Origins
The term Land Back first emerged through online meme culture in 2018. The phrase was further popularized in no small part thanks to engagement from Indigenous youth, who began to use Land Back in their creative works—including music, fashion, art, and other mediums. Although a “new” term, the concept of Land Back is deeply rooted in the histories of colonialism and its resistance in both the United States and Canada. For Indigenous historians like Nick Estes, the settler colonial violence against the Oceti Sakowin (the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota nations) reveals how the United States systematically violated treaties (The Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868) that guaranteed the Lakota and their allies vast territories, including the Black Hills and the Missouri River basin. The US government effectively violated the terms of the agreements by advancing gold rushes, military invasions, and dam projects that have drowned fertile lands. Thus, #NoDAPL (No Dakota Access Pipeline) became an early precedent for the contemporary iteration of the Land Back movement: reclaiming stolen land by asserting treaty rights, defending sacred waters, and reuniting the Oceti Sakowin after generations of attempts at dispossession.
Shortly after its emergence, Indigenous scholars began incorporating "Land Back" into their academic publications, often as a means of organizing the numerous diverse land and resource initiatives pursued by Indigenous nations (Notably on this front is the 2019 Yellowhead Institute’s LAND BACK Red Paper Report). At the same time, Indigenous land and water defenders began using “Land Back” in their organizing efforts. From here, Land Back became synonymous in the minds of many in the Indigenous community with direct action efforts that centred Indigenous reclamation and restitution of material goods.
Notably, Land Back rose in popularity at the same time that reconciliation—the most prominent political framework to address Indigenous affairs in Canada to that point—was coming under heavy criticism. As an example to this point, less than a year after the Yellowhead Institute (2019) published its Land Back report, Wet’suwet’en land defenders on the west coast gripped public attention for their opposition to a federally-supported pipeline project; they proclaimed that “reconciliation is dead”. As such, Land Back resonated profoundly with Indigenous communities, in part, because it met the need for an alternative framework that decentered the settler-state at a critical time in North American Indigenous politics.
As Glen Sean Coulthard explains, the politics of recognition—where the state formally acknowledges Indigenous rights and identities through legal and policy frameworks—has largely functioned as a new mechanism of colonial assimilation, reproducing domination by offering symbolic inclusion while leaving intact the structures of dispossession and state sovereignty over Indigenous lands. For the Land Back movement, this recognition-based framework is part of the broader system of settler colonialism. Demanding the material restitution of land and the resurgence of Indigenous governance grounded in place-based relations, reciprocity, and self-determination is essential to the Land Back movement. Rather than seeking validation or delegated authority from the settler state, Land Back asserts that true decolonization requires dismantling the colonial relation itself and restoring Indigenous jurisdiction, embodying what Coulthard calls a politics of self-affirmation and resurgence against the assimilative logic of recognition.
Philosophy and Praxis
In 2022, I described Land Back as an umbrella term which encompasses “any action taken to return jurisdiction, authority, and resources to Indigenous people. This might include taking land back into Indigenous stewardship, restoring Indigenous people’s legal rights to their land, or the active refusal to follow colonial laws on traditional and unceded territories.” Today, I can see several ways Land Back has expanded. Most notably, I have seen several new iterations of Land Back that highlight other sites of reclamation beyond the land. These include, but are not limited to, Cash Back, #DataBack and Language Back.
One of the key advantages of the Land Back project is its decentralized nature. Without a distinct ‘Land Back’ authority or arbiter of ‘what counts’ as real Land Back, the concept is highly democratic and accessible for a wide array of people and initiatives to take up. In short, Land Back belongs to the collective. This allows it to continue evolving in its form and growing in its popularity organically over time. Moreover, unlike other movements throughout history that have been closely linked with a specific group or organization, Land Back can avoid common pitfalls such as weakened support, spurred by group infighting and misalignment of values. One person’s Land Back does not have to look precisely like another's.
Despite these differing sites of focus, the new iterations of Land Back maintain that original focus on material gains and reparations for Indigenous people over symbolic gestures. Moreover, rather than focusing on the education or status of the non-Indigenous majority, these efforts all centre on the direct benefits to Indigenous nations themselves. While there is room for non-Indigenous people to participate in these (blank)-Back initiatives, they are not critically dependent on the purchase of external communities. In short, Land Back and its iterations have evolved into a decentralized movement of Indigenous people reclaiming those elements of their lives and worldviews that have been attacked or stolen by settler colonialism. The following are a few examples of land back in practice
1. 1492 Land Back Lane
In July 2020, Haudenosaunee land defenders in what is currently called Ontario, Canada, refuted the development of a housing project in their territory. Despite efforts from the province’s police force to arrest and intimidate land defenders as well as an injunction order from the provincial Superior Court, members of the camp (which they named 1492 Land Back Lane) remained steadfast in their refusal. By July 2021, the housing development corporation announced the cancellation of the project. Haudenosaunee successfully defended their territory from state-backed, corporate encroachment. Next, I want to highlight an example of Indigenous people pursuing other forms of material reclamations under the Land Back umbrella.
