SE/4 of NW/4 of SW/4 of section 11, township 16 N, Range 19E: A Land Gorget My grandma passed away a month ago today. She was raised in rural Oklahoma, in this little red square, her mother’s allotment land. She was born at home, while her mom was home alone, and had so many stories of this land, the nearby creek, and running down the way to her grandparents’ house. This is the site of her emergence into the world. After removal from our traditional lands in the southeast on the Trail of Tears, in 1887 the Dawes Act carved up collectively held Native land in Indian Territory into land parcels for each enrolled tribal member. It was an attempt to assimilate Native people into farmers, to declare any unallotted land “excess” and therefore open to white settlement, and to move Indian land into private ownership, making it into a commodity. My great granny’s tiny 10 acre allotment was “contested,” and another family was also claiming it for their son. So as a result of a court case I have a map that shows her square marked out in red, and that map is the basis of the beadwork. But then in the early 1940s, the Army Corps of Engineers built a dam on the Grand River, making Ft. Gibson lake. Thousands of acres of Native allotments were seized by eminent domain and flooded out. Families forcibly displaced, again. Prime farmland, homesteads, and memories, all submerged forever. My great granny was given less than $900 (only $14,000 in today’s money) for over 300 acres of her family’s combined allotments. She had no choice. To be a Native person is to have a connection to land and place. A tangible, real connection. Because of settler colonialism my family’s land is unreachable, untouchable, and drowned. I’ve thought about this so much in my adult life, and about what it means to try and reclaim, touch, and undrown that little red square in ways that I can, especially now that my Gram has passed. (Cont. in comments) #LandBack #CultureBack #StoriesBack #EverythingBack