Land-rights law can be redirected to steward rather than possess the land

Evidence

The Onondaga Nation took a different approach. Their claim was made under United States law, but its moral power lay in the directives of the Great Law: to act on behalf of peace, the natural world, and future generations. They did not call their suit a land claim, because they know that land is not property, but a gift, the sustainer of life. Tadodaho Sidney Hill has said that the Onondaga Nation will never seek to evict people from their homes. The Onondaga people know the pain of displacement too well to inflict it on their neighbors. Instead the suit was termed a land rights action. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1169

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘On Sacrifice’ / land-rights thread and the earlier chapter claims about Indigenous land-as-gift versus settler land-as-property (ch4), now applied as a legal strategy for the reader’s Legal Systems land-rights course.
• XREF: Connects to the Earth jurisprudence and rights-of-nature movement (Christopher Stone’s ‘Should Trees Have Standing’) applicable across the Legal Systems leg of the polyad. — connects to: Abuse of land stems from regarding it as owned commodity rather than community — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 10; Land stewardship fails for lack of pride or shame in husbanding wild things — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 558; Ecological reasoning led courts to deny landowners absolute rights over land — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 319 (+7 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘calling it a land rights action instead of a land claim’ as rhetorical reframing that converts a defensive ownership dispute into a caretaking mandate.

Broader Connections

• Excessive property rights can block beneficial use rather than enable it #expands (0.85) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 2284
• Reciprocity with the land is possible even where land and nature are absent #qualifies (0.75) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 867