For Native communities, the reclamation of land goes hand in hand with the reclamation of identity.
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In Washington, the Native-led land reclamation movement is thriving, from Indigenous farming projects within cities to fundraisers meant to buy back ancestral homelands. (Clockwise from top left: Dorothy Edwards/Crosscut and Taylor Hensel for Crosscut)
As a non-Native person, I thought the idea behind the “Land Back” movement seemed fairly simple. After all, the goal is in the name: Native communities want their ancestral homelands back under their ownership.
I’d heard of efforts in the Black Hills, for example, where activists have demanded the closure of Mount Rushmore, and I had seen fundraisers — Real Rent Duwamish is one — that remind people in the Seattle area whose ancestral lands they live on. I understood the first part of these efforts, aimed at both raising awareness of the Native history behind the land all people in the Americas live on and fighting for the land’s return to its original stewards.