MONTGOMERY-The racial wealth gap can arguably be traced to significant land loss among Black, Indigenous and People of Color through theft, hoarding, gentrification, and legal loopholes. Since colonization, Indigenous communities across the country have suffered significantly in terms of poor health and limited access to land for hunting, fishing, gathering, and agricultural production. The history of food production and Indigenous communities, as it relates to U.S. policy throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, shows how Indigenous people, including nations that were not traditionally farmers, were forced to farm marginal and unproductive lands. The Dawes Act of 1887–the first of many federal policies of forced integration–resulted in Native American tribal communal landholdings being confiscated and turned into family-held or individual allotments, effectively enforcing a system of private property. U.S. farm policies which have prompted the loss of topsoil, the clearing of forests and the polluting of waterways–coupled with energy policies that included systematic damming of rivers and mining practices–has resulted in the loss of the most arable and traditionally significant lands for Indigenous people. The reservation era further eroded food sovereignty, disconnecting whole generations who were sent to boarding schools for assimilation into the “American way of life” from access to traditional meats, vegetables, and fruits, while reinforcing diets high in starches and dairy.
Through the 1999 Pigford v. Glickman settlement,15 the US government was found guilty of discriminating against Black farmers over many decades, resulting in many farm foreclosures and business failures. The USDA recently reported that Black farmers lost $326 billion worth of land in the 20th century due to Heirs’ Property laws, which passed land down through generations to multiple heirs without a clear legal title, leading to land loss among Black farm families. The percentage of Black farmers in the United States has dropped from 14% in 1920 to just 1.3% today. While all small and family-sized farms are underrepresented in subsidies that are allocated through the farm safety net, Black farmers receive a mere fraction (.06%) of what white farmers receive.
The full report can be found here.
Media Release/Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network
