Struggle For Land Research Articles

Land, race, and (slow) violence: Indigenous resistance to racial capitalism and the coloniality of development in the Caribbean

This article, which has been informed by sustained engagement with an autonomous social movement and long-term participatory action research, offers a critical structural analysis of the Maya land struggle in Toledo District, Belize. We contend that state-sanctioned violations of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) reveal both the coloniality and misanthropic skepticism inherent in conventional ‘development’ agendas and the Westminster-modelled liberal state. More specifically, by drawing from revolutionary theories of race and decolonisation and placing the concepts of racial capitalism and slow violence into an integrated anticolonial frame, we explain how economic development projects and government sponsored FPIC violations are aiding and abetting land dispossession, ecosystem damage, heritage destruction, the criminalisation of environmental defenders, and disavowals of Indigenous governance. Ultimately, the piece illustrates how extractivist-driven refusals of good faith consultation with Indigenous communities in the Caribbean exacerbate environmental degradation, undermine Indigenous self-determination, and constitute contemporary manifestations of colonial power, racial-capitalist exploitation, and structural (slow) violence.

Struggle for Land: Tribal Land Issue and Debate

The reader does not need to have copious concepts to grasp the tribal problems. It is about the land issue and the debate over how it arose and persisted; it exposes the problems in tribal societies.The central and state governments have the actual power to ensure tribal development. Furthermore, the land rights and protection problems are under the government's commitment to provide legal safeguards. However, neither the federal government nor state or local governments have exhibited much interest in the land troubles that tribal communities face. The paper focuses on tribal land issues and debates in the Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam. In the region, 97.88 per cent of the tribal people live in rural households and face uncertainty. The findings show that tribal people consider the government process insecure and intended to safeguard tribal members while ensuring the secure use of land in the region.

UNRECOGNIZED ESTATE (ODNODVORTSY OF THE CENTRAL BLACK EARTH REGION IN THE 18th – EARLY 19TH CENTURIES)

The topic of this work is the estate of the odnodvortcy of the Central Black Earth Region of Russia. Based on the analysis of the laws published in the PSZRI and other sources, the author comes to the conclusion that in the first quarter of the 19th century the odnodvortcy represented a stable community, de facto were a special class. However, due to difficult relations with the ruling nobility, who did not want to see odnodvortcy as competitors in the struggle for land, civil service and other privileges, the government stubbornly refused to recognize them as such. Since the time of Peter the Great, proceeding from class interests, through the publication of discriminatory laws with varying intensity, it pushed the odnodvortcy towards the peasantry. In a bureaucratic way, in spite of the natural process of their development, odnodvortcy were formally ranked among the state peasants. Although, remaining service people, they served in the Landmilitia and other troops, had the right to own peasants and land, and retained their way of life. In the end, odnodvortcy in the era of the Great Reform of 1860 were included into the strata of rural inhabitants. Since the position of the odnodvortcy of the Central Black Earth Region at different times was not the same, depended on the will of the monarchs, for a better understanding of the problem different periods in their evolution were identified.

PERAN HUKUM INTERNASIONAL DALAM PENYELESAIAN SENGKETA KEPEMILIKAN KEPULAUAN ANTAR NEGARA DI DUNIA

International law is a law that basically applies to every citizen in the world which regulates the relations of every country in the world. International law was created to overcome various existing problems in order to create a harmonious relationship between the countries in the world. Every country in the world must try to maintain harmonious relations with other countries in the world, but this is not always successful, many conflicts occur between countries in the world that require assistance from international law in their resolution. In carrying out their state life, every country must try to maintain the sovereignty of their country. In maintaining the sovereignty of the state both in terms of government, socio-culture to its territory. This often causes conflicts to arise, such as the struggle for territory, both land, sea and air The struggle for territory from one country to another can be resolved through international law. There are many ways that can be taken in resolving a dispute in the view of International Law. These methods will of course be implemented in dispute resolution from every country in the world. In the perspective of International Law, it has been regulated regarding the settlement of disputes between countries. The purpose of this research is to link theory and implementation in studying International Law in its direct application. This study uses a descriptive approach by conducting an analysis of qualitative data. By using several references based on research that is relevant to the research in this article.

