10. Return Land, Wealth, and Access to Indigenous and Black Communities

Design Justice demands Indigenous and Black land sovereignty,  land return, and the rights of land itself. Our communities' relationships with land are critical to our survival, safety, and potential to thrive.

Design Justice demands Indigenous and Black land sovereignty,  land return, and the rights of land itself. Our communities' relationships with land are critical to our survival, safety, and potential to thrive. These relationships are inherently spatial, in and outside of existing western systems of land theft, private property, and intergenerational wealth hoarding. This is particularly critical, as communities of color have historically borne the brunt of climate and environmental injustice. Built environment disciplines must acknowledge past and present harm and actively prevent future harm by dismantling power structures within our field that perpetuate this harm while simultaneously working in solidarity with communities in cultivating land access and land sovereignty.

Ultimately, Design Justice looks like the return of land, land as reparations, and land access for Indigenous and Black communities descended from distinct yet entangled histories of enslavement, genocide, and dispossession. It advocates for all communities historically marginalized and dispossessed of land—recognizing that this work should and will look different in different contexts and requires the ongoing collaborative building of futures. As well, Design Justice demands an end to violence against land and land-based communities through racial capitalist and settler colonial resource extraction, toxic pollution, agroindustrial monocultures, commodification, and militarization. In doing this work, we demand that Black and Indigenous knowledge systems be at the center of our action, which means design workers must decenter western epistemologies that alienate the land from ourselves, our communities, and our work. We must identify ways to repair both ecological and social relations with land in solidarity with the original peoples of  the land.