Return Land / Land Return - The Sogorea Te Land Trust

We are founded on stolen land and Indigenous people are still here.

If you have access to land and wealth, consider your place in the lineage of this theft and how you might contribute to its healing, how you might reimagine your relationship to the land you are on.

From creating a cultural easement for gathering rights, offering access to a space or writing us into your will or nonprofits dissolution documents, we are dreaming with our supporters to build many paths of radical reciprocity that are a part of rematriation and land return.

“As long time racial justice activists, we are choosing not to perpetuate the unearned privilege of passing on our home within our White families…”
From A LETTER about the intention to will a home to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.

Creative collaborations with our allies have opened up gardens to grow our food in, neighborhood projects have cultivated plants for us to make medicine with, and allies have opened their access to privatized land allowing us to create Lisjan and build ceremonial spaces including the first Ohlone arbor in territory for more than 200 years. But we still dont “own” land we can live on.

If you have more than you need, consider how you can shift resources towards returning land to Indigenous people.

Rematriate the Land Fund

Rematriation Resources

Resource Guide

All land carries Indigenous knowledges and stories, and is home to Indigenous peoples. What can we do to honor this? This Resource Guide offers a variety of questions, prompts and ideas for how to engage this history a variety of questions, prompts and ideas for how to engage the history and reality of the land we are on.

Recommended Readings

Check out our in progress Recommended Reading List.

Read one of these pieces and talk to someone about it!

Start a study group with your family, friends, collective, business, coop, nonprofit. Go on walk and talks with your neighbors, organize your community, penpal with your grandma. Talk about the land you are on and how you got here. How has your family benefitted or been impacted by legacies of colonization? What does it mean to you to be on stolen land? What does it mean to recognize this history? How can allies we go beyond acknowledgement? How can we rematriate? Learn about how other communities are healing the history of the land our relationships to it.

Questions About Home for Reflection

These are Questions About Home is an for exercise is for non-native people to learn and reflect on the history and current struggles of Indigenous people, and to begin thinking about our role in colonization and decolonization. By Qwul’sih’yah’maht, Robina Thomas (Lyackson of the Coast Salish Nation) with input from our founders Corrina Gould (Chochenyo and Johnella LaRose (Shoshone-Bannock), Nick Tilsen (Oglala-Lakota), Annie Morgan Banks and Chanelle Gallant.

Tips for Difficult Conversations

Check out these tips for talking about Settle Colonialism and other difficult conversations from Showing Up for Racial Justice Albuquerque.

Resource Guide for Indigenous Solidarity Funding Projects

This is a Resource Guide for Indigenous Solidarity Funding Projects compiled by the Indigenous Solidarity Network and representatives from Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, Real Rent Duwamish, and the Manna-hatta Fund.

Resource-Guide-for-Indigenous-Solidarity-Funding-Projects-with-links Download

Maps

Understand your relation to the land on which you live, work, and stand.

Native Land Map

East Bay Native Peoples Map