“The Land Belongs to Us”: Ethnic Claims Over Land During Zimbabwe’s Land Reforms

Zimbabwe’s radical Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), implemented in 2000, diversified the agrarian structure by replacing a few large commercial farms with many smaller-scale farms. In understanding how the allocations evolved, studies have emphasized the effects of class, political party affiliation, gender, citizenship, and generation. However, the influence of ethno-regionalism or ethnicity on land access has been understudied. This article examines how ethnic mobilization structured the results of land distribution on the basis of survey data and other sources. Ethno-regionalism was inevitable in the small-scale A1 farms, since it mainly resettled peasants near their communal areas of origin. However, in the small capitalist A2 farms, ethnic tensions were perceived through exclusions of the “insiders,” as they were edged out of the allocations by the urban middle classes seeking accumulation opportunities in the context of an economic crisis. It is argued that if the latter trajectory persists, demand for land will continue to rise and fuel future land struggles, which might be colored by grievances of prior marginalization along ethnic lines.

Wahi Pana Aloha ʻĀina: Storied Places of Resistance as Political Intervention

Wahi pana aloha ʻāina, storied places of resistance, is a historical and political research device that perpetuates contemporary Hawaiian sovereignty history, and can serve as a political intervention between Kanaka (Hawaiian people) and the State of Hawaiʻi. Wahi pana aloha ʻāina are places where movements and resistance in the name of aloha ʻāina occur. Aloha ʻāina is a founding quintessential concept to a Hawaiian worldview and epistemology. The genealogy of aloha ʻāina traditions, equipped generations of Kanaka with environmental keenness through a deep love for and connection to the land. During the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi in the 1890s, aloha ʻāina became the political identity of Kanaka in the struggle for sovereignty of Hawaiʻi during the illegal encroachment by the United States. In the 1970’s during the Hawaiian renaissance (cultural re-awakening), leaders of the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana (the group who organized the first contemporary resistance by Kanaka against the U.S.) re-discovered and reclaimed aloha ʻāina to re-awaken the Hawaiian consciousness after decades of imposed American indoctrination. The Hawaiian renaissance led to a series of land movements that arose in opposition to America’s control of Hawaiian lands and became the basis for the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement, or, the current Hawaiian political movement for better self-determination and the return of Hawaiʻi’s sovereignty to Kanaka. This legacy of storied places of resistance has been effectively written over by colonial historiography and the State of Hawaii’s legacy of American expansionism. This has manifested into a legacy of prejudice in the State of Hawaiʻi judicial system that favors non-Kanaka entities, initiatives and agendas, while disapproving and discrediting Kanaka self-determination initiatives and sovereignty agendas. Due to this, there is no concern from the State of Hawaiʻi in remedying the political conflicts that arise between Kanaka and the State. I argue that the normalization of wahi pana aloha ʻāina, can assist Kanaka in overcoming the negative impact of the colonial footprint of the State of Hawaiʻi over Kanaka ancestral legacies and land histories, and be used to reclaim Kanaka land rights. In this paper, I lay out the research behind the theory of wahi pana aloha ʻāina, and how it functions as a research tool in the field of Kanaka land struggles, with a specific focus on historical colonial resistance. Second, I exemplify the use of wahi pana aloha ʻāina through telling the story of the wahi pana aloha ʻāina of my own moʻokūʻauhau (genealogy) in Keaukaha on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, and how my family and community maintain our moʻokūʻauhau and kuleana (rights/privilege/responsibility) through the practice of perpetuating wahi pana aloha ʻāina.

