Across the United States and Canada, Indigenous Nations and communities are using community land trusts to bring land back under Indigenous stewardship and to house their people on their own terms. This page gathers what we know about that work: the CLTs themselves, recordings of conversations with their leaders, and the research and reporting that has followed them.
It is meant for three groups of readers. For community land trusts, it is a chance to learn from Indigenous approaches to land and governance. For anyone exploring partnerships with Tribes, including cultural easements, it offers examples to draw on. And for funders, it shows who is doing this work and where.
How we use these terms. We call a CLT Indigenous-led when an Indigenous Nation or community controls its governance. We call it Indigenous-guided when Indigenous leaders and Elders shape its work within a broader governance structure. We name each Nation as it names itself.
This page is a work in progress. If you know of an Indigenous-led CLT or a resource we have missed, please let us know.
On this page: Indigenous-led CLTs · What CLTs can do · Related efforts · Recordings from the CLT Center · Research and reports · Articles, podcasts and video
CLTs in the US and Canada
Indigenous-led
1. Dishgamu Humboldt Community Land Trust
Location: Loleta and Eureka, California. Nation or community: Wiyot Tribe. About: A department of the Wiyot Tribe; the Tribal Council makes its decisions. It is building youth, family and senior housing in Eureka, including 39 homes for young people and nearly 100 family and senior homes due in 2027. It also stewards land returned to the Tribe, and its Give Land Back page explains four ways landowners can give land.
2. Sogorea Te’ Land Trust
Location: Oakland, California. Nation or community: Confederated Villages of Lisjan (Ohlone); urban Indigenous women-led. About: Stewards more than ten sites in the East Bay. Its use of cultural easements, which guarantee ceremonial and gathering access to land in perpetuity, is a model for partnerships between Tribes and land trusts. Recent returns include the West Berkeley Shellmound (2024) and Sausal Creek Headwaters (2026). Its Shuumi Land Tax, a voluntary contribution from non-Indigenous people living on Lisjan land, helps fund this work. Read its co-authored history in Ecology and Society, or browse its resources.
3. Wukchumni Community Land Trust
Location: Visalia, California. Nation or community: Wukchumni Tribe (Yokuts). About: Shaped by visioning sessions with Wukchumni youth, adults and Elders. It is planning Bu’hach’hai Village, the Tribe’s first tribally owned housing, on land in north Visalia: affordable, energy-efficient homes for income-qualified community members, with community gardens, gathering spaces, playgrounds and ceremonial grounds. The Wukchumni Tribe is not federally recognized.
4. Eyak Community Land Trust
Location: Cordova, Alaska. Nation or community: Eyak people. About: Incubated with the Native Conservancy, it holds land returned by NDN Collective: two acres on Eyak Lake in 2024 and a parcel on Sea Otter Island in 2026, which it owns outright. Both parcels are in the Eyak homeland around Cordova.
5. Lahaina Community Land Trust
Location: Lahaina, Maui. Nation or community: Lahaina families; board of Lahaina lineal descendants and Kanaka Maoli advocates. About: Keeping Lahaina land in Lahaina hands after the 2023 fire, guided by ʻike Hawaiʻi and by an advisory board drawn from West Maui. It buys land, helps fire-affected families keep their homes, and plans for future residents of its properties to become members of the trust. See its 2024 annual report.
6. Aboriginal Land Trust
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia. Nation or community: A sister society of Lu’ma Native Housing Society, whose boards are Indigenous. About: Owns about 800 homes built or planned, including a healing centre in the Downtown Eastside with 112 homes, and Ch’ich’iyúy Elx̱wíḵn in Strathcona, with 172 affordable rental homes, 56 of them for Elders. Lu’ma operates the homes.
7. All Our Relations Land Trust
Location: Kingston (Katarokwi), Ontario. Nation or community: Urban Indigenous community members; Algonquin, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Métis and Mi’kmaq board. About: Founded in 2022; holds 2.86 acres of former pasture gifted by the United Church of Canada. Since 2021, more than 600 volunteers have planted over 1,000 native trees and shrubs there, along with vegetable, medicine and pollinator gardens. Its Indigenous Placekeeping & Storytelling project shares StoryMaps and short films.
