History of Indigenous Land Loss.
United States Federal Expansion, Treaties, Removal, and Allotment
Reservations and Allotments
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress | July 21, 2025
This Library of Congress guide explains how reservation policy and allotment reshaped Native space and produced major land loss.
Native Americans and the Homestead Act
| National Park Service | National Park Service | September 17, 2024
This article explains how homesteading transferred land in many states that had been traditional or treaty lands of Native nations.
The Expedition's Impact on Indigenous Americans
| National Park Service | National Park Service | November 29, 2023
This article connects the Lewis and Clark expedition to later U.S. expansion, removal, reservations, and the loss of Indigenous homelands.
Native Nations Face the Loss of Land and Traditions
| National Park Service | National Park Service | September 13, 2022
This article explains how land loss also damaged cultural identity, sacred sites, burial places, and traditional lifeways.
The Dawes Act
| National Park Service | National Park Service | July 9, 2021
The National Park Service explains how allotment divided communally held reservation lands and opened so-called surplus land to non-Native settlers.
Teaching American Indian History with Primary Sources
| National Park Service | National Park Service | December 10, 2020
This teaching guide uses primary sources to trace treaties, expansion, Native resistance, and land loss across U.S. history.
Indian Treaties and the Removal Act of 1830
| Office of the Historian | U.S. Department of State | n.d.
This article explains how the United States used treaties, the Indian Removal Act, coercion, and violated court rulings to displace Native nations from the eastern United States.
Removing Native Americans from Their Land
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress | n.d.
The Library of Congress explains how U.S. expansion, treaties, reservations, and federal policy pushed Native nations from their homelands and transferred Indigenous territory to settlers.
American Indian Removal: What Does It Mean to Remove a People?
| National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.
This teaching resource uses Native perspectives, documents, maps, and images to examine the causes and human consequences of forced removal.
Impact of Native American Removal
| National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.
This resource explains how treaties, fraud, intimidation, and violence removed about 100,000 Native people west of the Mississippi between about 1830 and 1850.
History of Allotment
| Indian Land Tenure Foundation | Indian Land Tenure Foundation | n.d.
This article traces the federal allotment policy that broke up tribal landholdings and weakened Indigenous control over land.
Land Issues
| Indian Land Tenure Foundation | Indian Land Tenure Foundation | n.d.
The Indian Land Tenure Foundation summarizes how U.S. policy reduced Native land ownership and control by tens of millions of acres.
Land Tenure Issues
| Indian Land Tenure Foundation | Indian Land Tenure Foundation | n.d.
This article explains the long-term effects of allotment, fractionated ownership, land loss, and barriers to tribal land recovery.
Legacies of Allotment and Indigenous Resistance
| Native Governance Center | Native Governance Center | n.d.
This guide explains how allotment took more than 90 million acres of Indigenous land and connects that history to modern Native resistance.
Native American Lands: Ownership and Governance
| Office of Natural Resources Revenue | U.S. Department of the Interior | n.d.
This federal explainer summarizes Native land ownership, trust land, allotment, and how land loss changed tribal governance.
Federal Law and Indian Policy Overview
| Bureau of Indian Affairs | U.S. Department of the Interior | n.d.
This overview explains major eras of federal Indian policy, including treaty making, removal, allotment, reorganization, termination, and self-determination.
Homesteading and Indigenous Dispossession
| Digital Scholarship Lab | University of Richmond | n.d.
This essay explains how the Homestead Act depended on earlier dispossession through treaties, military force, and federal land policy.
Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations
| National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.
This exhibition explains treaty making between Native nations and the United States, emphasizing that treaties were often coerced or broken.
Excerpts from Do All Indians Live in Tipis?
| National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.
This Native Knowledge 360 resource explains common misconceptions and describes allotment as a policy designed to break up reservations.
Historical Timeline of American Indian Policies
| Iowa State University | American Indian Studies Program | n.d.
This timeline summarizes major U.S. Indian policies, including removal, treaty making, allotment, termination, and self-determination.
Treaty of Paris, 1763
| Office of the Historian | U.S. Department of State | n.d.
This article explains how imperial treaty making transferred claims to vast territories without Indigenous consent.
Royal Proclamation of 1763
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
This article explains how Britain attempted to regulate colonial expansion after 1763 while still asserting imperial control over Indigenous lands.
