Conscious act of land return to Indigenous peoples

Quaker Paula Palmer has been working on her ministry related to Friends and Indigenous Peoples for many years. You can find out about her work on the Friends Peace Teams site, Toward Right Relationship with Indigenous Peoples. https://friendspeaceteams.org/trr/

Indian Boarding Schools

You can read her foundational article published by Friends Journal in 2016 here: Quaker Indian Boarding Schools, Facing our History and Ourselves. This discusses another area of concern related to Quaker relationships with Indigenous peoples.

I’m grateful I had the opportunity to get to know Paula when she came to the Midwest to talk about and lead workshops related to the forced assimilation of native children.

Land Return

Yesterday I received this email from her.

Friends, I spoke about this at today’s QIBS meeting but want to pass the information on to all of you. The Sierra Friends Center property in the northern California mountains (home of the former Woolman School) is being sold to the Nisenan tribe, through their non-profit organization California Heritage: Indigenous Research Project (CHIRP). The sale is supported by the Indigenous Concerns subcommittee of Pacific Yearly Meeting and by many California Friends. However a letter by a Berkeley Friend criticizing this sale was published in Western Friend online. Please read the letter and the information on the Sierra Friends Center site and the announcement below. Please consider whether you would like to write a letter to Western Friend supporting the sale as a conscious act of land return to Indigenous peoples.
Paula Palmer

Letter of Dismay

Dear Friends,

I am a graduate of the first class of John Woolman School in Nevada City, CA, and have held the campus and its environment close to my heart and soul for sixty-odd years.

I have just sent the following letter of dismay to all of the nonprofits that I mention in it, plus to many parts of many yearly meetings, plus to Western Friend.

This letter was written in response to the sale of the property that was once John Woolman School – currently 188 acres with 9 buildings – which is being sold to a nonprofit representing the Nisenan people, who are indigenous to the land in question. The Quaker board that represents Woolman in this sale has not been up front with the larger Quaker community about the extent of the property’s debts, nor about the fair market value of the property, which I speculate could be $4 million or more. The board has suggested that the property might be sold to the Nisenan for $1.3 million.

Here is my letter of dismay, which I have distributed widely:

This is the link to that letter: https://westernfriend.org/news/letter-of-dismay/

I find this detailed letter to be helpful in itemizing the objections some Quakers have about returning land to Indigenous peoples. I say “some” Quakers because I don’t know how many Friends object to this idea of land return.

I realize using the phrase “land return” implies the land was taken from Indigenous people. This is complicated by the concept of “property” and land ownership as viewed by most non-native people. It doesn’t mean taking back private property. It is about returning public lands to the stewardship of native peoples.

It is also about broken treaties, treaties that acknowledged native people’s rights to land.

Broken Treaties With Native American Tribes: Timeline. From 1778 to 1871, the United States signed some 368 treaties with various Indigenous people across the North American continent by Sarah Pruitt, History.com, July 12, 2023

Please consider whether you would like to write a letter to Western Friend supporting the sale as a conscious act of land return to Indigenous peoples.
Paula Palmer