Land Rights

20 Major Wins For Indigenous Rights In 2025

June 15, 2025 John Ahni Schertow, Intercontinental Cry. Create! Amazon Rainforest, Colombia, Ecuador, Environment, Environmental Justice, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Landback, Landback Movement, Victoria Nuland, Victory

So far, 2025 has been a powerful year for Indigenous rights. Over the past 6 months we have seen many hard-fought victories and long-awaited acts of justice for Indigenous Peoples across the globe. While these wins vary in scale and geography, a common thread runs through them all: Indigenous leadership. Whether resisting oil drilling in the Peruvian Amazon, overturning mining projects in Arizona, or securing court protections for uncontacted peoples in Colombia and Ecuador, these movements reflect a resurgence of Indigenous authority in matters that directly affect their survival and future.

Federal Judge Temporarily Halts Land Swap At Oak Flat Copper Mine Site

May 11, 2025 Debra Utacia Krol, The Arizona Republic. Resist! Apache, Arizona, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Trump Administration

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from moving ahead with a plan that would allow Resolution Copper to take ownership of Oak Flat and begin extracting copper on land considered sacred to Apache and other Native peoples. Judge Steven P. Logan issued the order May 9, two days after hearing the case in U.S. District Court in Phoenix. He ruled that the government cannot publish a final environmental review of a land swap between Resolution and the U.S. Forest Service, which manages a campground at the site 60 miles east of Phoenix.

Minneapolis Plans To Return Land To Indigenous Stewardship By 2026

April 17, 2025 Darren Thompson, Last Real Indians. Create! Indigenous Peoples, Land Back, Land Rights, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis, MN — Minneapolis city officials and community leaders announced at a press conference on Monday that the city would transfer land to Indigenous stewardship. The announcement comes after a decade of organizing by local organizations and is amongst a movement of lands being returned to Indigenous stewardship. “Owámniyomni is not only a place sacred to the Dakota, it is a place of shared importance to all who call this land home," Owámniyomni Okhódayapi President Shelley Buck said to CBS News in Minnesota on Monday. “Our vision for the land at Owámniyomni is to create a place of healing, beauty and belonging that is open to everyone — while reclaiming Dakota stewardship of this land, restoring native plantings and uplifting traditional practices in caring for our natural relatives.”

South Africa’s Long Road To Land Reform

February 11, 2025 Jonis Ghedi-Alasow, People's Dispatch. Strategize! colonization, Hunger, Inequality, Land Reform, Land Rights, South Africa, White Supremacy

On January 23, 2025, South Africa enacted an Expropriation Act, updating the methods for land expropriation for the first time in fifty years. The new Act allows for land expropriation for public purposes and interests whilst introducing the possibility of zero compensation for expropriated land. Consequently, the Act’s scope has been broadened since its 1975 version. Land can still be expropriated for public purposes, such as constructing roads, an uncontroversial and universally accepted practice. The expansion of the scope to include public interest, however, also enables the Act to address a long-standing issue of land reform.

How US Activists Are Infiltrating Israeli Events Selling Palestinian Land

January 12, 2025 Arvind Dilawar, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Illegal Settlements, Israel, Israeli settlements, Land Rights, Palestine

Outside of a synagogue in West Orange, New Jersey, a hundred people with PAL-Awda NY/NJ, a local Palestinian rights organization, gathered to protest an Israeli real estate event taking place there on Nov. 13. The protesters accused the realtors from My Israel Home, an Israeli real estate company based outside of Jerusalem, of marketing Palestinian land. They also said that the company was discriminating against event attendees by religion, effectively excluding everyone except especially religious Jews. According to PAL-Awda, the protesters were attacked by counter-protesters, including an organizer of the event, armed with pepper-spray and tactical flashlights wielded as bludgeons.

Challenging Land Use and Abuse In Allamakee County

November 14, 2024 Dave Rollo, Resilience. Strategize! Big Ag, Factory Farming, Iowa, Land defenders, Land Rights, Mining

Allamakee County lies in the northeast corner of Iowa, bordering Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is part of a three-state region that, unlike most of the upper United States and Canada, escaped glaciation during past ice ages. This geological oddity is immediately obvious to visitors by the dramatic terrain of bluffs, hills, and valleys. Expansive plains characterize most of the rest of Iowa, where miles-thick glaciers moved over the land like a bulldozer, lowering elevated areas, filling in depressions, and depositing rich, deep till. In contrast, the unglaciated northeast of Iowa, referred to as the Paleozoic Plateau for the geologic era of ancient sea bed limestones visible at the surface, contains thin soils and exposed bedrock.

Newark Residents Are Reshaping Who Influences Land Use Decisions

October 24, 2024 Kimberly Izar, Next City. Organize! Civic Engagement, inclusionary zoning, Land Rights, New Jersey (NJ), Newark

Asada Rashidi and several other residents of Newark gather around a 3D map of the city. The plan is covered with legos and paper cutouts representing city streets, rivers and bays, family homes, and local community institutions like childcare centers and churches. But then Rashidi and her team instruct the workshop participants to discuss what rules they would create to regulate development for the health and welfare of Newark’s residents. New zoning concepts and uses, like where residential, commercial, and industrial zones can go, transform how participants view the map.