Treaty of Fort Stanwix
| Encyclopaedia Britannica | Encyclopaedia Britannica | n.d.
This article explains how colonial officials negotiated a boundary that opened more western land to settlement and affected nations whose lands were claimed by others.
Northwest Ordinance
| National Archives | National Archives | n.d.
This document page explains the ordinance governing western lands, including language about Indigenous property that was often contradicted by expansion.
Louisiana Purchase
| Office of the Historian | U.S. Department of State | n.d.
This article explains how the United States acquired imperial claims to a vast region where many Indigenous nations already lived.
Indian Removal Act
| National Archives | National Archives | n.d.
This National Archives page provides the text and context of the 1830 law that authorized removal treaties and opened Native homelands to settlement.
Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek
| National Archives | National Archives | n.d.
This treaty page documents the agreement that ceded Choctaw lands and became a model for removal.
Treaty of New Echota: Primary Source
| National Archives | National Archives | n.d.
This primary source page documents the controversial treaty used by the United States to remove the Cherokee Nation.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
| National Archives | National Archives | n.d.
This treaty transferred vast territory from Mexico to the United States, intensifying U.S. control over Indigenous homelands in the Southwest and West.
The Annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War
| Office of the Historian | U.S. Department of State | n.d.
This article explains how U.S. expansion through Texas annexation and war with Mexico reshaped control over lands inhabited by many Native nations.
Gadsden Purchase
| Office of the Historian | U.S. Department of State | n.d.
This article explains how the Gadsden Purchase added land in the Southwest while ignoring Indigenous sovereignty and land rights.
Native American History and Culture: Boarding Schools and Land
| National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.
This resource connects forced assimilation to wider federal policies that separated Native children, cultures, and communities from land.
Termination Policy
| National Library of Medicine | Native Voices | n.d.
This timeline entry explains termination as a federal policy that ended recognition for some tribes and threatened land bases and services.
Relocation and Termination
| National Library of Medicine | Native Voices | n.d.
This entry explains how mid-twentieth-century relocation and termination policies pushed Native people away from tribal homelands.
United States Regional and Tribal Case Studies
Report Finds Colorado Was Built on Indigenous Land Expropriation
| Associated Press | Associated Press | June 14, 2024
This article reports on a Native-led study documenting Indigenous land takings in Colorado and recommending restoration and compensation.
Truth, Restoration, and Education Commission Report
| People of the Sacred Land | People of the Sacred Land | 2024
This report examines Indigenous land dispossession in Colorado and proposes truth-telling, reparative action, and land restoration.
How a Navajo Scientist Is Helping to Restore Traditional Peach Horticulture
| National Park Service | National Park Service | June 22, 2022
This article connects Navajo removal, the destruction of orchards, and cultural restoration through traditional agriculture.
The Potawatomi Trail of Death
| Citizen Potawatomi Nation | Citizen Potawatomi Nation | September 25, 2014
This tribal history article explains the forced removal of Potawatomi people from Indiana to Kansas.
Muscogee Creek Removal
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This PDF explains how treaty pressure, allotment provisions, violence, and removal separated Muscogee people from homelands in Alabama and Georgia.
We Have a Story to Tell: Native Peoples of the Chesapeake Region
| National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.
This teaching guide explores Native nations in the Chesapeake and shows how colonial settlement and treaty relationships changed Indigenous land control.
Standing Rock Sioux and the Dakota Access Pipeline
| National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.
This resource connects modern pipeline conflict to treaty rights, land protection, and the continuing consequences of dispossession.
The Great Sioux Reservation
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This planning document summarizes how treaties and federal actions reduced the Great Sioux Reservation into smaller reservations.
Trail of Tears
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This National Park Service site documents the forced removal of Cherokee people and other Native nations from southeastern homelands.
Trail of Tears National Historic Trail: History and Culture
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This history page explains the forced routes, death, loss, and homeland dispossession associated with the Trail of Tears.
Cherokee Removal
| New Georgia Encyclopedia | University of Georgia Press | n.d.
This article explains how Georgia, the federal government, and settlers dispossessed the Cherokee Nation and forced removal west.
The Treaty of New Echota
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This article explains the disputed treaty used to justify Cherokee removal despite broad Cherokee opposition.
