CLTs as a Step Towards Decolonizing Our Relationships to Land

Recordings

Webinar Resources

• Slideshow presentation from Autumn Ness, Lahaina CLT
• Slideshow presentation from Norm Leech, Downtown Eastside CLT
• Slideshow presentation from Corrina Gould, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust
• ENGLISH Transcript

Webinar Description

For thousands of years before the invasion and colonization of the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands, Indigenous peoples across these regions lived in deep relationships with the land, understanding it as sacred and shared. The imposition of private ownership, capitalism, and extractivism over the past five centuries has profoundly disrupted that relationship, disconnecting communities from the land and environment.

This webinar brought together representatives of Indigenous-led CLTs in the US and Canada to share how CLTs can serve as a step towards decolonizing our collective relationship to land, returning sacred land to Indigenous stewardship and resisting disaster capitalism.

Speakers and Panelists

Autumn Ness, Executive Director, Lahaina CLT (Hawai’i, US)

AUTUMN NESS serves as LCLT’s Executive Director, accountable to the past and future generations of Lahaina, nurturing the long-term vision of a community-owned land base that redefines homeownership and economic systems outside of extractive capitalism and more in accordance with ‘ike Hawai’i (the values and wisdom of this place). She has intimate experience with post-disaster displacement, and its permanent effects on environment and culture, after being displaced after the Japan tsunami and nuclear meltdown. As a settler on Maui since then, she has worked on land, water and agriculture justice issues from a systems change lens, working arm in arm with community to take those systems back in ways that build local power and collective well being. She previously served as Senior Affordable Housing Policy Advisor for Council Member Johnson, chair of Affordable Housing. They worked with Maui County Council to implement a progressive package of affordable housing bills that include the strongest anti-displacement policies in Hawaiʻi, and increased funding mechanisms for infrastructure and affordable housing. She is also the founder of the Maui Food Hub, a response to COVID that has now become vital and permanent farm-to-consumer infrastructure.

Corrina Gould, Co-Director, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust (California, US)

CORRINA GOULD (Tribal Chair for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation) was born and raised in the village of Huichin, now known as Oakland, CA. She is the Co-Founder and Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a small Native run organization and the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led organization within her ancestral territory. Through the practices of rematriation, cultural revitalization, and land restoration, the Land Trust calls on Native and non-Native peoples to heal and transform legacies of colonization, genocide, and to do the work our ancestors and future generations are calling us to do. 

Norm Leech, President, Downtown Eastside CLT (Vancouver, Canada)

NORM LEECH is the President of the Downtown Eastside CLT (DTES CLT). DTES CLT is moving toward a more Indigenous relationship with land that is sustainable, responsible, and healing. This can help preserve affordable housing by sheltering property from the global market that is increasing housing costs around the globe.

Norm speaks widely on inter-generational trauma due to colonization. He grew up in East Vancouver, with ancestry in the T’it’q’et community of the St’at’imc nation where he has served as Chief and also Administrator. He draws on his experiences as a recovering alcoholic/ addict, inter-generational survivor, and spiritual explorer to inform his current work which includes several boards and committees.

Amber Khan, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Washington

AMBER KHAN, PhD, MPH is an applied interdisciplinary disaster scholar focused on community-led solutions to the climate crisis, centering on community-led land use and policy, affordable housing, and preventing displacement and gentrification. In her current role as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington, she leads an international study with the International Center for CLTs on the application of CLTs in building climate and disaster resilience. In her role as a participatory action research fellow at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), she designs and conducts research on climate displacement, migration, and resettlement with Indigenous-led organizations.