Turtle Talk

Brigette Arcoite and Daniel K.N. Johnson have posted “Land-Back to Move Forward? The Measurable Relationship between Land-Back Movements and Economic Outcomes in Indigenous Communities within the U.S.” on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

The land-back movement in its current state began in 2018 and has rapidly gained traction since. The main call in this movement is for the return of government owned ancestral lands to their Indigenous stewards. This paper quantifies the economic impacts of land-back movements on income and employment for over 1,700 Indigenous communities, using both panel data instrumental variables and endogenous treatment techniques. We find uniformly promising results (reductions in the percentage of citizens living on low incomes, and reductions in the unemployment rate) that recommend continued return of tribal lands not only for racial justice reasons, but as a catalyst for economic stability of populations living in proximity to Indigenous peoples.