Seminole Wars
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This article explains how U.S. military campaigns and removal policy targeted Seminole lands and sovereignty in Florida.
The Creek War and Treaty of Fort Jackson
| Encyclopedia of Alabama | Encyclopedia of Alabama | n.d.
This article explains how the 1814 treaty forced a massive Creek land cession after U.S. military victory.
Chickasaw Removal
| Chickasaw Nation | Chickasaw Nation | n.d.
This tribal history page explains Chickasaw removal from ancestral homelands to Indian Territory.
Choctaw Removal
| Choctaw Nation | Choctaw Nation | n.d.
This tribal history page explains the Choctaw Nation’s forced removal and the loss of homelands in the Southeast.
California Indian History
| California Native American Heritage Commission | State of California | n.d.
This state resource summarizes missionization, violence, treaty failures, land loss, and survival of California Native peoples.
California Indian Treaties
| National Archives | National Archives | n.d.
This page explains the unratified California treaties that left many California Native nations without promised reservation lands.
The Eighteen Lost Treaties of California
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This article explains how the U.S. negotiated but failed to ratify treaties that would have reserved land for California Native nations.
California Genocide
| Calisphere | University of California | n.d.
This essay explains how state violence, militia campaigns, forced labor, and land seizure devastated California Native communities.
Native Americans in the California Missions
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This article explains how Spanish missions disrupted Native land, labor, culture, and community life in California.
Missionization and Indigenous California
This article examines missionization as a process that transformed Indigenous land relationships and imposed colonial control.
The Gold Rush and Native Americans
| PBS American Experience | PBS | n.d.
This article connects the California Gold Rush to land seizure, violence, and catastrophic effects on Native peoples.
Indian Country and the Gold Rush
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This article explains how the Gold Rush intensified the invasion of Native lands and destruction of California Native communities.
The Navajo Long Walk
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This article explains the forced removal of Diné people to Bosque Redondo and the eventual negotiated return to a reduced homeland.
Bosque Redondo Memorial
| New Mexico Historic Sites | State of New Mexico | n.d.
This site explains the imprisonment of Diné and Mescalero Apache people at Bosque Redondo after forced removal from their homelands.
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851
| National Archives | National Archives | n.d.
This lesson explains treaty relations on the Plains and how U.S. expansion repeatedly undermined Indigenous territorial rights.
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868
| National Archives | National Archives | n.d.
This primary source page documents the treaty that recognized Lakota rights to the Black Hills and other lands later violated by U.S. policy.
The Black Hills and Lakota Land Rights
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This article explains the sacred significance of the Black Hills and the conflict over U.S. seizure of Lakota treaty land.
The Sand Creek Massacre
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This National Park Service history explains the massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people and its connection to Colorado land conflict.
Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This site preserves the history of the Sand Creek Massacre and the broader struggle over Cheyenne and Arapaho homelands.
Courts, Claims, and Legal Doctrine
South Dakota v. Yankton Sioux Tribe
| Supreme Court of the United States | Library of Congress | 1998
This case reviews allotment-era statutes and the disputed reduction of reservation territory.
Solem v. Bartlett
| Supreme Court of the United States | Library of Congress | 1984
This Supreme Court case discusses allotment history and reservation boundaries, showing how land policies continued to affect tribal jurisdiction.
Montana v. United States
| Supreme Court of the United States | Library of Congress | 1981
This case discusses allotment on the Crow Reservation and illustrates how non-Native fee lands inside reservations complicated tribal authority.
United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians
| Justia | U.S. Supreme Court | 1980
This case summary explains the Supreme Court ruling that the United States had taken the Black Hills in violation of treaty obligations.
Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones
| Supreme Court of the United States | Library of Congress | 1973
This case discusses the Indian Reorganization Act as a shift away from allotment and toward halting further tribal land loss.
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989
| International Labour Organization | International Labour Organization | 1989
This convention sets international standards for Indigenous land rights, consultation, and protection from forced relocation.
Indian Claims Commission
| Wikipedia contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview explains the federal body that heard tribal claims for lands taken by the United States, usually resolving claims through money rather than land return.
The Indian Claims Commission
| Federal Judicial Center | Federal Judicial Center | n.d.
This article explains the commission created to hear tribal land claims, often offering monetary compensation rather than land return.
