Movement Is Justice - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly

"The Kiowa people followed the buffalo. These migration patterns took our community from what is now known as northern Montana to southern Texas. Our physical health and economy were based on this movement that was tied to communal cooperation, weather, season, plant blooms, and the health of the buffalo. Our epic context for land justice is this-to restore our communal movement over and around these ancestral homelands and everything that has limited that access since."

"Unfortunately, the word justice most often shifts and redirects conversations toward legal frameworks and institutions, rather than the health and wellbeing of the people the institutions affect. Legal frameworks and institutions, in short, often struggle to capture some of the most important relationships of community-of people and land, people and animals, animals and land. Conversations around land justice too often continue without explicit recognition that there is always this missing peace (piece) that is much harder to articulate."

"The conversation for land justice often begins with the framing of Injustice. Many of us are all too familiar with the Invasion of America map by researchers Claudio Saunt and Sergio Bernardes, documenting the loss of Tribal land. The extent of land loss is staggering, jolting, and reflects the cultural, social, and political havoc that has been suffered by all Tribal Nations. In his book Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory, Saunt states that "between 1776 and 1887, the United States seized over 1.5 billion acres from America's Indigenous people by treaty and executive order.""

The Kiowa historically followed buffalo migrations from northern Montana to southern Texas, relying on seasonal movement, communal cooperation, and ecological cues. Land justice focuses on restoring communal movement across ancestral homelands and reversing barriers that limit access. Legal frameworks and institutions often prioritize property and courts rather than the health and wellbeing of people, animals, and land, and therefore fail to capture interdependent relationships. Land dispossession has been vast, totaling over 1.5 billion acres seized between 1776 and 1887, producing cultural, social, and political devastation across Tribal Nations. True land justice centers communal stewardship, ecological relationships, and restored access to traditional territories.

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