Sustainable Planning and Policy

#LandBack - Land Return to Native Nations

What is our relationship to land? In the US and other settler-colonial nations, the answer is complicated. Increasingly, Indigenous scholars and activists alike point to #LandBack - the return of land to Indigenous peoples with ancestral ties to the land - as a path forward towards sustainability and justice as we contend with climate change and species loss and social and economic inequity. KU Alumnus Edgar Heap of Birds' installation Native Hosts (one panel of five pictured above), reminds us that Native nations have existed in what is now the United States for millennia - and continue to exist.

Distinguished Professor Sarah Deer, enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and CCSC Director Ward Lyles are investigating the growing #LandBack movement, wherein settlers voluntarily return land to the Tribal Nations from which it was taken. Our research has identified more than 75 instances of land return ranging from a few acres to tens of thousands of acres, the overwhelming majority in the last three to five years. Individual landowners, city and county governments, state governments, universities, non-profit organizations, and businesses have all participated in this intriguing and promising movement.

The figures below show the wide spatial variation of instances of land return and the dramatic growth in land return activities over the last few years. These figures come from a manuscript currently under review; copies can be requested from wardlyles@ku.edu.