Indian Claims Commission Decisions
| Oklahoma State University Library | Oklahoma State University | n.d.
This digital collection provides access to claims decisions that document land-loss disputes between Native nations and the United States.
The Doctrine of Discovery
| Upstander Project | Upstander Project | n.d.
This explainer describes the legal and religious ideas used by European powers to justify claiming Indigenous lands.
Doctrine of Discovery
| Gilder Lehrman Institute | Gilder Lehrman Institute | n.d.
This article explains the origins of the Doctrine of Discovery and its role in European claims to Indigenous territories.
Johnson v. M'Intosh
This case summary explains the Supreme Court decision that embedded the Doctrine of Discovery into U.S. property law.
The Doctrine of Discovery and Federal Indian Law
| Native American Rights Fund | Native American Rights Fund | n.d.
This article explains how the Doctrine of Discovery shaped federal Indian law and Indigenous land rights.
Worcester v. Georgia
This case summary explains the Supreme Court decision recognizing Cherokee sovereignty that federal and state officials failed to protect.
Research, Maps, Education, and Public Memory
A Republic Built on Native Land
| Native News Online | Native News Online | July 2026
This article connects the United States’ 250th anniversary to the long history of treaty making, land cessions, and Native dispossession.
Nothing More of This Land
| Washington Post | Washington Post | July 15, 2025
This review discusses Joseph Lee’s book on Aquinnah Wampanoag identity, sovereignty, federal recognition, and the fragility of tribal land rights.
Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession
| Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project | Cornell University | October 18, 2023
This article explains how land-grant university wealth was tied to lands taken from Indigenous peoples.
Without Indigenous History, There Is No U.S. History
| Ned Blackhawk | Time | April 24, 2023
This essay argues that U.S. history cannot be understood without centering Indigenous nations, land, and the expansion of settler power.
Indigenous Nations and the Development of the U.S. Economy
| Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis | Journal of Economic History | 2022
This scholarly article examines how U.S. economic development depended on the transfer of land and resources from Indigenous nations.
Land-Grab Universities
| High Country News | High Country News | March 30, 2020
This investigative project maps how land-grant universities benefited from Indigenous lands taken through the Morrill Act.
Indigenous Land Acknowledgement, Explained
| Teen Vogue | Teen Vogue | February 8, 2018
This article explains land acknowledgments as a practice that names Indigenous peoples and draws attention to histories of colonization and land loss.
Morrill Act and Indigenous Land
| Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project | Cornell University | n.d.
This project examines how Cornell University benefited from lands seized, ceded, or expropriated from Indigenous nations.
The Invasion of America
| Claudio Saunt | University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab | n.d.
This interactive map visualizes the loss of Native land and the spread of U.S. state power from the late eighteenth century forward.
Native Land Digital
| Native Land Digital | Native Land Digital | n.d.
This mapping project helps users identify Indigenous territories, treaties, and languages, making visible the lands erased by colonial maps.
Mapping Indigenous Land Dispossession
| University of Wisconsin-Madison | University of Wisconsin-Madison | n.d.
This educational module uses maps to explain land cessions, allotment, reservations, and Indigenous dispossession in Wisconsin and beyond.
Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past
| Smithsonian Institution | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.
This Smithsonian resource connects Indigenous survival, land, sovereignty, and the continuing effects of colonial dispossession.
Indigenous Peoples in the United States
| Minority Rights Group International | Minority Rights Group International | n.d.
This profile summarizes Native nations’ histories of dispossession, forced assimilation, treaty violations, and contemporary rights struggles.
Indigenous Land Dispossession
| New York State Archives Trust | New York State Archives Trust | n.d.
This teaching resource explains how Indigenous people in New York and across the United States lost land through migration, disease, treaties, and government policy.
Alaska
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This history explains the Alaska lands question, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and later debates over parks and subsistence rights.
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act Overview
| ANCSA Regional Association | ANCSA Regional Association | n.d.
This overview explains the 1971 settlement that extinguished Aboriginal land claims in Alaska in exchange for land selections and corporate structures.
Hawaii
The Apology Resolution
| United States Congress | GovInfo | November 23, 1993
This federal resolution acknowledges U.S. involvement in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its effects on Native Hawaiian self-determination.