8. Temiskaming District Community Land Trust
Location: Temiskaming and Cochrane districts, Ontario. Nation or community: First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and gender-diverse people, through Keepers of the Circle. About: Forming, with CMHC support, through Keepers of the Circle. A steering committee is working toward incorporation, with First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and gender-diverse people holding most board seats. A Council of Grandmothers, Wisdom Keepers Council and youth council will guide the board.
9. Toronto Indigenous Land Trust
Location: Toronto, Ontario. Nation or community: First Nations, Métis and Inuit community members. About: Forming. It brings First Nations, Métis and Inuit community members together to decide collectively how land can meet their needs, including community-led housing, and holds sharing circles with the Canadian Network of CLTs. See also a UBC research project on an Indigenous women-led land trust in Toronto.
10. Tierras Indígenas Community Land Trust
Location: Barrio Logan, San Diego. Nation or community: Indigenous-centered and member-led. About: Founded in 2023 with support from the Environmental Health Coalition, it bought its first building in Barrio Logan in 2024. Plans include affordable housing, an Indigenous-led midwifery and birthing clinic, and an art gallery. KPBS interview
11. LFL Community Land Trust
Location: Humboldt County, California. Nation or community: Afro-Indigenous and Native partners (Yurok, Tolowa Dee-ni’, Karuk, Wiyot). About: A partnership of Afro-Indigenous and Native-led organizations in Humboldt County, including Pathways of Purpose, Humboldt Healthy Families and FireKeepers Alliance. Its leaders spoke at the June 2026 California session.
Indigenous-guided
12. Downtown Eastside Community Land Trust
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia. Nation or community: Guided by Elders, a tenants’ advisory committee and a majority-Indigenous board. About: Founded in 2020 by a coalition including the Aboriginal Front Door Society and the Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre Society, and incorporated in 2023. It buys privately owned single-room-occupancy hotels to keep them permanently affordable, starting with the Powell Rooms, with tenant-led support from the DTES SRO Collaborative.
13. Calgary Urban Indigenous Community Land Trust
Location: Calgary, Alberta. Nation or community: Urban Indigenous community, Elder-guided; led by the Elizabeth Fry Society. About: A 2021–22 project, funded by CMHC and led by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Calgary with HomeSpace and the City of Calgary, to co-design an urban Indigenous CLT model with Elders and community members. Current status unknown.
Supporting Indigenous land return: what CLTs can do
CLTs hold land, so they are in a position to return it, share access to it, and share the resources that come from it. Start with NDN Collective’s Let’s Get the Land Back: A Toolkit to Restore Our Relations by PennElys Droz (2024), a Native-led guide to land back, and NDN Collective’s Land Back resources. These are further practical starting points.
Build relationships
- Learn whose land you are on with Whose.Land or Native Land, then work through Questions About Home, a reflection exercise by Qwul’sih’yah’maht (Robina Thomas) with Sogorea Te’ founders Corrina Gould and Johnella LaRose.
- Read and discuss Sogorea Te’s Land Rematriation Resource Guide and its recommended reading.
- Redbud Resource Group, a Native-led organization, offers Tribal relations workshops and resources for non-Tribal organizations building partnerships with Tribes.
Return land
- The Wiyot Tribe’s Give Land Back page explains four ways landowners can give land to its CLT: outright, by easement, as a future gift or by will.
- The Northern California Land Trust, a Berkeley CLT, conveyed land to Sogorea Te’ through a 99-year lease.
- Land in Common, a CLT in Maine, returned 184 acres to the Bomazeen Land Trust.
- The United Church of Canada gifted 2.86 acres to All Our Relations Land Trust in Kingston, after seven years of relationship building with Faith United Church.
- A Bay Area couple willed their home to Sogorea Te’.