2. Tšilhqot’in Mushroom Permits
In May 2018, the Tšilhqot’in nation in British Columbia, Canada, issued a community-based environmental regulation. Namely, anyone from outside the nation who wanted to forage or sell mushrooms from their territory would need to apply for community-issued permits and follow the outlined regulations—otherwise face fines. This example falls under the Land Back umbrella because, while it does not increase the territory of the nation, it does assert its authority and jurisdiction over its territory. Again, Land Back can include more abstracted forms of return. Finally, I want to highlight an example of Land Back, where non-Indigenous people are active participants.
3. Real Rent Duwamish (RRD)
This initiative was organized by non-Indigenous allies in Seattle, USA, who first came together in 2009. This group created a website and encouraged non-Indigenous people who lived in Seattle, traditional Duwamish Tribe territory, to give money in any amount to RRD, which would forward this to the Duwamish Tribal Services. Importantly, this is not meant to be viewed as a charity initiative. Instead, it encourages non-Indigenous people to recognize that reparations are owed to the nations whose lands they live on, and cultivate a sense of responsibility and relationship to Indigenous people.
Opportunities and Challenges
In terms of challenges, the greatest threats to the movement I have witnessed have been the misinterpretation by non-Indigenous people and co-option from the settler state. Increasingly, non-Indigenous people have been reframing Land Back not as an effort to pursue Indigenous restitution, but rather as a manifesto of Indigenous minority rule and a campaign to dispossess the non-Indigenous population of their property and other resources. Whether it’s a reaction based on an unfounded, but legitimately felt, fear that Indigenous people would somehow engage in a form of ‘reverse colonialism’—using increased authority to do unto the settler population what was done to our nations—or a conscious effort to undermine Indigenous demands in favour of the status quo—this growing misinterpretation is unhelpful to Land Back efforts and is difficult to correct. Correction requires educating the non-Indigenous masses on the true nature of Land Back, an action which centres non-Indigenous people and is thus antithetical to Land Back’s spirit. While Land Back is not necessarily contingent on non-Indigenous support, more transformative change is helped by having external community contributions.
Second, in the Canadian context at least, we have seen instances of politicians and other Canadian leaders taking up the language of Land Back—claiming an understanding and support of the movement, only to articulate decidedly harmful visions of the project that only reinforce state superiority. For example, in late 2021, Canada’s then-minister of Crown-Indigenous relations stated that “it was time to give the land back”, sparking surprise and some optimism among Indigenous onlookers. When questioned further, however, this minister only provided examples of land restitution to be accomplished via existing government-facilitated processes—processes that had long been criticized as ineffectual, too slow, low ambition, and which ultimately depended on Canada’s willingness to come to the table as a true partner and meet Indigenous demands. In all, when taken up by Canadian officials, Land Back loses much of the potency which made it so resonant among Indigenous people in the first place. To avoid settler co-option of Land Back, we must understand that this concept, like all organizing concepts, is malleable and can evolve in ways that begin to fail its original intent. We should always be careful to align ourselves with the goals this concept helps us achieve, rather than becoming too attached to the words themselves. The modern Land Back movement emerges directly from centuries of broken treaties and ongoing colonial occupation, but it is also a refusal of the assimilative frameworks that settler states continue to impose. Land Back, then, stands as both a rejection of reconciliation on the state’s terms and an affirmation of resurgence, insisting on the material restitution of territory, the restoration of Indigenous jurisdiction, and the repair of relations among people, land, and non-human kin. More than a slogan, it has become a decentralized and evolving movement—whether through direct reoccupation, reassertion of Indigenous law, or broader reclamations like #CashBack or #LanguageBack—that embodies a collective insistence on Indigenous futures beyond colonial domination. Additional Resources
Briarpatch Magazine. (2020). September/October 2020: The Land Back Issue. Briarpatch Magazine. https://briarpatchmagazine.com/issues/view/september-october-2020
Droz, P. (2024). Let's get the land back: A toolkit to restore our relations. NDN Collective. https://ndncollective.sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/22000716/Lets-Get-the-Land-Back-A-Toolkit-to-Restore-our-Relations-by-PennElys-Droz.pdf
Native Land Digital. (n.d.). Native Land Digital. Retrieved May 29, 2025, from https://native-land.ca/
Yellowhead Institute. (n.d.). Land Back Online: A Yellowhead School online course. Yellowhead Institute. Retrieved May 29, 2025, from https://learnonline.yellowheadinstitute.org/
Indigenous Nations Poets. (n.d.). Language Back. Retrieved from https://www.indigenousnationspoets.org/language-back
Animikii Indigenous Technology. (n.d.). #DataBack: Asserting & Supporting Indigenous Data Sovereignty. Retrieved from https://databack.animikii.com/
Author Bio: Riley Yesno (she/her) is a queer Anishinaabe scholar and commentator from Eabametoong First Nation, currently based in Toronto. She is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, a Distinguished Fellow at the Yellowhead Institute, and a Vanier Scholar. Suggested Visuals:
(Photo taken by author, 2022)
(Photo via 1492 Land Back Lane/Facebook)