More than Just a Land Acknowledgement: The Relationship Between Land Back Movements and Economic Outcomes in Indigenous Communities

The land back movement in its current state began in 2018 and has rapidly gained traction since. The main call in this movement is for the return of government owned ancestral lands to their original stewards. Years of land dispossession, beginning when settlers first arrived, has left Indigenous peoples in what is now called the U.S. with a fraction of the land they call home. This paper seeks to decompose the economic impacts of land back movements by analyzing the relationship between land changes on tribal lands and several economic outcome indicators, which include annual income, educational attainment, the local unemployment rate, and the number of occupants per room. This paper also facilitates a cursory analysis of the relationship between land back and cultural strength, for which language spoken at home is used as a proxy variable. The results of this paper indicate that though the effect of receiving one unit of land back is small, with significant land change those effects could be very large. Our analysis of the effects of land back on language use showed no statistically significant results. Further research in this area should focus on understanding the non-economic impacts of land back movements. This paper concludes by recommending continued government action to return tribal lands, as well as moves towards supporting Indigenous sovereignty over Indigenous affairs, particularly in the collection, analysis, and reproduction of data.