Practitioners

 "A deed may be a flimsy piece of paper, but it is also one of the heaviest things we hold." 
~ Janelle Orsi, Sustainable Economies Law Center, Legal Tools for Land Return

Radical imagination. A yearning toward right relationship. Unfettered creativity combined with technical prowess. An unwavering commitment to love and liberation. These are the qualities that transform a system constructed around power over, accumulation, enclosure, and exploitation.  To be truly reparative and transformative, Land Reunion proceeds through relational processes that feel liberatory and healing because they honor sovereignty, contextualize truth, orient toward repair and restitution, and practice right relationship. Practitioners of law, real estate, finance, mediation, philanthropy, and allied aspects of land reunion are invited to shed long-held ways of being and doing “transactions” in favor of relational process that animates a world view based in sacred agreements and contracts. As described in the North, the soil of Land reunion must be sown with ancient seeds that affirm ecosystems as living, life-giving, right-bearing entities, teeming with sovereign beings with whom we are invited to be in reciprocal loving relationship.  

Lead with:

Seeds of Land Return Toolkit: A toolkit informed by work with Indigenous and Black land stewards intended to provide legal and real estate guidance that smooths the land reunion process.

Legal Tools for Land Return: Describes the rationale for and provides a robust description of approaches to facilitate land return and reparative agreements for land access by developing creative, reparatively-focused durable legal documents.

A Guide to Transformative Land Strategies: This guide synthesizes the strategies of transformative community land organizations (TCLOs): those that share the guiding principles of decommodification of land, racial justice, economic democracy, and transformative politics.