Land Justice AN INTERVIEW WITH BRITTANY KOTELES
Brittany Koteles is the director of the Nuns & Nones Land Justice Project, an initiative that helps religious communities make long-term decisions about their land that are rooted in ecological and racial healing. They offer education, support, accompaniment, and other resources for religious communities who are facing decisions about their longheld land and property. Since much of this issue focuses on a very specific geographic area, AMOS talked to Koteles about how the overarching message of land justice and being led by Indigenous people in movements for ecological justice is one that can be applied to communities around the nations. Learn more about this initiative and work at: nunsandnones.org.
Could you talk a little about what land justice is? Land justice is about restoring relationships between and among people and with the Earth. The definition that we give sisters is that land justice is the holistic pursuit of three things: protecting land from development and extraction, regenerating the health of the land, and expanding equity and access to people who have been dispossessed of land. Specifically, we focus on expanding equity and access to Black and Indigenous people, but also to anyone who has experienced marginalization under the paradigm in which we live. Land justice is about healing the land but also about healing human relationships and those relationships that have been cut off from land because of past and present colonization, extraction, and racism. Land justice is about considering and trying to pursue both racial and ecological healing in decisions about how land is loved, governed, tended, and stewarded. 12
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“. . . land justice is the holistic pursuit of three things: protecting land from development and extraction, regenerating the health of the land, and expanding equity and access to people who have been dispossessed of land.” From a Catholic perspective, a lot of it boils down to what Pope Francis talks about in Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home): heeding the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor. Land justice is about making decisions that attempt to do this.
Why was this the area that Nuns & Nones decided to focus on? When we talk about the healing of the Earth, we have to reckon with the fact that 1,500 acres of land are developed every day and 98 percent of private land is owned by white people or institutions. The same construct that has allowed for white ownership of land allows for the continued extraction of land. It is all part of a paradigm of domination that has led us to a crisis of racial injustice and a climate crisis. It is all connected. If we really care about taking action for justice, we can’t forgo thinking about the land we own and steward. It’s a huge responsibility, but I believe it’s also a huge opportunity for transformation and transformative leadership. If religious landowners can change how they plan for the future stewardship of the lands they hold in trust, then I think we could see the world change. The Land Justice Project was the result of a several-years-long organic unfolding that allowed for this “spinoff” to happen. We never planned on this. This wasn’t
part of the Nuns & Nones blueprint, but it was the result of really listening to how we wanted to manifest their values of a solidarity economy—the redistribution of wealth, the healing of the Earth, and racial and ecological justice. Those were all things the Nuns & Nones community were grappling with. At the same time, many of the sisters in our community were being faced with really unsatisfactory options about the land that they have loved forever. No one else is talking about this—no one is talking about how to make decisions about land that are in-line with Laudato Si’ and with the solidarity economy movement. Many of the sisters wanted their lands to be a part of this type of movement but didn’t have the resources to figure out what that looked like.
This issue centers around salmon in the Pacific Northwest, but there are similar calls from Indigenous communities to change our ecological practices around the nation. How can the church be better at listening to Indigenous communities when it comes to ecological justice? In Laudato Si’ Pope Francis talks about Indigenous people as the primary dialogue partner in ecological work.