Market purchase by a land trust is restoring endangered maple sugarbush at White Earth.

Evidence

In 1989, to directly address the crisis of land tenure on White Earth, we founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) with the proceeds of a Reebok Human Rights Award. The WELRP works to return White Earth land to the Anishinaabeg by supporting the transfer of public lands back to the White Earth tribal government, buying land from willing sellers, and other mechanisms. To date, we have purchased over 1,300 acres of land—primarily maple sugarbush, the most endangered ecosystem on the reservation—which is held in a conservation land trust. The project also seeks to preserve White Earth land, even when held by others, including Native cemeteries, forests, and other endangered ecosystems. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 655

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the reader’s own ‘Grafting & Growth’ infrastructure essay on maple sugarbush and land trusts as a re-commoning tool. — connects to: White Earth’s clearcut funded Weyerhaeuser and lasted a century. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 65; Resistance through litigation and land recovery is restoring White Earth forests and culture — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 67; Menominee sustained 140 years of harvest yet holds more timber than in 1854. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 668 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: Supports the trees-as-infrastructure piece: conservation land trust purchasing of sugarbush is a concrete restorative mechanism parallel to the living-root-bridge and bark-cloth cases.