one, a way of saying sorry without really doing anything to make amends. 

In the words of Athabascan writer Sena Crow, "Indigenous communities need resources, not apologies."

Word, Cena. 

But how Land Back actually works can vary pretty widely. 

Like today, some of the land in question is privately owned, but much of it is managed by federal or state governments. 

In the privately owned cases, non-native owners have occasionally offered up the land voluntarily, either through a direct return of the land or by paying tribes a voluntary land tax, sometimes called settler rent. 

Settler rent is a way for non-native people to transfer wealth back to the people whose land they occupy, just like anyone would pay rent to live on someone else's property. 

But while Land Back is about reclaiming land, organisers explain that the last thing they want to do is repeat the mistakes of colonisation by kicking people out of their homes. 

Like in 2015, when the Pomo tribe bought back 700 acres on the California coast, the seller still lived on the land.

So the tribe signed a contract that allowed him to keep living in his family home until his death, even though the Pomo became the technical owners of that land. 

However, much of the land that Native people seek to reclaim isn’t owned by individuals. It's owned by federal or state governments, which means that Land Back often happens through the legal system. 

Sometimes, Native nations are able to regain complete control over their land in this way. Other times, they agree to share control with the government.

Thats what happened in 2012, when the Nez Perce tribe sued the United States over access to the Valles Caldera National Preserve in what's now New Mexico. 

The tribe argued it had never given up its right to the land there, even though it had been owned by the US since the government bought it from a private owner in 2000.

It took 12 years, but in 2024, the two sides reached a settlement. The government agreed to set aside over 3,000 acres within the preserve for the Pueblo. And the Pueblo agreed to let the US Park Service maintain the land for public use. A win-win. 

The Pueblo could now return to their ancestral home. But the tribe got more than just land in the settlement. They want a chance to revitalise their culture. 

The governor of the Jemez Pueblo, Peter Madalena, said that the settlement was "crucial to the survival of our pueblo, and our traditions and culture."

Returning the land to the Pueblo gave them the freedom to practice songs and dances tied to that land, which had been part of their culture, since well before the US existed. 

And that's the thing about Land Back. It's not just about the land itself. It's also about reclaiming everything connected to the land, reviving tribal relationships and identity, making space for traditional indigenous worldviews. 

And this is especially relevant when it comes to the environment.

As we've learned in previous episodes, Natives often see the environment as both a gift and a responsibility. We take care of the land and the land takes care of us. 

So for many Natives, widespread pollution and environmental degradation can be traced back to the same problem, colonisation, when settlers separated the land from the Native people who took care of it. 

Let me give you an example. 

For centuries, Native Hawaiians had a diverse, self-sufficient food system. On the island of Moloka'i, Native-made fish lagoons fed about a million people. 

But after Hawaii became a US territory in the late 19th century, millions of acres of land were stolen, and sellers turned much of it into sugarcane and pineapple plantations, destroying or abandoning the fish lagoons in the process. 

Fast forward to today and you'll find over 80% of Hawaii's food gets imported from elsewhere.

And this lack of self-sufficiency in their food system is dangerous. Because if an emergency affected the availability of imports, residents might not have enough to eat. 

So, settlers didn't just take the land, and they didn’t just destroy aspects of Native culture, by changing the environment they put everyone at risk. 

For many Natives, this complex dilemma has one solution. Land Back. 

At its core, the Land Back Movement is about decolonisation, or the undoing the ideas and systems imposed by colonisation. 

Like the ones that decided only sugarcane and pineapple should be grown, at the expense of a sustainable food system. 

Decolonisation means understanding that the way things are isn’t the way they have to be. 

Just ask the Native activists who are currently working to bring Hawaii's Native fish lagoons back.

A non-profit group called Āina Momona, or Fertile Land, is leading a community effort to restore the land and teach a new generation of Native Hawaiians sustainable fishing techniques and traditional food practices.

And when Native folks get land back, it could have wide ranging, even global benefits.

In fact, some experts say if we were to increase the forest land maintained by indigenous peoples globally by about 900 million acres in the next 25 years, it would be as impactful as bringing every truck up to modern environmental emissions standards. 

That's a win for all of us. 

Unfortunately, one of the biggest obstacles the Land Back Movement faces is a slow, tedious legal system. One that was never designed to give land back, only take it away. 

As we saw with the Jemez Pueblo, it can take years to see any kind of justice. So sometimes when those systems fail, Native people choose to take matters into their own hands. 

Which brings me back to the fight for 1492 Land Back Lane. The Haudenosaunee struggle didn’t begin with trenches and barricades.

Before that summer, battles had been fought in the Canadian Parliament and Court system and through federal land claim processes. 

The Haudenosaunee point back to the Haldimand Proclamation, signed 1784 by the governor of Quebec that promised them nearly 950,000 acres. 

It was a sign of goodwill after the Haudenosaunee,  who had allied with the British during the American Revolution, lost millions of acres in what’s now New York State. 

But it wasn’t long after the proclamation was made that European settlers began moving in on their promised territory, pushing Natives out. 

Dr. Rick Monture, a Haudenosauneean historian, told reporters, "We took it to the court system — we raised it to every politician that would listen for the last 200 years or more — but no one ever does anything."

I feel you, Rick. 

So with the systems failing them left and right, the Haudenosaunee had finally had enough. 

After the announcement of a massive new housing addition that would develop the last of the open land in the area, protesters calling themselves land defenders moved in and set up an encampment. 

At first, things were peaceful. There were traditional dances, songs, and food. 

But within a few weeks, the police raided the encampment and arrested several of the land defenders. 

In response, the defenders dug in, setting up a blockade and letting the government know they had no plans to leave willingly.

The traditions remained, but now they existed alongside burning tire fires and graffitied buses. 

And it worked. A year later, the land developers announced the cancellation of the planned housing complex. 

But as of 2024, over 1,400 days after the start of the protest, there had been no resolution between the nations and the government. The Haudenosaunee were still fighting for their rights to the land more broadly. So the occupation continued with a half dozen members now living full-time on the property. 

That's commitment. 

As representatives from the occupation told the government, "We will continue to cultivate orchards, sing our songs, and hold space here. We will be free on our land for however long it takes Canada to realise we are never going to leave and for generations after that."

This is just one example of Land Back activism. 

But across North America, advocates are working every day to undo centuries of injustice, broken treaties, and land theft, both in the courts and on the ground. 

So Land Back is a big idea.

It's about getting Native people back to the land, nursing the land back to health, and bringing back our understanding of land as essential to human life. 

This can mean long, hard-fought court cases, and it could also mean direct activism and protest, and it continues to this day. 

In our next episode, we're going to shift gears and talk about the ways that Native culture has been appropriated in the media, and I will see you then. 

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course: Native American History, which was filmed at our studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was made with the help of all these nice people. If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join our community on Patreon.