Indianz.Com > News > ‘This is about self-determination and sovereignty’: Tribes welcome return of ancestral lands
‘This is about self-determination and sovereignty’
Tribes welcome return of ancestral lands
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Indianz.Com
Kimberly Morales Johnson can’t help but imagine the land that today is Los Angeles as her ancestors would have seen it centuries ago.
The Tongva people used the canyons of the San Gabriel Mountains as trading routes with the indigenous people of the Mojave desert.
Last year, the Tongva reclaimed land in Los Angeles for the first time in almost 200 years after being forced to give up their lands and having their federal status terminated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1950.
Sharon Alexander, a non-Native woman, donated a one-acre property in Altadena, California, to the Tongva after learning about the #LandBack movement during the 2016 Democratic National Convention and discovering that the Tongva were the original inhabitants of Los Angeles.
Johnson, vice president of the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy, a nonprofit set up by the community to receive the land, said the tribe has big plans for the property.
“It needs a lot of work, but we’re all dedicated to it,” she said.

Last year, the Rappahannock Tribe celebrated the return of more than 400 acres along the Rappahannock River that is home to a historic tribal village named Pissacoack and a four-mile stretch of white-colored cliffs. “Your ancestors cherished these lands for many generations and despite centuries of land disputes and shifting policies, your connections to these cliffs and to this river remain unbroken,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said at an event celebrating the land return. One of the largest land returns last year involved the purchase of more than 28,000 acres by the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa Tribe in Minnesota. The Conservation Fund, an environmental nonprofit, sold the land to the tribe after purchasing the land from a lumber manufacturer in 2020. Emilee Nelson, Minnesota associate state director of The Conservation Fund, said her organization bought the land from the PotlatchDeltic Corporation after the company decided to divest of much of its Minnesota land holdings. The Conservation Fund bought 72,000 acres from the company, including 28,000 acres that were within the Bois Forte Reservation. The Boise Fort Band lost the land following passage of the Dawes Act of 1887, which led to the allotment of the land to private landowners. “Where this land was located made a lot of sense for the tribe to own it,” Nelson said..@Interior is committed to strengthening our nation-to-nation with Tribes and their communities. Yesterday, I was honored to stand with Chief Anne Richardson and the Rappahannock Tribe in Virginia as 465 acres of their ancestral homeland at Fones Cliff was returned. pic.twitter.com/YpunfPMinZ
— Secretary Deb Haaland (@SecDebHaaland) April 2, 2022


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