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Indigenous Honor & Land Taxes for Foundations

We invite you to join us in paying Indigenous Honor & Land Taxes as one step in a long-term process of healing and repair in which philanthropy can play an important role.

After centuries of organizing, prayer, and solidarity, we are in a historic moment in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, the unceded land of the Lisjan Ohlone people, where land return and rematriation are blossoming. This is where the Justice Funders office was originally located. Over the past three years, twenty foundations have committed to paying the annual  Shuumi Land Tax to support the crucial work of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust to return Lisjan Ohlone land to its people. The Shuumi Land Tax is an invitation to acknowledge the history of this land and contribute to its healing, and to enter into an ongoing restorative relationship with the local Indigenous community.

In the coming years, the Funder Circle for Shuumi & Action, a joint project of Justice Funders and Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, hopes to demonstrate that foundations in our beloved Bay Area recognize the scale of the need for land rematriation and are ready to meet it.

Will you join us to double the number of philanthropic institutions paying Shuumi from 20 to 40 by the end of 2025?

And if you are not based in the East Bay, we encourage you to build on this momentum by learning whose land you occupy, supporting your local Indigenous communities, and paying land taxes where your staff, board of directors, grantees, and offices are located.

Below are links to some Indigenous Honor & Land Taxes across the U.S. that we are aware of; we continue to educate ourselves about emerging opportunities to pay these taxes.

We are in this together. Reach out to Jessi Espinoza-Jensen (jessi [at] justicefunders.org), Director of Funder Organizing and Funder Circle for Shuumi and Action member, if you would like to chat strategy and next steps. We’d also love to hear your ideas for how we can support each other in this work – please complete this brief survey.

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

There are also three 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:

While 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 Indigenous Honor & Land Taxes is one step in a long-term process of healing and repair. Philanthropy has an important role to play in this work.