If this were a Family Feud questionnaire and I asked you about “things that are stolen,” I’d wager that personal property, food or merchandise for sale, or one’s heart may be the top answers on the board. Suggesting “land” as an answer might even earn you a strike.
I suggest, then, that you read Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership.
The recently released book by activist and author Brea Baker disabuses us of the notion that the only things that can be stolen are things we can take with us. Thieves can also take that which we hope to leave behind. In the excerpt we recently published here in The Emancipator, she noted that “the exclusion and expulsion of Black and Indigenous people from the land economy has been an act of financial warfare.”
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Black Americans currently own less than 1% of U.S. farmland and Indigenous households possess only approximately eight cents of wealth compared to every dollar of a White one, Baker writes in her book. When I asked Baker recently whether those facts could lead one to question why they should care about land theft that happened generations ago, she connected the land to the people in a way I didn’t expect.
“This is land on which some of the greatest trauma our people have ever suffered,” Baker acknowledged. “But the land did not do that. The land was not just a witness to that trauma. Actually, it was also a fellow victim and hostage.”
She went on to spell out some of the remedies for what has gone wrong with our ecology. These remedies can be found in old traditions that racism has seen us discard.
“When land was in the hands of Black and Indigenous land stewards,” Baker told me, “the land was cared for. The land was loved. We were in this sort of symbiotic reciprocal relationship.
“Now, the land is crying out — and we see it and we feel it in how hot it is in early June, how hot it is in December. There’s no snowfall, it’s just raining. And when it does, it’s just flooding everywhere. Our infrastructure is crumbling. We’re seeing the impacts of what has happened. I believe that reparations and land back for both Black and Indigenous people, which would hopefully then push a lot of people of all races into a more loving and sustainable relationship with the land, is a good thing for all of us.”
Our conversation, edited for time, is below.
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