LET’S TALK ABOUT THE LANDBACK MOVEMENT

This article is written by a student writer from UC Berkeley’s Her Campus chapter.

The beginning of November marks the beginning National Native American Heritage Monthwhich opened unofficially with President Joe Biden’s official apology for the US policy of sending Native American children to federally supported boarding schools. Biden’s October 25, 2024 speech marks the first time a US president has apologized for the practice, which involved the forced separation of Native children from their families and communities, often without parental consent.

Those boarding schools, among many other practices in the US, were intended to erase Native American languages ​​and cultural practices by forcibly assimilating indigenous people. Recognizing the darkness of this period in US history is only part of the larger story we must remember this November.

Many Native Americans look for more than an excuse or an acknowledgment of the terrain that merely acknowledges past damage without a real commitment to action. There are current reparations movements to pursue long-term healing of the individual, community, and generational trauma inflicted on Native American nations. Such a move is known as Landback Movement, which defines itself in part as “a relationship with Mother Earth that is symbiotic and just, in which we (indigenous peoples) claim stewardship.”

Landbacka term coined by Arnell Tailfeathers (a member of the Blood Tribe/Káínai Nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy) in 2018, is shorthand for a movement based on reclaiming indigenous land that has been illegally seized and in violation of treaties concluded by the United States. states. Landback aims to restore Indigenous political sovereignty over traditional, unceded Indigenous land that has been lost in the ongoing process of US colonialism. By taking this step, they would also support the continued existence of Native American cultures, traditions, and practices in their homelands.

For its proponents, Landback is the appeal against the actions of a settler colonial state. It works against past displacement policies like President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 which sent tens of thousands of natives away from their ancestral homelands and killed thousands (notably, Cherokee who had resisted the directive to leave their land) on The road of tears. Landback counters efforts to confine indigenous communities to federal government reservations designed to coerce and control native people.

Locally, even here in Berkeley, these repatriation efforts continue to be made by many communities and organizations such as Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. After many years of active struggle, the sacred West Berkeley Shellmound will be returned at Lisjan Ohlone. Even after taking a big step in repatriation last year, UC Berkeley continues to hold on to thousands of native remains and cultural artifacts. For decades, Indigenous communities have demanded that UC Berkeley return these items, and that fight continues here and across the country at other educational institutions.

Knowing all this, Native American Heritage Month is a time to raise our awareness of Native American cultural practices and ways of life. Not only in how they were threatened, but in our understanding, respect, and broader incorporation of them into contemporary US life.

On an individual level, we can support Native American artists, authors, activists and their work. We can read books like Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by Nick Estes and Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance by Leonard Peltier. We can listen to podcasts like LANDBACK for the People or The Red Nation. We can make conscious and intentional decisions to outwardly appreciate Native thought, literature, art, and existence.

A month that celebrates Native American heritage must also confront resistance: the historical and current implications of settler colonialism, along with the ongoing struggles of surviving Native nations today. From a societal point of view, we can amplify Native voices, not just as political signs or to demonstrate a performative alliance, but as a real way to account for settler colonialism.