Indigenous Honor and Land Taxes for Foundations

The Justice Funders office was originally located on the unceded land of the Lisjan Ohlone people. We have since become a national organization where staff reside on the lands of the: Lisjan Ohlone, Tamien Ohlone, Amah Mutsin, Ramaytush Ohlone, Tongva, Tiwa and Tewa, Paiute, Shoshone, Washoe, Jumanos, Coahuiltecan, Lipan Apache, Tonkawa, Shawnee, Cherokee, Catawba, Sugaree, Waxhaw, Piscataway, Anishinaabe, Anacostan, Ottowa, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Lenape, and Chumash peoples. We recognize that we, like all non-Indigenous people in the Bay Area, have inadvertently benefitted from the genocide waged against the Lisjan Ohlone people and the theft and occupation of this land.

We believe that philanthropic institutions, as stewards of wealth that has been accumulated through the extraction of Indigenous lands and the exploitation of communities of color, have a particular responsibility to contribute to the healing of the lands they occupy and to enter into a restorative relationship with their local Indigenous communities.

We encourage philanthropies across the U.S. to learn whose land you are on, support your local Indigenous communities and pay land taxes where your staff, board of directors, and grantees, live and work. Paying Indigenous land and honor taxes is one step in a long-term process of healing, action, and repair. Learn more about the Indigenous land you occupy at native-land.ca.

This year, Justice Funders is committed to paying the:

To learn more about Shuumi Land Tax for foundations, please check out the following:

There are also two important Resource Guides on supporting the work of rematriation (the return of Indigenous lands to Indigenous hands) and Indigenous sovereignty:

Please also see these related resources from allied organizations:

No amount of money will undo the damage caused by colonization, land theft and attempted genocide; bring back the lost lives; or erase the centuries of suffering that Indigenous people have endured. Paying Shuumi Land Tax is one step in a long-term process of healing and repair in which philanthropy can play an important role, in proportion to the resources and power that our sector directs.