O Papel da Educação na Formação da Identidade do Sujeito Sem-Terra

Este artigo focaliza o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST), e mais estritamente a constituição da identidade desses sujeitos pertencentes ao movimento, buscando vislumbrar o movimento social como princípio formativo. Por meio de um levantamento bibliográfico, discutiu-se como os movimentos sociais se constituem em uma conjuntura de disputa, sendo, essencialmente, processos político-sociais. É importante destacar que o MST nasce das lutas concretas de sujeitos que, ao viverem essas lutas na pele, se rebelaram contra os processos de exclusão, engendrados pelo modelo capitalista neoliberal. Por meio da luta pela terra e de sua dinâmica de organização e de iniciativas, pautadas na coletividade e no pertencimento ao movimento social, o MST apresenta a possibilidade de construção de um novo projeto popular de desenvolvimento para o país. A formação dos sujeitos sem-terra se dá nas vivências dentro do movimento, na experiência da luta e da organização coletiva, que lhes conferiram um sentido maior que o individual e os inseriram numa perspectiva comum de vida. Por isso, falar sobre um projeto educativo do/para o campo significa pensar nos sujeitos que lutam e trabalham na terra, e veem nela sua vida e seu trabalho. A formação neste contexto é um fazer-se humano, um ser que constrói e é construído em um movimento de luta social. Palavras-chave: MST, princípio formativo, identidade. The place of Education in the Formation of the Landless Subject's Identity ABSTRACT. This paper discuss the Landless Workers Movement (MST), and the constitution of the identity of these subjects belonging to the movement, seeking to envision the social movement as a formative principle. Through a bibliographic survey, it was discussed how social movements are constituted in a conjuncture of dispute, being essentially, political-social processes. We emphasize that the MST is born from concrete struggles, from subjects who, by living in their skin, rebelled against the processes of exclusion, engendered by the neoliberal capitalist model. Through the struggle for land and its dynamics of organization and initiatives, based on collectivity and belonging to the social movement, the MST presents the possibility of building a new popular development project for the country. The formation of landless subjects takes place in the experiences within the movement, which gives them a greater meaning than the individual, and inserts them into a common perspective of life, and thus, talking about an educational project from/to the countryside, it means thinking about the subjects who fight and work on the land, and see their life and work in it. The formation in this context is a human doing, which builds and is built in a movement, of social struggle. Keywords: MST, formative principle, identity. El papel de la educación en la formación de la identidad del sujeto sin tierra RESUMEN. Este artículo se centra en el Movimiento de los Trabajadores Rurales Sin Tierra (MST), y en la constitución de la identidad de estos sujetos pertenecientes al movimiento, buscando visualizar el movimiento social como principio formativo. A través de un levantamiento bibliográfico, se discutió cómo los movimientos sociales se constituyen en un contexto de disputa, siendo esencialmente procesos político-sociales. Resaltamos en el texto que el MST nace de luchas concretas, de sujetos que viviendo en su piel, se rebelaron contra los procesos de exclusión engendrados por el modelo capitalista neoliberal. A través de la lucha por la tierra y su dinámica de organización e iniciativas, el MST presenta la posibilidad de construir un nuevo proyecto de desarrollo popular para el país. La formación de sujetos sin tierra se da en las vivencias dentro del movimiento, que les otorga un sentido mayor que el individual y los inserta en una perspectiva común de vida, y así, hablando de un proyecto educativo desde/hacia el campo, significa pensar en los sujetos que luchan y trabajan en la tierra, y ven en ella su vida y trabajo. La formación en este contexto es un hacer humano, que construye un movimiento de lucha social. Palabras clave: MST, principio formativo, identidad.

ДЖЕРЕЛО ДО БІОГРАФІЇ ЮЛІУША СЛОВАЦЬКОГО: СУДОВА СПРАВА ЕРАЗМА СЛОВАЦЬКОГО

Archives, museums and libraries of Ukraine preserve a large number of various documentary evidences dedicated to the Polish community and its existence on Ukrainian territory, as well as to the life and activities of its individual representatives. The informational potential of these materials is still not fully utilized due to the lack of a comprehensive index with a list of relevant documents and their storage locations in Ukrainian repositories. Increased public interest in iconic figures of Polish history and culture, whose lives were connected with Ukraine, stimulates searches in Ukrainian archives by domestic and foreign scientists. The article analyzes the course of the long-term land court case between the landowner Erazm Słowacki, the uncle of the classic of Polish literature, Juliusz Słowacki, with the Zhytomyr city society, which lasted almost three decades. The documents discovered in the State Archives of the Zhytomyr region reproduce the course of complex and contradictory processes that took place on the territory of Right Bank Ukraine after its capture by the Russian Empire. The author carried out an abstract review of a protracted court case involving the landowner (gentleman) E. Słowacki, who alternately sued the Zhytomyr city society and the magistrate, and later the Zhytomyr Duma, for the right to own land located on the outskirts of the city. These institutions protected the interests of the townspeople and did not want to recognize the legal ownership of the land bought by E. Słowacki from the previous owners. In fact, the analyzed conflict had a much deeper basis, and the struggle for land in Right Bank Ukraine was a competition of social structures and political ideologies, which will become obvious a little later. The representatives of the Polish community of the annexed regions of the Right Bank, finding themselves in a difficult situation, looked for ways to preserve their private property, but as evidenced by the archive file of E. Słowacki, they did not always manage to do this. An appeal to the highest judicial institutions of the Romanov empire, and even to Tsar Nicholas I himself, did not protect the property interests of the Słowacki’s. The heirs of E. Słowacki, after many years of litigation, lost a significant part of the lands of their ancestors, which generally corresponded to the colonization policy of the Russian Empire regarding the deprivation of land ownership of the Polish population of Right Bank Ukraine. The land ownership of the Polish elite of Right-Bank Ukraine and the profits it brought to its owners became the strongest economic basis that enabled Polish resistance to the colonial policy of the Russian Empire in this region. Unfortunately, the Polish community was not homogeneous and consolidated in its political aspirations. Part of the Polish elite sided with Russia. Others were forced to see the Russian tsars as defenders of their, if not political, then at least economic interests, dedicating their historical and poetic works to the Russian rulers. Among them was E. Słowacki, who dedicated a poem to Alexander I. However, the question of political loyalty of J. Słowacki’s uncle needs additional study as part of a complex and ambiguously interpreted phenomenon.

