Land History Library
Juneteenth for White Folks
Step back and see that all these things exist at once. Street art blooms across the street from the tracks of the train Mr. Plessy boarded. Ruby was, Ruby is, her ancestors were freed, not free, White supremacy was, White supremacy is, and what comes next is all in the gravel kicked down a New Orleans train track to the Supreme Court and back, but never really very far.
A Guide to Reparations & Reparative Action
Many people are examining their own relationships to stolen land and stolen labor, and are interested in building new patterns in the world. They have already begun their own reparative paths. Let these examples be your inspiration for what comes next.
5 ways for a complete beginner to uncover living history
Each time I visit a new city, I look for the places that are easy to overlook. I look because I want to know about the place. But it’s more than that. I look for a place’s hidden history because, by visiting the place, I’ve become part of its story. Here are the top 5 ways that a complete beginner can uncover living history.
What is land history? My land story.
Land history is a squishy layer cake. From a twenty-first-century keyboard, I slice through layers of time. The Jewell County, Kansas land that I visited as a child was—and is—my grandparents’ farm. It was and is the United States’ undervalued taking from indigenous stewards and overpaid taking for a land-speculator’s gamble and miles-away homestead rolled into a reservoir-making land swap. It was and is and always will be Kanza homeland. In my land history, all of those pasts are present today.