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“When we fight pipelines, when we fight oil projects, when we fight all of the extractive development that harms our mother, we don’t do that just for ourselves,” Krystal Two Bulls says, director of the LANDBACK Campaign within the Indigenous advocacy organization NDN Collective in Grist. Elaborating, “We do that so we can all actually have an earth to live on in the future. So that future generations that aren’t even born yet have an earth to come to.”

Ultimately, she believes that opposition to Landback and what it will mean for the descendants of settlers comes from a place of guilt. “Your fear is rooted in the fact that you think, when we get our land back, we will treat you the way that you have treated us.”

Replicating systems of oppression has never been part of the plan, and proponents of the movement say they could use some help from white people in dispelling that knee-jerk fear and explaining why this solution will benefit everyone. “A lot of our allies and accomplices could play a really important role in helping lead some of those conversations,” Tilsen says, “so that we, as Indigenous people, can focus on getting our damn land back.”

Read the full article here.

“For decades, arts and music education in California has been dying a slow death in many schools, strangled by budget cuts amid an ongoing emphasis on core subjects like reading and math and test scores as the measure of student success,” reports Louis Freedberg in EdSource.

Freedberg states, “That’s why the initiative (former Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Austin) Beutner, is promoting will still be needed. In fact, it would simply help schools follow the spirit, if not the letter, of what they are already required to do by law.” Resuscitation appears on the horizon, as Freeburg shares, “With the backing of a growing number of artists and educators, Beutner wants to put an initiative on next November’s ballot that would require the state to spend between $800 million and $1 billion extra each year out of its general fund for arts and music education in the state.”

Read more here.

“Some of the changes that we instituted during the pandemic were things that we were actually thinking about before,” said Rashad Cobb, community engagement program officer at the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation. He summarized, “These weren’t necessarily new ideas that we had never thought (of) before, but maybe the pace at which we would’ve implemented these ideas was sped up by the pandemic.”

“I think that creativity can equal resilience,” Tom Linfield, vice president for community impact at Madison Community Foundation Development (MCF) said. “I think a lot of the nonprofits stepped out of their comfort zone and succeeded, and that doesn’t always happen. So I think some of them were bold, and creative and that worked for them. And so I hope that will build their capacity moving forward.” MCF Development Director, Angela Davis also said she saw an increase in Black families engaged in the formal, usually-White-dominated philanthropy space – a trend she’s noticed the past few years but which accelerated in 2020.

“Philanthropy (in) the Black community has always been there, which we all know. It just may not have been called ‘philanthropy,’ but it’s always been there. And now it’s becoming more mainstream for Black folks to come together … to give back,” she said. “I’ve never worked with so many Black folks before in my career. And that says a lot that they want to give back, particularly with education. That they want to make sure that next generation has the support to get that education.”

“These things have been gradual, but I think it’s part of the momentum that has been growing over the course of the last decade,” Linfield said.

Read the full piece here.