Native Hawaiian Land Loss
| National Park Service | National Park Service | n.d.
This article explains how Native Hawaiian land tenure changed under colonial, missionary, business, and U.S. influence.
The Māhele
| Ulukau Hawaiian Electronic Library | Ulukau | n.d.
This resource provides materials on the Māhele, the nineteenth-century land division that transformed Hawaiian land ownership.
Hawaiian Kingdom Overthrow
| Office of the Historian | U.S. Department of State | n.d.
This article explains the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and U.S. annexation, events central to Native Hawaiian land and sovereignty loss.
Canada
Canada's Colonial Genocide of Indigenous Peoples
| Kim Matheson and colleagues | Public Health Reviews | 2022
This scholarly article discusses Canadian colonial policies, including land dispossession, cultural destruction, and the health effects of colonialism.
A History of Indigenous and Settler Relations to Land in Ontario
| D. J. S. Diamond | University of Toronto | 2022
This thesis examines Indigenous and settler relationships to land and the legal and political processes of dispossession.
Dispossession, Destruction, and the Reserves
| Facing History and Ourselves | Facing History and Ourselves | July 28, 2020
This article explains how reserves in Canada and other settler colonies were used to dispossess Indigenous peoples and restrict movement.
Indigenous Peoples and Lands in Canada
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
This article explains Aboriginal title in Canadian law and the long struggle over recognition of Indigenous land rights.
Numbered Treaties
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
This article explains the treaties that opened large areas of western and northern Canada to settlement while restricting Indigenous land bases.
The Indian Act
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
This article explains how Canada’s Indian Act controlled Indigenous governance, reserves, status, and land management.
Reserves in Canada
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
This article explains the creation of reserves and how reserve systems confined Indigenous peoples to small portions of their territories.
Indigenous Peoples and the Canadian State
| Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada | Government of Canada | n.d.
This government page provides historical context on treaties, reserves, and Crown-Indigenous relations.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
| National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation | National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation | n.d.
These reports document how residential schools were part of broader colonial policies that separated Indigenous peoples from land, family, culture, and sovereignty.
Australia
The Historical Process of Dispossession of Indigenous Peoples in Australia and Canada
| Len Collard and colleagues | Edith Cowan University | n.d.
This scholarly article compares the appropriation of Indigenous land in Western Australia and British Columbia.
The Impacts of Colonisation
| Yoorrook Justice Commission | Yoorrook Justice Commission | n.d.
This article explains how colonisation in Victoria forcibly removed First Peoples from Country and disrupted land, culture, and families.
Terra Nullius
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | n.d.
This article explains the doctrine of terra nullius and how it denied Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights.
Mabo Decision
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | n.d.
This article explains the 1992 Mabo decision, which rejected terra nullius and recognized native title in Australian law.
Native Title
| Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies | AIATSIS | n.d.
This resource explains native title, colonisation, land rights, and the legal struggle for recognition of Indigenous land relationships.
Aboriginal Land Rights Act
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | n.d.
This article explains the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Rights Act and its significance in land recovery.
Australia's Historic Landback Efforts
| CNT Editors | Condé Nast Traveler | n.d.
This article reports on land handbacks in Australia and connects them to Indigenous stewardship, tourism, and global landback movements.
New Zealand
Waitangi Treaty Grounds: The Treaty
| Waitangi Treaty Grounds | Waitangi Treaty Grounds | n.d.
This article explains the Treaty of Waitangi and its central role in Māori land, sovereignty, and colonial conflict.
Te Tiriti o Waitangi
| Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand | New Zealand Government | n.d.
This article explains the Treaty of Waitangi, translation differences, and disputes over sovereignty and land.
New Zealand Wars
| New Zealand History | New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage | n.d.
This article explains how wars between Māori and the Crown were closely tied to land purchases, confiscations, and settler expansion.
Māori Land Loss
| Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand | New Zealand Government | n.d.
This article explains how Māori land ownership was transformed and reduced through Crown purchases, war, confiscation, and the Native Land Court.
The Native Land Court
| Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand | New Zealand Government | n.d.
This article explains how the Native Land Court individualized Māori land titles and accelerated land alienation.
Land Confiscation
| New Zealand History | New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage | n.d.
This article explains how the New Zealand government confiscated Māori land after the wars and how those seizures shaped later claims.
