Creating Spaces of Realized Justice: Right to Land
When we imagine a utopian life, we might imagine community, justice, and joy. This vision glimmers like dappled sunlight on rippling water, beautiful and intangible. But when we reach out to grab it, our hand sinks under the surface; it is simply too good to be true.
How much of what we yearn for is truly possible? A large part of the Left-leaning anti-capitalist discourse is revealing the horrors and irrationality of the current system, describing its history and naming its profound effects. We, however, need more discourse around what we might create instead, and what that alternative future will need in the present.
There are four things that I believe are central to creating these spaces, although there are many more things we will need. These are, in my opinion, essential in our current context: sovereign land, anarchic communities, free education, and – perhaps the most controversial – self defense. To begin with, I want to start with land sovereignty. Justice requires all of us to have and realize our right to land.
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It may not be surprising that land is a priority to an environmentalist such as myself, but the right to land is more than an environmental principle. It’s not an abstract requirement for aesthetic and moral purposes. I don’t speak of land for other living beings, although that is just as important. Land is a human right.
Maybe when I say ‘land,’ you and I imagine a few hundred hectares of freshly mowed grass. But this understanding of land is one incubated by colonial-capitalists. It’s not Land as a human right. Let us imagine instead the diversity and life of Land, its meandering rivers and towering mountains, its dense forests with all manners of fruit and mushrooms ripe for our enjoyment. Let us imagine Land that we do not own but share with all life.
Before the notion of property was popularized and defended religiously, land was owned by everyone. There was no hierarchy between people of land-owners and land-tenants. Likewise, there was minimal hierarchy between humans and all other life. When land became ‘private property,’ the majority of people were forced to be servants and slaves at the bottom of these hierarchical relationships. Very few people were the landlords, the owners.
Many people taking part in the complex hierarchies of today will argue that this system of ownership is the only logical way. They might say that it is the best solution to scarcity, and that human nature demands some people to have more power than the majority. These arguments fall apart quickly when you point out that the only practical reason for a few select people owning the land is to make money. The only reason hierarchies and land ownership continue to exist is for a few people to have substantially more wealth, leisure, and power than the rest of all people. The concept of scarcity and the morality of the powerful were constructed after the fact. In reality, there is enough land and resources for everyone if we make the right systems, and because human nature is to be imperfect, there is no one exempt from this nature, including the landlords.
Imposing a hierarchy on land ownership restricted all of our human rights to freedom and self-determination. The person who has no access to land must depend on others who do, and so must give their labor until the landlord is satisfied enough to give them money or access. Land is inherently connected to freedom and survival, and so access to land is one of the most basic human rights.
Currently, our society denies us our right to land. Indigenous peoples and communities who have been taking care of the land for centuries are being dispossessed by so-called modern necessities: dams, highways, and oil fields (for example, Kaliwa Dam in the Cordillera region of Luzon). Peasant farmers in the Philippines, despite their immense importance as providers, have less and less right to the land they till. Abundant farmlands are owned by a few landlords who exact high prices on farmers, which combined with low local prices and high levels of importation, sends farmers into increasing amounts of debt which leads to landlessness and joblessness. My heart broke when I heard of news in January of farmers who had died by suicide, driven to take their own lives by the hopelessness of their situation (CNN Philippines).
What must we do? If land is a human right, intrinsically connected to freedom and self-determination, how can we fight for it? Firstly, we need to unlearn the harmful beliefs we hold about ownership. No one group of people owns the land. “How can you own that which outlives you? Only the people own the land because only the people live forever.” These are the words of Macli’ing Dulag, tribal chieftain of the Butbut tribe in Kalinga province of the Philippines. He alludes to nature’s eternality and how our individual life spans cannot compare. We only gain eternality when we unite ourselves with the past and present. We, too, are Nature and Eternal – but only when we humble ourselves and identify with the whole of humanity, all the generations of the past and all the generations yet to come.
Even then, humanity is not the only species. Even intergenerationally, we cannot lay claim to the land by ourselves. It seems paradoxical – how can all people own the land and yet no one own the land? Here we have to depart from the word. We have unlearned ownership so much that it is paradoxical, so we must leave it behind. We need to use the word kinship. We are in eternal kinship with the land. Evolving from the same basic elements, the same primordial space soup, we are quite literally related to the land and all living beings. Have you ever heard someone say they own their sister? No, that would be crazy and sadistic. It is the same with the land and other living beings.
After unlearning ownership and fostering kinship, what must we do next? Vandana Shiva, world-renowned food sovereignty activist and philosopher, nicknamed the “Gandhi of Grain,” points us toward the seed. We must practice our kinship with the land and all living things by saving seeds. Doing so fosters biodiversity, the diversity of species and the genetics among species, and allows life to flourish. Wherever there is seed and soil, there is freedom.
“The seed does the work, the farmers do the breeding, and all that the corporations do is collect rent.” – Vandana Shiva. Peasant farmers are truly at the frontlines of the resistance against the colonial-capitalist hegemony because of their close relationship with the land. In our fight to realize our right to land, we also need to be protecting those at the forefront of the struggle.
I imagine small pockets of communities at the edges of our society, saving seeds and growing diverse gardens of fruit and vegetables. Having unlearned and abolished hierarchical relations, these communities are practicing kinship with the land. They in their humility and wisdom are feeling the joy of reciprocal relationships, the sweetness of true freedom.