- Dawnland Return’s First Light is a model for conveying conservation land to Wabanaki Nations.
- A CLT’s bylaws can direct its assets to Indigenous Nations or organizations if it dissolves. Brightside Homes explains how it did this.
Share access through cultural easements
- The City of Oakland’s cultural conservation easement to Sogorea Te’ over Rinihmu Pulte’irekne (2022), told in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service case study and the video Steps to Land Back (2025).
- The Native Land Conservancy’s Cultural Respect Easements.
- Restoring Tribal Access to Land: A Menu of Options to Reestablish Cultural Access Rights, from Conservation Partners.
Share resources
- Pay a voluntary land tax where one exists, such as Sogorea Te’s Shuumi Land Tax in the East Bay or the Tongva conservancy’s Kuuy Nahwá’a in Los Angeles County. Organizations can pay Institutional Shuumi.
- For funders: Sogorea Te’s Shuumi guidance for foundations, and the Resource Guide for Indigenous Solidarity Funding Projects, compiled by the Indigenous Solidarity Network with Sogorea Te’, Real Rent Duwamish and the Manna-hatta Fund.
More in this vein: the Canadian Network of CLTs’ Indigenous Solidarity page and Sogorea Te’s Return Land page, which also lists land returns across the U.S. since 2017.
Related efforts
These organizations aren’t community land trusts, but they are bringing land back to Indigenous stewardship in ways CLTs can learn from.
Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy · Altadena, California
A Tongva-led conservancy stewarding Huhuunga, an acre returned in 2022 and burned in the 2025 Eaton Fire. It publishes an annual impact report and a video series on traditional ecological knowledge.
Native Hawaiian land trusts
Kīpuka Kuleana on Kauaʻi is a Native Hawaiian, women-led, community-based land trust that keeps families on ancestral land. Kulāiwi Land Trust on Oʻahu works on land return.
Indigenous conservation and cultural land trusts
In Canada: W̱SÁNEĆ Lands Trust and XAXE TEṈEW̱ Sacred Land Society on Vancouver Island, Mno Aki Land Trust, and the Walpole Island Land Trust in Ontario. In the U.S.: the Wabanaki-led Bomazeen Land Trust in Maine. Several are profiled in Land Trusts and Indigenous Peoples: The Canadian Context (2024). The Land Trust Alliance’s First Stewards program connects U.S. conservation land trusts with Tribes.
From the CLT Center
Recordings and transcripts from our webinars and the 2026 Global CLT Virtual Summit, newest first.
Meeting the Moment: Solidarity and Partnerships with Indigenous Peoples in the California CLT Movement
June 9, 2026 · California CLT Network session, Global CLT Virtual Summit
With Darlene Franco (Wukchumni Tribe) and leaders of the LFL Community Land Trust.
Recording (English) · Recording (Spanish) · Transcript (English) · Transcript (Spanish) · Slides
Decolonizing Community Land Trusts in Canada
May 26, 2026 · Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts session, Global CLT Virtual Summit
With the Downtown Eastside CLT, Temiskaming District CLT, All Our Relations Land Trust and others.
Recording · Transcript
CLTs as a Step Towards Decolonizing Our Relationships to Land
November 25, 2025 · CLT Center webinar
With Corrina Gould (Sogorea Te’ Land Trust), Norm Leech (Downtown Eastside CLT), Autumn Ness (Lahaina CLT) and Amber Khan.
Recording (English) · Recording (Spanish) · Transcript · Slides: Corrina Gould, Autumn Ness, Norm Leech
Housing for Indigenous Women by Indigenous Women: An Indigenous Women-Led CLT Model
Case study of the Temiskaming District CLT, from Keepers of the Circle (PDF, 2025).
Research and reports
Show all 10 reports (newest first)
- Susannah Bunce and Emma Ezvan, Community Land Trusts in Canada: Responses and Resistance to Gentrification, University of Toronto / UBC Balanced Supply of Housing, 2025.
