State trust lands generate millions of dollars for carceral facilities and programs every year, largely from extractive industries like oil and gas drilling.
written by Alleen Brown, Clayton Aldern, & Maria Parazo Rose, at Grist, published January 28, 2025
Grist / Getty Images
Excerpt:
To build America, the U.S. government enacted laws to redistribute Indigenous lands they had taken. Some land was given to individuals and corporations to build homes or private empires, through laws like the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railway Act, while the Morrill Act offered up freshly seized land as capital for states to establish what became known as land grant universities.
Separately, the legislation that transformed frontier territories into states — known as Enabling Acts — contained handouts of land that state governments could use to pay for public institutions. Those offerings are generally called state trust lands and continue to be used to fund public institutions, mostly K-12 schools, but also universities, hospitals, and penitentiaries.
This is quality, independent journalism. Click on the Grist link here to read the rest of this article.
Tao Talk 
Believably unbelievable (if you know what I mean) colonialism so toxic, and still alive.
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“There’s a lot of it about” Paul. Frankly I’m physically nauseated by it all. I’m sick of toxic patriarchy. I’m sure you’ve studied times where women were the leaders of their communities. How do we get back to those times?
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Reprehensible.
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A tune with a terminal theme :(
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Yes indeed.
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Thanks for shining a light on these essential pieces of your country’s part in the colonization of what’s known as North America. While some work has been done in my country, it’s deplorable that many First Nations in what’s now Canada continue to live without clean drinking water, as an example of the inequities and injustices. Aspects of our history are a shameful legacy, heavily salted with the irony of current concerns about our country being recolonized.
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Steve, you are welcome. There is unclean drinking water in Canada?? When I think of Canada I think of a pristine wilderness.
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Many remote First Nations in Canada (or reserves, compared to reservations in the US) have had boil water advisories for decades. There are more than 30 long-term boil water advisories. In 2015 our prime minister vowed to end all these but the local water treatment and distribution infrastructure has not been provided or built properly in every case to ensure there is no e. coli bacteria in the water. Indigenous peoples continue to be overlooked in public policy.
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:(
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