LANDBACK

text on a landscape that says from the ground up

From the Ground Up: Building Ethical Land Access with LANDBACK

Thursday, November 17, 2022

This event has passed, but you can use the registration form below to receive the recording.

text on a landscape that says from the ground up

Join the BIPOC Intentional Community Council and featured speakers from LANDBACK on Thursday, November 17th for an informative conversation about the LANDBACK movement in North America, Latin America, and the Kingdom of Hawaii. LANDBACK is an Indigenous-led movement which seeks to return Indigenous land to Indigenous hands.

Non-Indigenous BIPOC and non-BIPOC have the opportunity to join this session and learn about how the LANDBACK movement intersects with their efforts to access and buy land for justice-oriented projects in the Americas.

How can we learn to do justice from the ground up?

There will be three presentations of approximately 25 minutes each by our speakers, followed by a fifteen minute Q & A.

Topics covered in this session: 

  • What is LANDBACK?
  • How does LANDBACK intersect with and support the efforts of the descendants of enslaved persons to access land and achieve their own form of sovereignty in the United States? 
  • How does white supremacy culture play into the perpetuation of colonialism?
  • How can BIPOC people from the United States perpetuate colonialism with their American privilege when seeking land in Latin America?
  • How might you rematriate land or form a cultural respect easement with the original stewards of that land?
  • And more!

Speakers

Dr. Psyche Calderon-Vargas is a Mexican general physician who believes that every person regardless of where they are from or their personal stories have the right to receive the best trauma informed medical care and that no human being is illegal. She considers herself an activist first, an educator second and a medical provider third. She is co-founder and co-director of Refugee Health Alliance since 2018 an organization that works in Tijuana, Mexico giving free medical attention to refugees, migrants and other displaced persons. She is the medical director of Centro de la Conducta since 2013 a substance abuse treatment center and she is a Professor of Border Health at the medical school of the Autonomous University of Baja California.

Demetrius Johnson (Diné) is a #LandBack Organizer at Rapid City, South Dakota-based nonprofit NDN Collective. Originally from Tółaní, Ganado, Arizona, Johnson began community organizing shortly after being elected President of Kiva Club around the disastrous Gold King Mine spill that affected his people in 2015. He is also a long-standing lead organizer for The Red Nation, a coalition of Native and non-Native activists, educators, students, and community organizers based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, advocating Native liberation. Johnson has been part of many campaigns advocating for the liberation of Indigenous, 2SLGBTQIA+, and working class people.

Kaleikoa Kaeo from the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Host: Jahia LaSangoma (she/her) is an Afro-Caribbean & German activist, artist, grower, and scholar. She is on the Board of Directors of the BIPOC ICC and works at the intersection of climate justice and social justice.

Event Sponsors

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The BIPOC Intentional Community Council’s mission is to cultivate radically safe and inclusive communities for black, indigenous, and people of color by providing inspiration, solidarity, and support to those seeking to find or found communities, and to those already living in community.

Defend. Develop. Decolonize. NDN is an action network built on principles of community organizing, building political power and advancing the rights of Indigenous people and the environment through advocacy, policy, direct action and organizing.

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