About the Honor Native Land Fund:
Honor Native Land Fund (HNLF) is an all-volunteer network of non-Native people in the Midwest who partner with and financially support Indigenous-led movements for rematriation. We understand rematriation to mean both the physical return of land to the Indigenous people from whom it was stolen, as well as the Indigenous-led work of retoring sacred relationships between Indigenous people and their ancestral land.
HNLF was started by a small group of descendants of European settlers living in the Dubuque, IA region who were inspired by the growing Voluntary Land Tax movement, which encourages non-Native people to contribute a voluntary “rent” or “tax” to a local Indigenous nation or organization to demonstrate respect for hte fact that the land we now occupy is still Indigenous land.
In 2023, HNLF began partnering with the Great Plains Action Society, an Indigenous-led organization resisting colonization and working to rematriate land in Iowa.
HNLF is inspired by the work of the following organizations:
- Shuumi Land Tax, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust (Bay Area, CA)
- Real Rent Duwamish (Seattle, WA)
- Honor Tax (Humbolt County, CA)
- Honor Native Land Tax (Albuquerque, NM)
- Manna Hatta Fund (New York, NY)
- Mni Sota Makoce Honor Tax (Minnesota)
About our Logo
From the Artist, Moselle Singh:
This logo emerged from weaving together three threads: (1) the tallgrass prairie, (2) the Oneness between humans and land, and (3) the simple gesture of touching the earth.
Touching the earth is a gesture that runs deep in my imaginative meshwork; it is a nod to the Bhumisparsha mudra, calling the earth to witness. This is a deeply reverential expression of honoring the earth and stepping into our awareness of Oneness, and, therein, stepping into the responsibility of upholding and embodying that honor. The grasses growing up from the touch of the fingers express that humans and nature are not separate, and that our touch can be one that expresses care and protection. Today's hegemony of colonizing beliefs function through systems of separation and superiority, justifying dishonorable acts of exploitation and extraction. Recovering from this will involve the steady healing of our beliefs, actions, and embodiment. I felt that this particular expression fit well with the vision and mission of HNLF, as it is subtle, expansive, and inclusive, and able to encompass the broad range of people who will be involved in this work.
Moselle Singh (Drawn from Water) is a Punjabi-American artist from Iowa with a background in agroecology and biodiversity regeneration. They celebrate, honor, and defend their relationship with life through art www.mosellesingh.com.