From a redwood forest to ‘Venezuela’s lungs,’ lands in Indigenous hands

In both Venezuela and California, returning land to the communities who’ve lived there for centuries acknowledges the value of Indigenous stewardship.

1. United States

For millennia, Indigenous tribes inhabited a lush expanse of land, home to an array of now endangered and threatened species such as the sequoia, the marbled murrelet, and the northern spotted owl. Settlers arrived in the coastal forest in the mid-1800s, forcibly removing inhabitants. To restore Indigenous governance and protect an ecosystem damaged by historical logging, the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League secured corporate funding to purchase the land from private owners and then donated