In A Historic Ruling, ICJ Declares Israeli Occupation Unlawful

July 20, 2024 David Kattenburg, Mondoweiss. Educate! Gaza, Genocide, Human Rights, International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel, Israeli settlements, Land Rights, Palestine, Settlements

In a scathing Advisory Opinion sure to tighten the legal screws on Israel and place its Western allies in a huge bind, the world’s supreme judicial body declared today that Israel’s 57-year occupation and settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are unlawful, that both must end, that settlements must be evacuated, and that Palestinians — denied their inalienable right to self-determination – must be compensated for their losses and allowed to return to their lands. “The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination...

Illegal Sale Of Palestinian Land Embraced By Biden, Local Government

July 11, 2024 John Parker, Black Agenda Report. Resist! California, Israel, Israeli Occupation, Land Rights, Land theft, Los Angeles, Palestine

On Sunday June 23rd there was a sale of Palestinian land in Los Angeles, California. The promotional materials included a photograph that looked a lot like Gaza’s shores. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that fits the image of Zionists wanting to clear out the land for more settlers – an ethnic cleansing operation of murder and starvation against the entire population of Gaza and the West Bank. Although the sale was held at Adas Torah synagogue, the event was not a worship service. It was a venue that was hosting the My Home in Israel real estate agency which promotes prospective home ownership in Israel (occupied Palestine).

Israel Approves Largest West Bank Land Grab In Three Decades

July 3, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. Educate! Colonialism, Illegal Settlements, Israel, Israeli settlements, Land Rights, Land theft, Palestine, Settler colonialism, West Bank

Israeli authorities last month approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now revealed on 3 July. The activists said the approval allows for the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers of land in the Jordan Valley, northeast of the West Bank city of Ramallah. By illegally authorizing their seizure, Tel Aviv is allowing the land to be leased to Israelis and banning private Palestinian ownership. According to Peace Now, this marks the largest single appropriation approved since the 1993 Oslo Accords. The move comes after the seizure of 8 square kilometers of land in the West Bank in March and 2.6 square kilometers in February.

What’s The Difference Between Indigenous Nations Co-Managing Or Co-Stewarding Their Land?

June 1, 2024 Taylar Dawn Stagner, Scheer Post. Resist! California, Indigenous Communities, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights

For a decade, wind farm companies had been eyeing Molok Luyuk — a mountain ridge of religious importance to tribes in northern California, whose people have worked for years to protect it. It’s also widely biodiverse with elk, mountain lions, and black bears, as well as 40 rare plants such as the pink adobe lily. Mia Durham is the secretary for the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, a tribe that has been in a relationship with Molok Luyuk for thousands of years. In response to petitions filed by wind energy companies that wanted to develop the area, the tribe and its allies asked President Biden to protect it in 2019.

Apache Stronghold Asks 29-Judge Appeals Court To Save Oak Flat

April 16, 2024 Ryan Colby, Becket. Resist! Arizona, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Legal System, Oak Flats, Sacred sites

Washington - A coalition of Western Apaches and allies today asked all 29 judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to protect their sacred site at Oak Flat from destruction by a mining project. In Apache Stronghold v. United States, a special “en banc” panel of eleven judges split 6-5 earlier this year, refusing to stop the federal government from transferring Oak Flat to Resolution Copper, a foreign-owned mining company that plans to turn Oak Flat into a massive mining crater, ending Apache religious practices forever.

How To Privatize A Mountain

February 12, 2024 Joseph Bullington, In These Times. Educate! Land Rights, Montana, Privatization, Public Lands

We had followed the trail for a half mile when it ran headlong into a fence. Signs nailed to the trees blared messages of unwelcome: “Private Property” and “No Forest Service Access.” They were emphatic: The trail ends here. Our map — the official map of the Custer Gallatin National Forest — said different: The trail continued for another seven or eight miles, a substantial orange line winding through the foothills of Montana’s Crazy Mountains. The signs, though, had the desired effect. On the other side of the fence, the trail grew faint. This trail, known as the Porcupine Lowline, had been marked on U.S. Forest Service maps for nearly a century — the earliest I’ve seen is dated 1925.

Hoopa Valley Tribe Reclaim Over 10,000 Acres

December 22, 2023 Last Real Indians. Create! Hoopa Valley Tribe, Indigenous Rights, Indigenous Sovereignty, Land Rights

The Hoopa Valley Tribe announced today the acquisition of 10,395 acres of land bordering the western boundary of the Tribe’s Reservation. The return of the Hupa Mountain property brings the Tribe’s landholdings to a total of over 102,000 acres. When the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation was created, the Hupa people lost access to and use of more than two-thirds of their ancestral lands. The Tribe’s $14.1 million purchase of the land rightfully returns management, conservation, and use of the land to Hupa People. “Today is a day of intense celebration for our Tribe,” said Hoopa Valley Tribal Chairman Joe Davis.

Violence, Harassment, and Surveillance On Unist’ Ot’ En Land

September 16, 2023 Nati Garcia, Cultural Survival. Resist! Canada, Gas Pipeline, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Police abuse, RCMP, Unist' Ot' En

In December 2019, the British Columbia Supreme Court issued an injunction allowing construction of a 669-kilometer-long Coastal GasLink pipeline that will cut through 22,000 square kilometers of unceded Wet´suwet´en land. The injunction gave the Coastal GasLink pipeline unlimited access to the ancestral lands of the Wet´suwet´en, and was firmly rejected by the Wet´suwet´en people. On January 7, 2020, the Wet´suwet´en Hereditary Chiefs served Coastal GasLink with an eviction notice, effective immediately. Despite the Hereditary Chiefs’ opposition to the pipeline, the Wet´suwet´en elected band council—a form of Indigenous governance established by the Canadian government...

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