Landscape memories of land struggles in plateaus of two Nsukka villages in Nigeria

The memories of landscapes that people hold can stabilize histories and traditions in rural areas, are entwined with everyday lives and have several meanings. The paper explores the memories that people hold about plateaus in two adjoining villages (Alor-Uno and Edem-Ani) in the Nsukka area of Enugu State, Southeastern Nigeria. This area is an exciting and essential area of the world, distinctly underrepresented in landscape memory scholarship. The paper shows that the plateaus separating Alor-Uno and Edem-Ani are landscapes of political memory of the ancient wars between the two communities and more contemporary disputes regarding territorial extent of the communities and use of the land behind the plateaus if you are in Alor-Uno. Alor-Uno claims that wars waged against it by several kingdoms displaced the community, permitting occupation of parts of the community’s land, and they seek to reclaim it from Edem-Ani. However, extant narratives often recognize the disputed area as part of Edem-Ani because of the use of the plateaus as a boundary by colonial administrators. The presence of the plateaus helps the people recollect these ancient wars’ memories, and they use it to seek legitimation of their claim over the land. The paper argues that the memory of past land use reinforces the legitimacy of current land tenure configurations and shapes sensitivity to territoriality leading to exclusion. This can sustain group identities across generations translating into a ground for future fighting. It calls for more attention to the non-human agency and in connection to landscapes’ political memory, which speaks to the current post-human thinking in human geography. It suggests that resource conflicts analysis should take social meanings, memories and identities connected to the physical landscape seriously, as they contain ideological and symbolic elements foregrounding conflict environments.

As conquistas da Educação do Campo e o avanço da extrema-direita: desafios e perspectivas

The pressure of socio-territorial movements of struggle for land, in articulation with different institutions of organized civil society and, associated with that, who assumed education for countryside schools as public policy contributed to the strengthening of Countryside Education. In this collective commitment, the objective was to guarantee the creation and maintenance of schools in rural spaces with a pedagogical proposal linked to their reality, to invest in the training of teachers to serve these rural schools and prepare teaching materials for this population. These actions were guaranteed by public policies established within the National Countryside Education Program (PRONACAMPO). One of these policies was the National Field Textbook Program (PNLD-Campo). This context favours strengthening the movement organized by agribusiness sectors to control education in the Brazilian agrarian space. In this sense, this paper discusses a brief history of Rural Education and public educational policies aimed at the field. Furthermore, it points out some of the current disputes that encompass the education of the/in the field and the relationship of these disputes with the increase in the power of the agrarian elites from 2016, demonstrating how land concentration is in the basis of these processes. Finally, we point how urgent is an articulation to confront the neoliberal advance on State and Rural Education.

