'We Want Our Land Back': Returning Land to First Peoples in the Land Return Era Using the Native Land Claims Commission to Reverse Centuries of Land Dispossession

Abstract

Native Nations continue their quest to regain their land after centuries of land depredation by non-Native actors. The North American continent that Native Nations originally inhabited has dwindled to reduced reservation enclosures through centuries of theft, violence, and settler incursions. To provide land justice, lawmakers should pass the proposed Native Land Claims Commission Act to create a Native Land Claims Commission to hear Tribes' land claims and return federal land to Tribes. The 1946 Indian Claims Commission sought to compensate Tribes for their losses, but failed because it provided only limited money compensation. Thus, the proposed Native Land Claims Commission will return land to help remedy generations of land injustice.