40 acres and a mule vs giving natives back their land
40 acres for every Black American would be 1.769 billion acres of the US’s 2.43 billion acre area, for a total of 72% of the land. Combined with the percent of the US that rightfully belongs to natives, we end up with a total of 1.72 times the US’s current size, so we clearly can’t satisfy both without expanding the country. I propose that we draft all white people into digging a secondary subterranean layer, providing the additional required land while providing humane employment for a demographic that sunburns easily.
Your plan involves twice as much work as it needs to.
We only need to dig a subterranian layer below half of the US. We can use the dirt we get from the under-layer to create an over-layer, and if we add the two up we get the same amount of land for half the labor. We can then focus on building infrastructure and housing on the new layers using the labor we would have used to finish the subterranian layer.
Land back. This is not controversial. Stewardship councils already exist; it is not some flight of fancy to suggest that maybe the colonists should have a condition of their continued use of the land be stewardship rather than exploitation and speculation.
The gist is that there are existing indigenous stewardship organizations (that is, organizations wholly operated by an indigenous nation) whose purpose is to develop and maintain their nation’s lands the same way they did for all the time before colonists came and fucked shit up. If you own land, you can give that land to the stewards. The land is then added to the nation, rather than being an explicit part of the colonist project (i.e., the land is no longer “owned” or part of the “land market”). Generally, the previous “owner” of the land is allowed to continue living on and working that land in accordance with the nation’s laws, with a particular focus on preserving the land and maintaining the harmony of the local ecosystem. There’s paperwork involved, and I’m not personally versed in the process, but the link dump below has some useful resources about what stewardship means, how to give your land back, and some of the nations that participate in this process.
Link dump:
https://www.fws.gov/nativeamerican/pdf/tek-indigenous.pdf
https://www.firstnations.org/projects/mapping-ecological-stewardship-opportunities-meso/
https://resourcegeneration.org/land-reparations-indigenous-solidarity-action-guide/
with a particular focus on preserving the land and maintaining the harmony of the local ecosystem.
Finally a good excuse to stop mowing the lawn
Giving the natives their mules back
40 Acre mules giving the natives their land back.
