Hundreds of Native Americans gather during a rally near the White House on Indigenous Peoples Day in Washington, D.C., on October 11, 2021.last year, we heard from Indigenous leaders, land stewards, scholars, and practitioners of Traditional Ecological Knowledge to learn how the return of Indigenous land is integral to mitigating climate change. The cornerstone of these articles was the ongoing battle to restore the Black Hills to its original stewards—especially in light of thethat said the U.
Otherwise, we feel like our narratives in our movement can get hijacked by people who aren’t in it. We created this podcast by the movement and for the movement so that we can continue to politicize our communities and our people, to continue to share stories of liberation and hope, and to talk about what is happening throughout the Indigenous world. Because the LANDBACK movement is a decentralized movement.The podcast is about leaning into complexity.
I think one of the big issues is right here in the Black Hills, which is one of the biggest land legal battles throughout the history of the U.S. We have exhausted our remedies. We went all the way to the Supreme Court of the U.S., which said the stealing of the Black Hills and the violation of our treaties was illegal and a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Yet the land hasn’t been returned. We say return the land to make it right.
Levy Uyeda: Throughout the podcast you refer to LANDBACK as a liberation framework. It’s not just a slogan. It’s not just something that would be nice. LANDBACK is a model of thinking and a call to action. I feel like we saw a similar dilution of political meaning after a few years of non-Native people using the word “decolonize.” Non-Native people stop their work after offering a land acknowledgment.
Levy Uyeda: In the podcast you underscore that the U.S. has broken every treaty it’s ever signed with a Native nation. This unconstitutional act weakens democracy. How is LANDBACK both a democratic effort, meaning a policy demand, and a liberation framework, or movement demand? And what is the relationship between the two?I want to clarify that I believe the supreme law of the land is natural law. It’s what we see happen in nature; it’s the natural law of biodiversity of our ecological systems.
Levy Uyeda: I wanted to end with a question related to occupied Palestine, given the horrifying and unspeakable violence the State of Israel is carrying out against the Palestinian people. Because when we say LANDBACK, it’s not just referring to the so-called U.S.; it means LANDBACK everywhere. A few years ago, NDN Collective published a paper called “.” I’m wondering if you can talk to us a little bit about international solidarity as it relates to the LANDBACK movement.