NDN Collective launches LANDBACK Action Network

RAPID CITY – Today, at the start of Earth Week, NDN Collective announced the launch of the LANDBACK Action Network (LAN) – a growing network of Indigenous people, organizations, grassroots groups, Tribal Nations, multiracial movement organizations, community members, organizers and accomplices working together to strengthen the LANDBACK movement and towards the collective liberation for all people and Mother Earth.

Alongside the announcement of the network itself, LAN today is also launching the new landback.org, a public storytelling platform where members of the network will offer insight, opportunities, and calls to action.

Earth Week originally began with Earth Day in 1970 in response to the rapid industrial development that was poisoning the planet and going virtually unchecked. Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by the end of the year and to the Clean Water Act just two years later.

But for Indigenous Peoples, every day is Earth Day, and has been for thousands of years. And with the regulatory infrastructure of the EPA completely gutted and now committed to “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion,” the fragility of the federal safeguards and accountability mechanisms for environmental protections have never been more clear.

“We’re launching the LANDBACK Action Network to break the isolation that authoritarianism thrives in by connecting Indigenous people across Turtle Island, Oceania, and beyond,” said Nick Tilsen, founder and CEO of NDN Collective. “The network will catalyze LANDBACK as an expansive theory of liberation that includes building infrastructure for land-based Indigenous practices like food sovereignty, language restoration, cultural and spiritual reconnection, and ecological restoration.”

“These times demand organized, united, expansive movements and formations to advance solutions and shape shared agendas while advancing a just and equitable future,” said Nicole Yanes, Membership Manager at NDN Collective. “Colonial forces rely on our isolation. But when we come together, we build collective power. That’s the work of the LANDBACK Action Network.”

Since its inception, NDN Collective has been in relationship with over 1,400 Indigenous organizers, organizations, Tribal Nations, and communities actively working on LANDBACK for their people, as well as non-Indigenous individuals and institutions supporting the LANDBACK movement. The LAN is built on that existing robust, connective foundation. It will function as a secure platform to strengthen and expand the reach and power of the LANDBACK movement by connecting, mobilizing, resourcing, and supporting people and organizations committed to returning land to its rightful stewards.

To make the work of LANDBACK sustainable, the LAN will also function as a vital resource for organizers navigating moments of state violence, climate disaster, or displacement. The LAN will function as a hub for both coordinated rapid response and long-term political power to ensure the work can continue far into the future.

The post NDN Collective launches LANDBACK Action Network first appeared on Native Sun News Today.

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