Gendered violences and resistances to development: body, land, territory, and violences against women in postwar Guatemala

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationships between violences against women (VAW) and rural development in the context of postwar Guatemala’s Northern Transversal Strip region (FTN). How might we understand the relationships between postwar development, its gendered implications, and VAW in this context? What are the implications of these entanglements for feminist activism? The article explores this question in a twofold way. First, drawing on decolonial and feminist political economic critiques, it broadens the understanding of VAW in relation to development, informed by decolonial, communitarian, and territorial perspectives of bodies, land, and territory. Second, in contending that colonial and neocolonial dispossessions linked to development are linked with VAW, it suggests that these relationships shape women’s defence of land and territories as well as the strategies women community leaders pursue in resisting VAW. Focusing on the impacts of palm oil cultivation in Maya Q’eqchi’ communities in the FTN, it highlights the overlapping interests and strategies for feminist activism, highlighting the webbed interconnections between struggles for land and territory and struggles for justice and an end to VAW as they manifested empirically through the research.

Beyond order, beyond the human

Beyond order, beyond the human

Local Judicial Practices in a Quilombola Territory in Marajó, Pará, Brazil

This article analyzes the socio-judicial organization of a Quilombola community in the state of Pará, Brazil. Using a pluralistic judicial systems approach, we seek to understand how Quilombolas define who has local land rights and to what capacity they can use the territory. The analysis was based on ethnographic field research in the community of Bairro Alto, on Marajó island, in Pará state, Brazil. Methods included: participant observation, interviews and questionnaires. The results showed that order in the territory is maintained through local judicial practices constructed during land occupation processes, and later reorganized on the basis of social relationships involving large-scale farmers, ranchers, neighboring Quilombola communities, and the State. Judicial tenets, intrinsic to the community, guide residents’ current land struggles where they are fighting to restore lands expropriated by ranchers that pertain to their original territory. Local legal practices converge with principles of article 68 of the Federal Constitution, making possible the correction of historical injustices related to land struggles in Quilombola communities.

Urban Precarity and Aspirational Compromise: Feeling Otherwise in a Mozambican Suburb

AbstractThe rapidly expanding Mozambican suburb of Inhapossa is very much the product of urban precarity. Indeed, most people only end up there after having exhausted other options. Striking, however, is how residents have, in recent years, discursively and materially constructed the suburb as an idyllic urban place in the making, so much so that Inhapossa has become one of the most coveted neighborhoods in the area. This article proposes an ethnographic reflection on urban precarity that draws on theories “from the South” and extends the notion of suburb to the shifting urban edge in Mozambique. It examines how local land struggles have created new opportunities for people from very different backgrounds, and whose lives became entangled in unexpected life‐enhancing ways, to craft better futures for themselves and their families. Locating the transformative potential of urban precarity in the work of attuning one’s aspirations with one’s circumstances, it shows how the suburb—a space of aspirational compromise—can become a space of aspirational achievement.

Placing land and food struggles in agriculture-industry power asymmetry: insights from Wanbao Village, Taiwan

ABSTRACT Land grab scholarship hitherto has seldom discussed about place, while alternative food networks (AFNs) scholars often overlook socio-spatial issues beyond agri-food systems. This paper addresses these gaps with a place-based approach. It examines two land struggles and three AFNs initiatives in Wanbao Village in Taiwan, showing how they co-shaped and protected the community’s sense of place from the threat of domestic land grabbing. Moreover, it demonstrates the structural linkages between land and food struggles that undermined AFNs' ‘(re-)localization' strategy, calling for their combined efforts in research and activism to defend marginalized agricultural/rural space from land frontier-making in a capitalist-industrial society.

The Political and Economic Origins of the Roman Revolution

The paper considers some economic and legal aspects of the struggle for the public land in Late Republican Rome. This period is one of the most controversial in ancient history; it brought many significant changes to the socio-economic and political life of Rome and contributed much to its transformation from Republic to Principate. Nevertheless, there is no special paper examining the competition between the Romans and Italians for the ager publicus populi Romani which started with the agrarian reform of Tiberius Gracchus in modern historiography. The first episode ended after the enactment in 111 B.C. of the lex agraria, when a large amount of public land was brought into private hands by its Roman possessors. A further part of the ager publicus populi Romani was still public and remained in hands of the socii. The logic of historical process, the economic changes of the second century B.C. which led Rome from Republic to Principate, demanded the formation of a new class of landowners. The latter would be the basis of the political system of the Roman Empire instead of the nobilitas; its political power would be based on private ownership of land. This was impossible without the full privatization of public land, and it is logical that the struggle for the ager publicus populi Romani was not ended in 111 B.C. Only after privatization of that land, which was possessed by the allies, the agrarian question in Rome could be fully resolved. The latter problem is of crucial importance for the further history of Rome, because it not only caused the Social War but also radically changed both the social structure and the political balance within Roman society during the last decades of the Republic.

