Land Ownership

Many indigenous people groups have a concept of land ownership that is very different to ours. We own land. The land owns them. I am becoming more and more convinced that neither of these is what God intended.

The indigenous perspective I am referring to is very common here in Australia, but it has parallels in Canada and in other parts too. Many aboriginal people talk about the land in a highly personified way. A spiritual way. Language belongs to the Land. People belong to the Land. I am told that when you go to a different place your first job must be to speak to the Land. This is entangled with, but seperate to, their knowledge and relationship with the Creator. I respect the ecology of this perspective, but there is no freedom in this view of the Land. I can't reconcile the submission of being owned by the land as something from God because one of the first things that God gave humanity was authority over the land. We aren't meant to be slaves to the land.

But, careful. That doesn't make our conception of land ownership more right. We have treated the land like it was disposable; pillaging, contaminating and adulterating without hesitation. (yes, this is obviously a generalisation.) This can't be what God meant by "take dominion".

So, I wonder again if the nomadism that God intended for his people, in both covenants, as a word picture and as a way of life, might shed some light on the healthy way to use the authority over the land that God has given us.

The nomad does not submit to the land, he bends it to his needs. But, never to the breaking point. Instead he moves on and the land regenerates. He benefits and takes freely what the land offers up, berries, honey, mushrooms, bush tucker or wildlife, without payment, because the land is his and he doesn't owe anyone for this privilege. In many cases harvesting alone makes the land naturally produce more, even without cultivation, as long as he doesn't take them all. He is free and not tied to any one location or beholden to it. The land serves him, not the other way around.