When the J.M. Kaplan Fund selected Land Justice Futures for its 2023 Innovation Prize, land justice was not one of the foundation’s established focus areas.
The fund brought to the relationship a long history as a more “traditional” conservation funder. But listening to Land Justice Futures opened up new ways of thinking about land, Indigenous sovereignty, and conservation itself.
As Executive Director Julia Bator shared during our recent webinar:
“You go into something as the funder thinking you know a lot, and what you end up finding out is that you learn from your grantees, and you find out things that you didn’t know before.”
Julia’s experience offers a helpful starting point for funders interested in land justice but unsure where it fits within their work: come as a learner with an open mind, recognize grantees and movement partners as experts, and be willing to let what you learn change how you fund.
That idea ran throughout From Land Grabs to Land Return: Indigenous Sovereignty and Philanthropy, the third webinar in our Land Justice for Funders series. Guided by Land Justice Futures, the conversation explored the many ways land return can happen and what it asks of philanthropy.
Missed the first two sessions? Check out our blog posts on Rekindling Right Relationship: Lessons from the Tributary Project Land Justice Webinar and Beyond Ownership: What the Community Movement Commons Teaches Us About Land Justice in Urban Contexts.
Let land justice expand how you understand conservation
For funders focused on conservation, climate, outdoor access, or environmental education, land justice may initially feel like a separate issue. Our panelists invited us to see the connection more clearly.
How land is cared for depends on who has the power to make decisions about it and whose knowledge guides those decisions.
“If sustainability is the highest and most sought-after technology on the planet, who should we be talking to?” asked Pat McCabe / Woman Stands Shining. “We should be talking to those people who’ve known how to live in one place over an extended period of time.”
Pat described the return of land at the base of Sisnaajini, one of the Diné’s four sacred mountains, as more than a change in ownership. It marked a shift from understanding land as an asset to renewing a living relationship with place.
“We’re not actually in it to own it, because we don’t need an asset. We need our relationship with it.”
Land justice is not simply about expanding who can access nature. It is about restoring the relationships, knowledge, and community authority that make long-term care for land and water possible.
Understand why access isn’t enough
Land access can make important cultural and ecological work possible, but it can also be temporary, conditional, or subject to someone else’s rules.
Biskakone Greg Johnson illustrated the difference through the return of Marywood Spirituality Center, a former Catholic retreat center on Trout Lake, to the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe. The Lac du Flambeau reservation includes many lakes, but much of its waterfront is owned by non-Native people, often as vacation property. That has limited where community members can practice traditions rooted in their relationships with land and water.
After examining how they had come to own the property, including their history with Indigenous boarding schools, the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration chose to return Marywood as an act of repair. Its return created a place where community members can build and launch birchbark canoes, prepare wild rice, hold ceremonies, and pass language and cultural practices on to young people.
Greg described it as:
“A place free from shame, a place where we won’t be judged.”
The difference is not simply access versus ownership, but access versus sovereignty.
As Michelle Mascarenhas of Kataly Foundation emphasized, colonization took land and its resources, as well as communities’ ability to govern themselves. Land return can restore the power to decide how a place is cared for, what happens there, and how those relationships continue across generations.
Fund what land return actually requires
Marywood represents one pathway to land return. Other transitions may happen through direct donations, community-led capital campaigns, philanthropy-supported purchases, or partnerships among communities, landholders, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations.
There is no single model. But when communities need capital to acquire land, Michelle put it plainly:
“Make the capital gifts. That’s the first thing. In deep relationship with the peoples of that land, obviously, is the core underlying thing.”
Blanket policies against funding land purchases or capital campaigns can create a particular barrier for communities whose work has been shaped by generations of dispossession. Program support cannot replace the security and decision-making power that land can provide.
But land return is more than a real estate transaction. Funders also need to understand the histories and relationships surrounding a place, including dynamics that may not be immediately visible to outsiders. Michelle encouraged funders to learn about the movement ecosystems communities are already part of and build relationships that allow them to “step in in a good way, rather than a harmful way.”
That also means staying involved after the deed changes hands. Communities may need ongoing funding for governance, organizational development, cultural programming, and the long-term vision for the land. Meeting that long-term commitment may require philanthropy to rethink its own practices. As Land Justice Futures co-founder Brittany Koteles reminded participants:
“This is the time that we need to experiment boldly and creatively, looking for new ways of relating to Earth.”
Turning that experimentation into action means funding land return in ways that support community sovereignty for generations to come.
Our 2026 Land Justice series is co-hosted by Blue Sky Funders Forum, Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, Highstead Foundation, Resist, and the Maine Climate and Environmental Funders Network. This series highlights working examples of land justice in practice, featuring bold funders integrating land justice into their portfolios alongside the visionary community partners with whom they work. Participants will leave inspired to begin or deepen land justice practices in their grantmaking and be better prepared to turn conversation into aligned, collaborative philanthropic action.