“Land Back, Bodies Back” Explained
#LandBackBodiesBack is both a slogan and a movement. It is a rallying cry from the women grown weary of capitalism and colonization’s dual attack on our intimate relationships, both to one another and to ʻāina (earth, land, the environment). It is a demand and a vow to restore precolonial pilina (relationship, connection). It is a call to arms by AF3IRM Hawaiʻi to re-establish a sacred relationship to our bodies, to one another, to land, and to reject how all are defined by Western values and institutions. With #BodiesBack, we denounce transactional relationships of all kinds, privatization of natural resources and relations, intense individualism over collective interest, greed and overconsumption, and white male domination over people and nature. We stand firm in our history and we reject American Leftist mythology, neoliberal “feminism,” and colonizer “socialism.”
Where the demands of #LandBack are to restore Indigenous decision-making power over land, reestablish Indigenous sovereignty and control over ancestral lands, and restore nature’s ecosystems, we, too, the women behind #BodiesBack, demand decision-making and sovereignty over our bodies and restoration of intimate pilina, free from governmental, capitalist, and partner violence or coercion. The word “back” in #BodiesBack emphasizes non-carceral abolition of colonial systems and is based on a comprehensive decolonizing process with the goal of ending the ideological status quo: patriarchy, white supremacy, and domination.
We denounce the sex trade that upholds patriarchal, imperialist capitalism at the expense of Native Hawaiian, immigrant and impoverished women, LGBTQ+ people, and children. We fight against the commodification, trafficking and sexploitation of women and children’s bodies.
We work toward decriminalizing and destigmatizing “sex workers” and sex trade survivors, and toward survivor-informed and community-based accountability for men who use money to buy sexual access to vulnerable people’s bodies. We demand an end to the extractive colonial industries that make people vulnerable to the sex trade and impede their right to exit. #LandBack is an assertion of Native rights, sovereignty, and self-determination. It is the assertion that we will be free once more. It is a struggle that is connected across oceans and continents and started on Turtle Island (America). Although LandBack is Native led, the allyship of non-Native members of the community is critical to its success. LandBack must include ending patriarchy — the social, political, and economic system that allowed for the theft of land, people, and culture.
#LandBackBodiesBack is a forward- and backward-looking way to address the economic, environmental, and social crises directly linked to the illegal occupation of Hawaiʻi. I ka wā ma mua, ka wā ma hope (the future is found in the past). Our current way of life is not sustainable, #LandBackBodiesBack offers alternative futures that will sustain our communities for the next seven generations and beyond. It is restoration of our life-giving mutual relationships built on care and reciprocity. It is not simply the literal return of land but the reclamation of our bodies, families, and pre-colonial ways of life that sustained us for eons.
Transnational feminism is crucial to how we think about LandBack. Many movements for liberation are ones that are deeply misogynistic and exploit women in the process. When we call for LandBack, we are also calling for the end of patriarchy and violence against women, which is why #LandBack and #BodiesBack are interconnected.
The LandBack movement is important because it encompasses a variety of struggles we face today. From water, land, housing, education, and everything in between. LandBack is a call to address all of these problems with Native self-determination as the basis of liberation. So, too, is BodiesBack.
Maunakea, draining the tanks at Red Hill, and efforts to restore ʻāina are all connected to LandBack, BodiesBack. Exemplary work AF3IRM does focuses on the issue of MMNHWGM (Missing and Murdered Native Hawaiian Women Girls and Māhū). Connecting land theft, displacement, and violence against women, girls, and gender minorities, AF3IRM works to address the sexual trafficking and exploitation that occurs in Hawaiʻi. Native Hawaiian women, girls, and māhū are overrepresented among the missing, murdered, and trafficked in Hawaiʻi — this is directly linked to the occupying military and tourism industry.
“A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is finished, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons.” — Cheyenne Proverb. As givers of life and protectors of the sacred, we deserve a movement that is equal parts decolonial and anti-patriarchal. With #LandBackBodiesBack as the foundation of our organizing, we vow an end to ALL harmful systems in Hawaiʻi that threaten women, girls, and māhū, water, air, and land. There was a time before; there will be a time after.
To read the #BodiesBack policy platform in full, visit: https://hawaii-78988.medium.com/the-nordic-model-needs-to-be-toppled-a765b230dd31
