The Landback Movement: Rematriating Indigenous Territories

“Colonialism severs people’s relationship to land, so that a few can amass wealth and power. Landback is about healing by restoring those spiritual, emotional, mental and economic relationships. We’re trying to flip the tides of colonialism. Everywhere you can help people reconnect with land, you're doing something incredibly powerful, especially if you are an Indigenous person connecting with your homeland. Those relationships are magic.” - PennElys Droz, PhD

Indigenous leadership on many of the core issues facing our planet today has never been stronger. On so many key fronts, from climate action to land preservation/restoration to biodiversity, Indigenous nations around the world are on the frontlines, not just resisting but actually winning many key struggles against a very serious backdrop, life threatening in many cases globally.?

In this week’s newsletter, we hear from Jade Begay, of the NDN Collective, as she explores just how influential Indigenous leadership has become in today’s world, and then we dive into an extensive look at #Landback with three women at the very cutting edge of this incredibly powerful movement.

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Jade Begay – Strengthening Indigenous Leadership During Collapse

Indigenous Peoples protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity, despite being 5% of the world’s population. This simple fact alone should position Indigenous, Native, and Tribal Peoples as not only leaders but experts on resource management and climate mitigation and adaptation. Yet, in many spaces, political and institutional, Indigenous knowledge and expertise are seen as supplemental, and at worst, romantic.

In this presentation, Jade Begay, one of North America’s most effective Indigenous Rights activists, shares her insights on how far Indigenous leadership has come and what we can do to strengthen and embolden this leadership that is so needed if we are all to survive on planet Earth.

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Landback: Restoring People, Place, and Purpose

#LandBack has become a rallying cry in Indigenous circles and beyond from coast to coast, but what does #Landback really mean, and how can we be a part of this movement? In this conversation, leaders in the #Landback movement will share different approaches to the return and “rematriation” of ancestral territories. For tribal members, the discussion will include organizational, fundraising, and legal strategies. For non-Natives, panelists will share how to be a good ally for #Landback.

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The Beauty Before the Bay Area with Corrina Gould

“As we come together, as people from all walks of life, we have to understand that we are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.”

Corrina Gould (Lisjan Ohlone) is the chair and spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan and co-founder and Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change. Her life’s work has led to the creation of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led organization in the Bay Area that seeks to heal and transform legacies of colonization and genocide.

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Bioneers Learning: Rights of Nature

Do you want to support and protect nature in your own community?

Learn about the background on the emerging rights of nature movement in the United States and internationally with?Thomas Linzey?and Mari Margil’s “Rights of Nature” Bioneers Learning course, a platform created for activists, innovators, and anyone seeking knowledge and tools to manifest social and environmental solutions. This course will prepare you to engage in your own communities to develop, adopt, and enforce local rights of nature laws.

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Erin Matariki Carr – The Resurgence of Māori Law: The Constitutional Transformation Movement in Aotearoa NZ

Erin Matariki Carr is from the Māori tribal nations of Ngāi Tūhoe and Ngāti Awa, and lives in Tāneatua in the east of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. Matariki is a member of RIVER and a lawyer working within the inter-generational movement of Māori resistance that is now surging towards constitutional transformation in honor of the treaty Te Tiriti o Waitangi 1840 between the British Crown and sovereign hapū Māori. An important story in this movement has been the granting of legal personality to Te Urewera rainforest, the homelands of Ngāi Tūhoe.

In this presentation, Tūhoe aims to “disrupt the false notion of human superiority over the land” by removing human ownership and management, and providing a new kawa (or law) that starts with “human management for the benefit of the land”.

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Landback Win in the Bay

Congratulations to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and Movement Generation for rematriating 43 acres of land in unceded Bay Miwok territory! With the support of partners like NEC members the Sustainable Economies Law Center and Nuns and Nones, MG raised the funds for Sogorea Te’ to purchase the land and liberate it from the speculative market. Together, they envision the land to become a?Bay Area movement hub?for “organizers, healers, cultural and earth workers'' and a space to build “Black and Indigenous solidarity for a land-based revolution.”

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Bioneers in Brazil: Aquarius

Aquarius, created by film producer Bruno Wainer, is a carefully curated streaming platform offering award-winning films, series and documentaries on yoga, meditation, spirituality, sustainability, environment, culture, art, science and social justice.

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