Waitangi Tribunal
| Waitangi Tribunal | New Zealand Government | n.d.
This page explains the tribunal that investigates Treaty of Waitangi breaches, including historic land loss and confiscation.
Latin America
Indigenous Peoples in Latin America
| World Bank | World Bank | n.d.
This report summarizes Indigenous peoples’ land, poverty, exclusion, and rights struggles in Latin America.
Indigenous Peoples and Land Rights in Latin America
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
This resource collects country-level material on Indigenous land rights, extractive conflicts, and territorial struggles in Latin America.
Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
This country profile summarizes Indigenous territories, constitutional rights, land demarcation, and conflicts over land in Brazil.
Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
This profile explains Indigenous land struggles in Guatemala, including historical dispossession, inequality, and territorial claims.
Indigenous Peoples in Mexico
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
This profile summarizes Indigenous peoples’ land rights, autonomy movements, and pressures from development and extractive projects in Mexico.
Indigenous Peoples in Peru
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
This profile explains land and territorial struggles involving Indigenous peoples in the Amazon and Andes.
Indigenous Peoples in Colombia
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
This profile explains Indigenous territorial rights, armed conflict, displacement, and threats to land defenders in Colombia.
Indigenous Peoples in Ecuador
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
This profile summarizes Indigenous land rights, political mobilization, and conflicts over extractive industries in Ecuador.
Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
This profile explains Indigenous territorial rights and the political history of land, autonomy, and plurinational governance in Bolivia.
Indigenous Peoples in Chile
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
This profile explains Mapuche land struggles, state policy, and ongoing conflict over Indigenous territory in Chile.
International Rights, Conservation, and Land Back
Indigenous Peoples' Rights to Lands, Territories and Resources
| Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights | United Nations | n.d.
This United Nations resource explains international human rights standards related to Indigenous lands, territories, resources, and self-determination.
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
| United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs | United Nations | n.d.
This page provides the declaration affirming Indigenous rights to lands, territories, resources, culture, and self-government.
Indigenous Peoples and Conservation
| International Union for Conservation of Nature | IUCN | n.d.
This brief explains how conservation history has sometimes displaced Indigenous peoples and how rights-based conservation can protect land relationships.
Fortress Conservation and Indigenous Land Loss
| Survival International | Survival International | n.d.
This article criticizes conservation models that remove Indigenous peoples from ancestral lands in the name of parks or wildlife protection.
Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas
| United Nations Environment Programme | UNEP | n.d.
This resource examines the relationship between Indigenous peoples, protected areas, land rights, and conservation policy.
Land Back
| NDN Collective | NDN Collective | n.d.
This movement page explains Land Back as a demand to restore Indigenous land, governance, ceremony, and relationships interrupted by colonization.
Afro-Indigenous Relations in a Reimagined Future
| National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.
This essay explains Land Back as a response to governments that dispossessed Indigenous peoples of homelands and links land to personhood and sovereignty.
Reference Overviews
Genocide of Indigenous Peoples
| Wikipedia contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview collects examples of Indigenous genocide and dispossession across the Americas, Australia, and other settler-colonial contexts.
Indian Removal
| Wikipedia contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview summarizes U.S. Indian removal policy and the forced displacement of Native nations from eastern homelands to Indian Territory.
Dawes Act
| Wikipedia contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview summarizes the 1887 allotment law and its role in breaking up reservation lands and transferring so-called surplus land to non-Native settlers.
Native American Reservation
| Wikipedia contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview explains the reservation system, its legal status, and its connection to treaties, removal, and land reduction.
Aboriginal Title
| Wikipedia contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview explains the legal doctrine of Aboriginal title in settler states and its role in Indigenous land-rights litigation.
Terra Nullius
| Wikipedia contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview explains the doctrine used to treat inhabited Indigenous lands as legally empty and available for colonial acquisition.
Mabo v Queensland
| Wikipedia contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview explains the Australian High Court decision that rejected terra nullius and recognized native title.
Treaty of Waitangi
| Wikipedia contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview explains the treaty between Māori chiefs and the British Crown and its continuing importance in land and sovereignty disputes.
Native Land Claims
| Wikipedia contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview explains legal claims by Indigenous peoples seeking recognition, compensation, or restoration of lands taken through colonization.
