Land Back

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The vision of Lucille Contreras (Lipan Apache), CEO & founder of the Texas Tribal Buffalo Project, is to revive and reconnect all the tribes of Texas through a regenerative herd of American bison, or Iyane’e. Contreras learned to care for bison on the Pine Ridge reservation, then purchased 77 acres in rural Gonzalez County, Texas, in 2020 with a new farmer-rancher loan from the USDA. The herd of 34 bison has grown from the initial eight acquired in 2021.

The “Land Back” movement seeks to restore a people to sacred stewardship of their ancestral lands, and successes like the one in Texas are happening across the country. The work of the NDN Collective, a South Dakota-based international Indigenous organization, is just another example.

Nick Tilsen (Oglala Lakota), the founder of NDN Collective, explains that a Land Back ethic doesn’t mean going back in time, but moving forward with all people to create a just and equitable world.

Contreras and Tilsen have found common cause as members of the Black Liberation-Indigenous Sovereignty Collective, co-founded by Trevor Smith (a Black man) and Savannah Romero (an Indigenous woman and citizen of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe). According to Romero, most Land Back successes in their member organizations are in rural areas of Indian Country or near reservation communities.

The BLIS Collective serves as a hub to connect leaders in the Land Back movement with those seeking reparations, or healing and restoration, for African American people injured because of their group identity. By promoting a braided narrative of justice for both Black and Indigenous people, BLIS includes dozens of member organizations who work to articulate the intrinsic tie between Land Back and reparations.

The Bad River Band is fighting to stop Line 5 and protect its watershed. Meanwhile, local sheriffs are already tallying the cost of riot gear.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34794729

Undaunted, the activists in Santarém took on one of the US powerhouses of world trade. Cargill generates revenues of more than $160bn (£119bn) a year, employs 155,000 people and accounts for more than 70% of the soy and maize shipped through Santarém.

[...]

This interrupted one of the focal points of the global food trade because the Cargill facility in Santarém is a primary hub between the nation with the biggest farms – Brazil – and the country with the most numerous dining tables – China, which is the destination for most of the soy.

...which is fed to enslaved animals which the humans in China then eat.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34794706

Santarém, Pará, Brazil – On Monday, February 23, Brazil’s government announced the revocation of Decree 12,600/2025, which opened the door to the privatizing the Tapajós, Madeira, and Tocantins rivers for industrial waterways in the Amazon. The government confirmed the decision following a meeting in Brasília between Indigenous leaders Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s Minister of Indigenous Peoples, and Guilherme Boulos, Minister of the Presidency’s General Secretariat. The announcement came amid an Indigenous occupation of Cargill’s port in Santarém, Pará State, and in the wake of growing national and international solidarity and extensive news coverage of the mobilization.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34757533

• Indigenous communities in Indonesian Papua have filed an administrative objection against forestry ministry decrees that reclassify more than a million acres as nonforest land, clearing the way for oil palm development under the government’s food estate program.
• The rezoning last September was carried out without the communities’ knowledge or consent, and the affected areas include swaths of forest that they have proposed as customary forests.
• The communities only learned of the decision months later, after NGOs obtained the decree. If the ministry fails to respond to their objection, they plan to sue in the State Administrative Court.
• The expansion aligns with the government’s drive to boost food and biofuel production, but Indigenous rights advocates warn the plan could cost communities their forests, livelihoods and cultural ties to the land.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34370909

After years of protests and blockades, a group of Atikamekw elders and chiefs have filed a lawsuit seeking to cancel forestry permits across a vast stretch of northern Quebec.

“This river is our road. It is our source of food, the home of our fish, and essential to the balance of the forest and the climate. How can this richness be turned into a corridor for soy? And worse, without listening to the peoples who live in and from it? That is why we are here — because we want Brazil to respect ILO Convention 169 and consult us before decisions are made. This decree was signed first, and now they want to discuss how to consult us? That is not consultation; it is an attempt to legitimize what has already been decided. And decided by whom? For whom? To benefit a handful of foreign companies, like Cargill, that profit from human rights and environmental violations in the Amazon,” said Auricélia Arapiuns, a leader from the Lower Tapajós region.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34028426

Brazil has suspended a decree on dredging and privatizing the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, after protests shut down a grain terminal — but Indigenous groups are pressing for its full revocation.

Hundreds of Indigenous protesters have since Jan. 22 blockaded the Cargill grain facility in the Amazonian city of Santarém over the threats they say the decree poses to the 14 Indigenous territories and hundreds of riverine communities living along the Tapajós.

The decree was a part of an infrastructure project called the Tapajós waterway, which plans to allow private sector actors to expand sections of the Tapajós, Madeira and Tocantins rivers. The project would make the rivers navigable year-round for large barges carrying soy, corn and other grains from Brazil’s agricultural states in the Cerrado and the Amazon to ports on the Atlantic coast.

After almost three weeks of protests, the federal government suspended the decree on Feb. 6, but protesters continue to demand that the decree be revoked entirely.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/33800925

“What is happening on the Tapajós is not an isolated episode: it is the direct consequence of decisions that treat rivers as export corridors and push projects forward without real listening and without rights safeguards. During COP30, more than 500 Indigenous people warned the world about the risks of projects tied to the Ferrogrão export corridor and the dredging of the Tapajós – and still, their demands remain without an effective response. The international community, buyers, and financiers cannot keep normalizing a ‘progress’ that fuels conflict and threatens living territories,” said Vivi Borari, an Indigenous leader and activist in the Tapajós Vivo Movement, a member organization of the Enough Soy Alliance.

“While Cargill tells the press that they have no control over the reckless expansion of export-oriented infrastructure across the Amazon, the opposite is true,” said Christian Poirier, Amazon Watch Program Director. “It is the demands of powerful commodity traders like Cargill that drive the destructive privatization of Amazonian rivers and construction of mega-projects like Ferrogrão. The Indigenous mobilization chose Cargill’s grain terminal for this reason, to hold them accountable alongside sectors of the Brazilian government.”

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/33800866

“We have been occupying the U.S. company Cargill for 14 days, and now we have blocked access to Santarém’s airport, where many people come to take photos and swim in the river without knowing about the problems we are facing. The president signed a decree that privatizes three rivers – the Tapajós, Tocantins, and Madeira – and advanced a measure that opens the way for dredging the Tapajós. Our river is at risk. The government can no longer tell Europe and the United States that it preserves the environment while destroying it here,” said Goldman Prize winner Alessandra Korap Munduruku, a leader from the Middle Tapajós region.

During Wednesday’s meeting with government representatives, Chief Gilson Tupinambá announced the blockade of access to the airport in response to the lack of effective government steps to address the movement’s demands. “I want to tell all of you that no one is leaving Santarém, the airport has just been closed. No one is leaving Santarém. And you are going to stay here with us, eat what we eat, go through what we go through, until we get an answer,” he said.

“We went to COP30 and it was a staged circus. There, they promised Free, Prior, and Informed Consultation, but now we don’t want consultation, we want this decree revoked. Revoke it now. I’m 50 years old and my concern is for our children and grandchildren. What will be left because of greed?” said Chief Gilson Tupinambá.

The removal orders include descriptions of how climate change is driving the disappearance of the glaciers at Glacier National Park and a wayside display at the Grand Canyon referring to the forced removal of Native Americans.

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The land trust will meet with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, and the Santa Clara County Department of Parks and Recreation, along with other groups, to map out an ownership and stewardship plan, Clark said.

The land back part of this is far from a done deal, but things are far more promising than they were before it.