LAND
For Indigenous Nations, sovereignty is inseparable from land. This section explores how Native peoples have maintained relationships to ancestral homelands despite removal, allotment, and dispossession, and how those relationships continue today through stewardship, rematriation, food systems, and Land Back movements.
Land is jurisdiction.
Land is relationship.
Land is responsibility.
HISTORY & LAND DISPOSSESSION
Indigenous Nations governed themselves long before the formation of the United States. While removal, allotment, and federal policies dramatically altered Indigenous landholdings, Tribal Nations and their governments endured. The maps below trace changing boundaries across time, revealing not only land loss, but continuance. Sovereignty did not disappear. It adapted, persisted, and remains a living reality carried through Indigenous Nations today.
Showing the reduction of Tribal lands following the opening of the Unassigned Lands. Reproduction Courtesy of the Muscogee Nation. Reproduced from the collections of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Map of the Tribal jurisdictions of Oklahoma courtesy of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.
Showing the allotments of Tulsa Public domain. Digital scan courtesy of the Internet Archive; original publication by E. Hastain.
Explore the Evidence
Indian Land for Sale, 1910
Following allotment policies, millions of acres of Tribal land were divided and opened to non-Native settlement and sale. Advertisements like this promoted Indigenous lands as private property available for purchase, accelerating the loss of Tribal land across the United States.
Dawes Enrollment Cards for Cherokee, Citizens by blood (BB), 4747 C. 1900
The Dawes Act of 1887 sought to dismantle Tribal communal lands by dividing them into individual allotments. For the Five Tribes, allotment was carried out under the Curtis Act of 1898. Lands not allotted to Tribal citizens were declared "surplus" and sold to non-Native settlers, resulting in the loss of approximately 90 million acres of Indigenous land. The allotment process also introduced blood quantum into federal policy as a means of controlling Tribal lands. Individuals determined to have one-half or more "Indian blood" were often deemed legally incompetent to manage their own affairs, and their allotments were placed into federal trust.
LAND BACK & REMATRIATION
Across Indigenous communities, efforts to reclaim, protect, and steward ancestral lands are reshaping conversations about soveriegnty. Land Back movements seek the return of Indigenous lands and authority, while rematriation emphasizes the restoration of relationship between people, culture, and place. These efforts recognize that land is more than the physical. It is memory, identity, connection and responsibility.
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photo courtesy of NPS
For thousands of years, Ocmulgee Mounds was been a place of governance, ceremony, and community for the ancestors of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Today, efforts to establish the site as a national park with Muscogee co-stewardship recognizes the Nation's enduring relationship to its ancestral homelands.
Click to read more about Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park.
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photo courtesy of Anita Fields
Sugar Loaf Mound is a sacred Osage ceremonial site in present-day Missouri. Its return to the Osage Nation represents an important step in restoring Tribal stewardship and protecting places of cultural and spiritual significance.
Click to learn about Sugarloaf Mound from Osage Culture
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photo courtesy of Western River Conservancy
The Yurok Tribe's acquisition of more than 47,000 acres in Northern California is one of the largest Indigenous land return efforts in California history. The return restores Tribal stewardship, protects cultural landscapes, and supports ecological restoration guided by Indigenous knowledge.
Click to read more about the largest ever land back conservation deal in California.
additional resources
Indigenous food sovereignty is the right of Indigenous peoples to grow, produce, farm and harvest their own traditional foods. For many Native communities, food carries knowledge of land, season, ceremony, and community responsibility passed down through generations.
Today there are many efforts revitalizing traditional foodways through agriculture programs, seed saving initiatives, hunting and fishing rights, buffalo restoration, and via Indigenous chefs and farmers. These efforts reconnect communities to ancestral lands and practices while also helping the health and self-sustainability of communities.
Food sovereignty reminds us that sovereignty is lived in everyday practices, including how communities grow, harvest, prepare, and share food.
FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
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The Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative (IFAI) focuses on putting Tribal sovereignty in food sovereignty, promoting Tribally driven solutions to revitalize and advance traditional food systems and diversified economic development throughout Indian Country. IFAI provides Tribal governments, producers, and food businesses with educational resources, policy research, and strategic legal analysis as a foundation for building robust food economies.
EXPLORE INDIGENOUS FOOD SYSTEMS
Click links below to learn more
SEEDS, GARDENS & TRADITIONAL FOODS
Click links below to explore more
Seeds carry knowledge, memory, and relationships across generations. Through planting, harvesting, saving seeds, and preparing traditional foods, Indigenous communities continue practices rooted in homelands, family, and community. Gardens are living spaces where cultural knowledge is shared, cared for, and passed forward.
FOOD KNOWLEDGE & COMMUNITY
These cookbooks preserve Indigenous food knowledge through recipes, stories, and family traditions. Together, they reflect how food sovereignty is carried forward across generations and remains an important part of Indigenous culture and community.
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Hokti's Recipe Book of Creek Indian Foods
Beulah Simms
Corn Dance by Loretta Barrett Oden
Intertribal Church Cookbook
Passed down through my family from an Intertribal Church in Tulsa.
READ & LISTEN
Click links below to learn more
TRIBAL STEWARDSHIP
Tribal stewardship can take many forms, including wildlife management, hunting and fishing, caring for lands and waters, restoring ecosystems, protecting culturally important species, and agreements between Tribal governments. These practices reflect both the authority of Tribal Nations to manage their lands and resources and their continuing responsibilities to the places and communities they care for.
FIVE TRIBES WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT RECIPROCITY AGREEMENT
An example of Tribal Nations working together to recognize hunting and fishing licenses across their jurisdictions and exercise authority over wildlife management.
The Shinnecock Indian Nation's defense of its fishing rights provides an example of how Tribal stewardship can also involve protecting Indigenous rights to access and care for traditional waters and resources.
Shinnecock women are using regenerative kelp farming as a way to care for Shinnecock Bay, restore marine ecosystems, and continue relationships with their waters.