Land Back

Thanks so much for saying that.

It's just one thing that I'm really proud of with this book is it's the sort of thing that you can buzz through in, like, four hours and get what I think is, like, a really well-rounded education about, you know, Native history, but also things like the Land Back movement, like, you know, everything about land acknowledgements.

Are they okay? Do they suck? You gotta read the book to find out, you know, um...

Yeah, there's a series of chapters called This Person Is Not Invited to the Pow Wow featuring specific reasons why, like, Christopher Columbus and Andrew Jackson suck.

Stop business as usual, stop the genocide.

It's Landback from Philippines to Falestine.

It's time to uprise 'til we're all free.

Fuck individualism, this is collectivism.

I don't wanna write a record, I wanna reflect the time.

Stop business, business, business, business

Landback, he said it.

Freedom, yes, we'll get it.

Word, Sina.

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, organizers explain that the last thing they want to do is repeat the mistakes of colonization 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.

I'm not a social worker, nor an elder, nor do I speak on behalf of all Indigenous peoples, but I can share my journey as a Dene mom navigating this colonial, misogynistic, ableist, racist world in 2026.

Land Back is a movement that could change and save the planet from climate change, but it would be a part of a treaty partnership, meaningful reconciliation, and honouring global initiatives like the United Nations Declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

As a former geomatics drafter, I'd be happy to teach you more.

Go to nativecalgarian.com to learn more.