Facilitating reparative land transitions at this moment in history requires practitioners who are rooted in an historical and racial analysis of the situation we aim to heal. Practitioners of law, real estate, mediation, and other technical fields can offer invaluable support by bringing a relationship-centered and culturally affirming approach to ethical land transition. It is essential that practitioners receive support themselves in this bridging and code-switching work, ensuring that the needs and perspectives of the Indigenous, Black, and Cultural Communities reuniting with Land, as well as the Land itself, are prioritized.
In the South of our Compass we acknowledge that practitioners of ethical land transitions are creating new fields of practice. We are reframing our professions to align with ethical frameworks centered on justice, which often differ from those taught in law school and in real estate programs. We focus on accompaniment and solidarity, humble to the fact that we are also undergoing personal transformations in our worldviews. As we learn to dismantle oppressive systems, we strive to do so without fixing, saving, or dominating the people and movement spaces we serve.
Facilitating repair and practicing ethical land transitions is a learning journey for practitioners that demands greater cultural competence in intercultural contexts. Learning to center the self-determinism, cosmologies, and cultural practices of communities reuniting with Land is deep work. It requires practitioners who orient toward Land and Liberation while engaging in their own lineage work to examine what they must reunite with and what they must relinquish as they too come into right relationship with Land.
Don’t know where to begin? Start here: