3/14/2024 0 Comments If i was a human bill gatesThose animals, which are sacred to my people and were nearly hunted to extinction by settlers, are preserved today on nearly 200,000 acres of Turner’s ranchland within the boundaries of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty territory in the western half of what is now the state of South Dakota, land that was once guaranteed by the US government to be a “permanent home” for Lakota people. He owns 2m acres and has the world’s largest privately owned buffalo herd. The billionaire media mogul Ted Turner epitomizes such disparities. Black, Mexican, Asian, and Native people, of course, were categorically excluded from the benefits of a federal program that subsidized and protected generations of white wealth. The 1862 Homestead Act opened up 270m acres of Indigenous territory – which amounts to 10% of US land – for white settlement. In this country, enslaved Black labor first built US wealth atop stolen Native land. Wealth accumulation always goes hand-in-hand with exploitation and dispossession. The relationship to land – who owns it, who works it and who cares for it – reflects obscene levels of inequality and legacies of colonialism and white supremacy in the United States, and also the world. Land is power, land is wealth, and, more importantly, land is about race and class. But why do a handful of people own so much land? The United States is defined by the excesses of its ruling class.
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