Rethinking “Disinvestment”: Historical geographies of predatory property relations on Chicago’s South Side

As vacancy in Rust Belt cities becomes a focal point of planning and policy efforts, Chicago planners and private institutions attribute it to “disinvestment” and seek to remove barriers to real estate investment in order to unlock the market’s purported ability to bring land to “productive use.” Drawing on findings from an analysis of nearly 10,000 postwar property records in the South Side Chicago neighborhood of Englewood, this article demonstrates that vacancy stems not from disinvestment but from predatory and hyperextractive investments in housing that derive economic feasibility and legal sanction from property’s historical articulation with race. I argue that racial regimes of ownership are endemic to the operation of real estate markets and function as central modalities for the appropriation of ground rent. As an analytical lens into the political economy of land, racial regimes of ownership expand urban geographers’ capacity to address the mechanisms that mobilize difference to accommodate capital’s circulation and, more broadly, to account for the racial logics that configure the terrain of contemporary land struggles.

Afrocolombian Struggles for Food, Land, and Culture: The Case of El Tiple.

El Tiple is one of many marginalized Afrodescendant communities confined within a green desert located in the southwest region of Colombia. This green desert is most widely known as the second-largest sugarcane monoculture field in the Americas. Herein, we describe a transdisciplinary and participatory effort to understand agroindustrial expansion in the region through the lens of the El Tiple community. Using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, we characterized the socioenvironmental context of El Tiple in terms of ethnography, autoethnography, social cartography, and ethnobotany. We implemented a participatory approach to codevelop a technology-assisted strategy for strengthening the community's small-scale farming activities. Our contextual analysis results show systemic food dispossession, which arises from several factors, including dramatic land transformation, rapid depletion and contamination of natural assets, and biodiversity loss. All these factors are associated with the presence of bordering sugarcane plantations. In collaboration with community members, we designed, constructed, and analyzed a greenhouse hydroponic cultivation system as an actionable means to gradually restore local production of food and medicinal plants for the community. Our transdisciplinary and participatory approach demonstrates how academics can partner with vulnerable communities in the coproduction of knowledge and solutions to pressing social needs.

Climate change migration in the post‐conflict state: Understanding Cambodian migration narratives through geopolitical history and land struggles

While there has been increasing scholarship exploring the social, cultural, and political dimensions of climate change migration, there is to date limited research situating climate migration studies within geopolitical history and land struggles, particularly in post‐conflict states like Cambodia. Four decades after the Khmer Rouge genocide (1975–1979) ended, rural migration and land struggles remain a central aspect of Cambodia's political and economic life. Since the beginning of the Cambodian civil war (1970), rural populations have repeatedly been forced to move from their land. However, the geopolitical dimension of land has not been widely considered in current climate change migration literature. To explore these dynamic relationships between land, migration, and geopolitical history, this paper investigates both historical narratives and everyday relationships with land of land(less) migrants in Veal Veaeng District, Western Cambodia, a former war zone and a Khmer Rouge stronghold during the 1980s and 1990s. This paper argues that political history plays a vital role in defining migration trajectories in Cambodia, especially how historical factors define land struggles. Through exploring migrants and land frontier dynamics, this paper discovers that poor peasants have been forced between labour markets and land frontiers.

“I am Sapelo”: Racialized uneven development and land politics within the Gullah Geechee Corridor

The history of land struggles in the United States demonstrates how ongoing patterns of uneven development depend upon and codify the legacies of white supremacy. In this article, we show how the histories of white supremacy continue to be embedded and institutionalized into contemporary land and property politics through the processes of racialized uneven development using the case of Sapelo Island, Georgia. We trace the history of property relations on Sapelo over four periods (covering 1802–2020) to reveal how Black, Saltwater Geechee descendants’ presence on the island has persisted despite manifold attempts to manipulate, control, and dispossess families of their land. We re-interpret Sapelo’s history through the lens of abolition ecology to articulate how the struggle for life through land consistently runs up against state-sanctioned racial violence, which perpetuates and institutionalizes systemic racialized uneven development. We argue that the “racial state” is facilitating the dispossession of Geechee cultural heritage, which lies in having access to and ownership of the land and requires new political imaginaries to combat the persistence of these tactics.