In 2018, Blackfoot meme creator Arnell Tailfeathers from Manitoba made a post on Instagram which contained a simple phrase: ‘Land Back’. It caught on quickly, perfectly capturing the essence of Indigenous people’s long struggle to reclaim their stolen land across Turtle Island – what is currently called the US and Canada. In just a few years, the use of those two words would snowball as they quickly became a rallying call.
Defining Land Back is both easy and complicated. Put most simply, Land Back is any action taken with the purpose of returning jurisdiction, authority, and resources to Indigenous people. This might include taking land back into Indigenous stewardship, restoring Indigenous people’s legal rights to their land, or the active refusal to follow colonial laws on traditional and unceded territories.1
The word action is especially important to emphasize when it comes to Land Back. Action is what makes this approach different from most state-led and non-Indigenous efforts at decolonization, signalling the active dismantlement of colonial ideals and structures. Decolonization is both a goal and a process, and Land Back could be considered one mechanism to facilitate it.
According to Canadian government figures, in In the US, too, economic conditions for Indigenous people are bleak. There, one in three Native Americans live in poverty versus about one in ten for the general population.