- Margaret Low and Tiana Lewis, More Than Just Affordable Housing: The Emergence of Indigenous Community Land Trusts, Land Back, and Healing, UBC Balanced Supply of Housing and the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts, 2024.
- Kristi Leora Gansworth et al., Land Trusts and Indigenous Peoples: The Canadian Context, Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership, 2024.
- Nat Pace and Jane O’Brien Davis, Reclaim, Remain: Community land trusts led by racialized communities in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Nova Scotia, Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts / UBC, 2024.
- Barger, Vaughan, Aiu et al., Kīpuka Kuleana: restoring relationships to place through a community-based land trust, Frontiers in Sustainability, 2024.
- Middleton Manning, Gould et al., A place to belong: creating an urban, Indian, women-led land trust in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ecology and Society, 2023.
- CMHC Housing Observer, Community land trusts create affordable housing for Indigenous Peoples, 2022.
- Ecotrust Canada, Developing a Community Land Trust (Homelands Toolkit), 2022. A practical guide for First Nations in British Columbia.
- Cheyenne Reynoso, Creating the Space to Reimagine and Rematriate Beyond a Settler-Colonial Present, MA thesis, UCLA, 2022.
- Lise Gibbons, Indigenous housing in the city: exploring the potential of CLTs, MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 2016.
Articles, podcasts and video
Show all 23 articles, podcasts and videos (newest first)
- Making ‘Land Back’ a reality through an Indigenous community land trust, Michelle Vassel and David Cobb, Resilience, June 2026
- NDN Collective transfers Alaska parcel to Eyak Community Land Trust, Tribal Business News, February 2026
- What Is Land Justice?, Nonprofit Quarterly, December 2025
- Harnessing the shock of disaster to propel change, Autumn Ness (Lahaina CLT), Shelterforce, October 2025
- Wiyot-Led Affordable Housing Projects Will Bolster Eureka’s Downtown Housing Supply with 93 New Units, Lost Coast Outpost, March 2025
- NDN Collective Completes Landback Deal in Alaska, NDN Collective, November 2024
- Community land trusts preserve housing and cultural identity (podcast, with Tierras Indígenas CLT), KPBS, September 2024
- Land Back and Liberated Zones through Community Land Trusts, Cooperation Jackson, August 2024
- Rematriation interview with Corrina Gould, Jessica Kutz, The 19th, November 2023
- Are land trusts part of the Land Back movement?, Nika Bartoo-Smith, ICT, September 2023
- How California’s Wiyot Tribe turned to community land trusts to fight for justice, Co-op News, August 2023
- Wiyot Tribe Makes Its Case, Convinces Eureka Council to Award Affordable Housing Projects to Tribal Land Trust Agency, Lost Coast Outpost, July 2023
- Land Back with David Cobb (podcast), The Response, Shareable, July 2023
- The Wiyot Tribe Is Getting Its Land Back and Making California More Affordable, Dwell, May 2023
- An Indigenous Community Land Trust Is Creating Housing Through #LandBack, Next City, March 2023
- Where Indigenous Land Return Is Already Possible (webinar, with Sogorea Te’), Next City, January 2023
- Indigenous and Black Communities Find Common Cause for Land Justice, PennElys Droz, YES! Magazine, November 2022
- Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and City of Oakland Announce Plan to Return Land to Indigenous Stewardship, City of Oakland, September 2022
- Decolonization: Moving from Metaphor to Practice (video), Michelle Vassel and David Cobb, Institute for Social Ecology, February 2022
- An Indigenous Community Land Trust Rises: Making Land Back a Reality, Nonprofit Quarterly, October 2021
- Dishgamu Humboldt, Thadeus Greenson, North Coast Journal, July 2021
- It’s time for environmentalists to become Indigenous rights activists, Autumn Ness, Medium
- Decolonize (video playlist), oral teachings by Norm Leech (St’at’imc), Downtown Eastside CLT
More news on community land trusts is in CLTs in the News.