Land Back

Back during summer, a friend of mine posted this to Facebook:

The value of the land under my house ($35,000) divided by the value of my property as a whole ($275,000) times the market rent for my house (estimated at $2,000/month) = the amount of rent I should be paying to indigenous people each month ($255).

What's your decolonization math?

When I asked her to explain it further, she spelled it out more fully. That's the proportion of the property value that's land. In her case, that's $35,000 divided into $275,000, which equals 13% x $2,000 rent (based on Craig's List comparables), which comes to $255/month, the portion that could reasonably be associated with rent for the land. "It's pretty arbitrary," she said, "but I feel obligated to do something direct and literal about being on stolen land, and this at least gives me a parameter to start with."

In my case, I would be paying this money to the Dakota or possibly the Ojibwe people. (History is a bit complicated here.)

I've been thinking about that idea since, and today, on Indigenous Peoples Day, I saw this to add to it from @iridienne on Twitter:

So on Indigenous Peoples Day, i'd like to invite my fellow non-natives to engage in a small exercise with me. Don't worry, it doesn't even involve getting out of your chair. It's about the demand for Land Back.

You see, there's this thing that happens CONSTANTLY, on Twitter and everywhere else, when indigenous peoples say that settlers should give the land back. They FREAK OUT. "What would happen to everyone living there? How would that work? Where would we go???"

And what I'd like you to do is… forget about private property for a minute. Let's just talk about property that's "owned" by federal and state governments in the U.S. (i don't have numbers handy for Canada). Do you know how much land that is? 40% OF THE TOTAL LAND AREA OF THE U.S.

That's mostly the Bureau of Land Management — it's grazing land, timber land, some other stuff. The Park Service, the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, they also own some land — parkland, conservation, etc. The Department of Defense owns a shit-ton, too, for bases and military testing and shit. On the state and local level, we've got mostly more parkland, and some grazing/timber land. Some universities and research facilities are on state-owned land.

Again, this is not "private property" — it's land whose title is held, free and clear, by The Government.

What if we gave THAT Land Back? What if we did it tomorrow, or next week? How easy is that? Nobody "owns" it, nobody is being "deprived" of "property rights." Federal and state governments could just agree to transfer stewardship directly to indigenous governments.

That's step one of this little exercise.

Now for step 2. Let's talk about "private" property, and who actually owns that. (Hint: it's mostly not PEOPLE.) What if we imagined a situation where we gave ALL the Land Back EXCEPT whatever actually has housing on it?

Because i'm a charitable person, i'll even include rental housing, even though the bulk of that by acreage is owned by giant corporations who should get fucked. So how much of the USA, by percentage, is actually land people are living on?

The best estimate i could find is 6.8%.

So okay. about 7% of land in the USA is actually being occupied, directly, by people and their families. On top of the 40% we've already given back, that gives us another 53% that's "owned" by mostly corporations who don't occupy it.

So…what happens if we transfer all that title? Seriously, that's the thing i want you to imagine: what if we just did it? Who is affected? Who is "displaced"? WHAT WOULD ACTUALLY CHANGE, and WHY?

Do you think indigenous people would bulldoze all the office towers and supermarkets? Do you think they would cackle evilly and send every office and retail worker in America home to starve? Or would things be… probably pretty much the same as they are now, at least at first, while transition plans were put in place for shit that really DOES need to get bulldozed?

That's part 2. And now for part 3: let's talk about that ~7% of land, where people are housed (that counts both cities and rural land with houses on it, by the way.)

Do you realize that "land ownership" by private parties is a fiction of the government to begin with? Private property is not (contra libertarians) something that happens in nature. It's a result of governments making laws about who is allowed to "own" things, and what "ownership" means.

For example, "eminent domain" is a principle that means the government can take your land, at any time, as long as they a) have a purpose that is in the public interest and b) compensate you fairly for it. There's also all kinds of nonsense about whether you own "water rights" and "air rights" and "mineral rights" and etc ad nauseam. THIS WAS ALL MADE UP. There is absolutely nothing stopping the sovereign state that grants you "title" to your land from changing the rules at LITERALLY ANY TIME.

And again, why not imagine what that looks like? Why not imagine that tomorrow, instead of your deed being recorded at the County Recorder's Office, the exact same deed is recorded at the Tribal Recorder's Office? Okay, so, you're now under someone else's jurisdiction. What actually HAPPENS to you?

What happens if your title is converted into a renewable 99-year lease? What happens if you suddenly pay taxes to a different entity and not the IRS [DN3 says: or the county]? What actually CHANGES, MATERIALLY, in your life, if these things happen?

Do you think Land Back means that suddenly indigenous people with guns are going to show up at your doorstep, beat you up, throw you off your property, and infect you with horrible diseases? Why do you suppose that that's what "land transfer" looks like, in your deepest heart?

Anyway, that's part 3 of our little Land Back exercise for the day. Just… sit with it for a bit. Sit with your fear and your confusion. Consider what it would actually MEAN, for you personally, and for people you love, and also what it WOULDN'T mean.

Indigenous people are not demanding their Land Back because they have a sinister plot to send 350 million people (the US + Canada) packing back to Europe. (They'd be 100% justified if they DID, frankly, but they're also not stupid.)

Really sit with why you think they might?

The reality is that "land ownership" is a social construct, that governments make (and change!) the rules about it, and that what indigenous people are actually asking for with Land Back is a) SOVEREIGNTY and b) STEWARDSHIP over the lands that are rightfully their heritage.

And the reality is also that if we gave it to them — seriously, even if we gave 100% of the land back TOMORROW — very little would change FOR ANYONE, in the short term, except for corporations and super-rich private "landowners." And again, frankly, those people can get fucked.

Random tribal governments are not going to bulldoze your apartment complex without warning (or infect you with smallpox!) All that would happen, short term, is that land sovereignty would rest with governments that regard the land as a RELATIVE, and prioritize the environment.

I'm not indigenous and I'm not going to speak for them, but my own personal best guess about the medium- to long-term is that land titles would be changed to long renewable leases, to reflect community stewardship instead of private "ownership."

And laws would change over time, of course, with regard to land use and stewardship. And that would be fine, really, because THEY CHANGE ALL THE TIME ANYWAY, it's just that the vast majority of people in the U.S. don't have any reason to care.

But nobody is talking, or has ever been talking, about making you and your children homeless refugees, sending you on a long journey with no money and no food to a place you don't belong, or in any other way brutalizing you.

Why exactly are you afraid of that, again?

(Again, i am NOT trying to speak for or over indigenous people, and i hope if i've said something shitty folks will bring it to my attention. I thought i could take this very common question, and do something useful with it, since i'm sure it gets tedious as fuck to deal with.)

I think this is brilliant. Even if the idea was that you own the house/building but the indigenous people own the land under it, it would still be a significant change. My friend's idea about starting to pay money in the meantime is a step toward this, an acknowledgement. But the wholesale shift to ownership of the land and the stewardship approach it brings, the different relationship with the earth... it's what we need.

Whose land are you on? (Find out, if you don't already know.)