Charlie Stephens: Giving Back Indigenous Land

My friend Charlie Stephens put together this important opinion piece about how they and their partner made the decision to turn over or return a parcel of land---36 acres---to tribes in the Sierra Foothills of California. The piece ran on the KQED radio station in San Francisco yesterday. You can hear and read the piece by going here or you can read it below. The questions of land and land ownership are basic to any people's freedom, but those questions do not stand alone in the cases of Indigenous peoples given the histories of settler violence, government control, and dishonesty that, when taken together, are genocidal. This powerful article should give readers pause to consider what we can all do and if we're brave enough to make the kinds of decision that Charlie and their partner did.

So much land was stolen from Indigenous peoples over much of American history that the debt can never be repaid. But Charlie Stephens decided he would do what he could to make amends.

In 2016 my partner and I bought 36 acres of off-the-grid land in an area of the Sierra Foothills covered with pine, madrone, cedar and oak. We were greeted by owls, bats, deer, bobcat, and hawks, and by clear night skies and air that smelled sweeter than what we breathed in our Berkeley neighborhood.

In 1862 under the Homestead Act, Indigenous land was parceled out and sold to white homesteaders for as little as $1.00, in exchange for agreeing to fence in the land and keep Indigenous people off it. About 270 million acres of land was stolen under this policy. Between 1906 and 1910 California’s Rancheria system provided land to Indigenous people not living on reservations but then just as quickly took it away (yet again) as Congress terminated this agreement in 1958. The Williamson Act of 1965—still in existence today—continues to perpetuate these issues.

This winter we will be giving these 36 acres back to the tribes for a symbolic $1. The land will be stewarded for conservation and cultural practices, bringing together elders and youth to harvest traditional plants for ceremonies, to care for the land with each other, and to have “back” what never should have been taken.

The tribal member we are working with said the last time someone offered to return land in this area was when he was three years old, and that it fell through at the last minute, echoing the historical failure of white promises.

Talking with him, I started to imagine the return of Indigenous land as a more common process, that here in California and beyond, donating land might outweigh amassing and protecting personal wealth. Soon this land we have loved will be back in the hands of the people who should have had it all along. I encourage others to consider doing the same even if it requires some financial discomfort or loss. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The time is always right to do what is right.”

With a Perspective, I’m Charlie J. Stephens.

Charlie Stephens is a writer, educator and bookstore owner.

  

Rabbi Emily Langowtiz: Letting our Land Rest: Shmitah and the Release of Expectations

Rabbi Emily Langowtiz has a wonderful reflection on Leviticus 25:1-26:2 posted on the ReformJudaism.org website. Her work is based on and inspired by the following verse:

Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of the Eternal. Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest (Shabbat Shabbaton), a sabbath of the Eternal; you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard…it shall be a year of complete rest for the land. (Lev. 25:2-5)

This is one of the great social justice and earth justice readings, but we seldom think about how to live it and apply it.

Intended or not, there is also a post by Rabbi Ben Spratt on "Joining God as Resident Strangers in the World" that I think should be read with Rabbi Langwitz's post in order to get context and a broader view of what land means, or can mean.

Food, Faith, Land & Sustainable Agriculture - Reverend Nurya Love Parish