By Anna Von Reitz
The correct answer is: "To the people who live on the land."
Land, like all physical assets, is held in a natural state of trust. Each generation receives it, uses it, takes care of it -- or not, and relinquishes it to the next generation.
This is an observation so commonplace that the necessity of commenting upon it may not be immediately apparent to someone of normal intelligence; but, take notice:
We start life as dependent beneficiaries of whatever has gone before us, become adults and shoulder the burdens of being trustees/caretakers of the Earth in the present day, and as elders, we become the donors of this natural trust as we hand both power and responsibility over to the upcoming generation.
We take this for granted. We construct all sorts of artificial systems to memorialize this process and confer rights to land. The Municipal Government and its "citizens of the United States" have their land descriptions. The British Territorial Government and its "U.S. Citizens" have their land title system. The American Federal System and its "United States Citizens" have a land patent system.
Last but not least, the American nation-states and the native nations -- the living people that actually live on the land -- have grants and treaties that allow us to live peaceably together and our metes and bounds land surveys based on landmarks and boundary stones.
It's all so simple, until foreign commercial corporations get their noses in the tent and start whooping it up, hoping that we will forget who or even what we are, and will forget our traditional means of settling and sharing land.
These corporations, governmental services vendors, certainly have no right to change it. They have nothing but an artistic "license" to redefine anything, even for their own purposes.
You have a cat (land) and then you have a painting of that cat (metes and bounds survey description) and then you have a photo of the cat (land patent) and then you have a diagram of the cat (land title) and then you have a flowery poem about the cat (land description) and then you have a license issued to the cat (street address).
Everyone needs to follow along.
All these different modes of describing and identifying land are actually the equivalent of artistic renderings, and are copyrightable under the same laws and presumptions --- you can own what you create, but you can never truly own the land because you didn't create it.
The land was a gift to you that you inherited, first as a baby (beneficiary) and next as an adult (trustee) and later on as an elder (donor).
Except when you are a baby and too young to deal with the responsibility, you don't own the land, the land owns you --- and this is just as true whether you are hearing it from the ancient wisdom teachings of the Navajo, or from an accountant in a business office.
And here we encounter the concept of "ownership".
In common parlance, this implies the use or possession of something material, the right to benefit from it, to manage it, to use it, to dispose of it in some way via sale or an inheritance directive conveying it.
But legally, technically, "ownership" means something quite different. It implies that you are a caretaker, either hired or volunteer, and that your custodianship is limited and subject to review.
You might conveniently think of this as a difference between private and public land ownership, and ponder the use of the same word, "ownership" in these two different venues. You also need to think in terms of different governments using different ways to describe land and establish an "interest" in land.
The American nation-states hold the public interest in all land assets held by this country, the living people hold the private interest in some land assets that they've bought, traded for, claimed, and developed, and share the public interest in the rest of the land as well. This is why you can freely walk down a "public street" or use a community water well.
The American Native nations hold a different kind of private interest in the land assets, one that is not dictated by grants, titles, surveys or descriptions and which simply expresses itself as inherent possession by virtue of being here. This is a natural relationship of all living people with land they live on, but it isn't organized or voted on; rather, it's like your relationship with your Mother. You didn't choose to be born here or there, but you were, and now that you are here, this is the land you inherited as a beneficiary of the divine, immutable, natural trust.
This is land ownership at the level of the natural trust we described at the outset and as it is a direct bequest from the Creator, it supersedes all other forms of land ownership.
The Brits like to call this an "aboriginal title" but it's not a "title" that comes through a king or a commercial enterprise, it's a natural right of possession that isn't created by drawing lines on a map or thinking up words or assigning numbers.
In this country this reality has always been recognized by the American Government, including the American Federal Subcontractor operated by the States of America Confederation between 1781 and 1861.
As this time period, 1776 to 1861, represents the only time period when our whole American Government was present and functioning properly without undue coercion and unlawful influence by the British, it's instructive to observe how the States of the Union were formed during this time -- especially the fact that treaties and agreements among the living people were always necessary.
Here is the example of Michigan, formed in 1836, four years prior to the first incorporation of our British Subcontractors doing business as "the" United States of America (Incorporated).
(1) The American Government offered to buy the land under guaranteed terms, though it is doubtful that the native people acted with full understanding of what they were giving up in trade.
(2) This deal was then undermined and redefined by the British Territorial "United States" Government that took control of the land under a territorial custodianship pursued under the provisions of The Northwest Ordinance.
This didn't change the underlying agreement with the American Government or its obligations to pay and provide for the agreed upon stipulations, but it did mean that the process entered "a grey area" and for a period of years, the British Territorial U.S. Citizens known as "the Blue Coats" had the ability to explore, run, and ransack things --- which they liberally construed as a "right" to subdue the "remaining" native people within this new "Territory of Michigan" and dispossess them of their homes and lands and wage a form of "administrative" warfare upon them.
The same thing happened with the Trail of Tears and the Louisiana Purchase and even the Spanish Cession of the Philippine Islands.
If the American Government bought the right to use and organize the land resources of "Michigan" and promoted peaceful settlement of the land, why didn't they ---and why couldn't they-- prevent the British Territorial Government from running roughshod and reckless over the native people in the time period between the sale or treaty agreement and the enrollment of the new State of the Union, Michigan?
In a word: gold. In a phrase: the King's Tribute Share.
As part of the peace treaty process with Britain ending the War of Independence, the Americans guaranteed that 10% of any gold mined in this country would be paid out to the British Monarch. This "tribute share" and efforts to ensure honest compliance oddly echo nuclear treaties of today.
Rumors of vast gold deposits and even already mined gold caches in our western states meant that the Brits insisted on "going in first" and thoroughly exploring, mapping, and literally digging around looking for gold. The implementation of this process is mandated by the Northwest Ordinance, one of the Four Organic Laws.
From the time new land rights were acquired until a new State of the Union could be formed and enrolled, the Americans were stuck with whatever atrocities and "civilizing influences" the British Territorial Subcontractors inflicted, and the settlers regularly suffered right along with the native populations being "subdued".
These British Territorial administrations were legendarily vicious and greedy and predatory, and because they had the use of our Title IV Flag when exercising "delegated" responsibilities, it was virtually impossible for natives or settlers alike to tell the difference between the American Government and the British Territorial Subcontractors.
This is the same kind of camouflaging that the British Raj would use in India thirty years later, where they took over the bureaucratic administration of the land jurisdiction government and started running everything as a territorial enclave without a word or a right to do so.
This, then, set up an involuntary -- on our parts -- Good Cops, Bad Cops scenario, where the actual settlers and the native peoples were terrorized and feted by turns, given money and material to build homes and schools and roads and hospitals and housing, and at the same time, having all their normal rights and expectations of justice and decency overturned.
Under their agreement with the Americans, the native people retained their hunting and fishing and use rights. But here come the British Territorial forces, and they ignored all that. The American Government could only grit its teeth through this "interim administration" and issue diplomatic protests.
So we complained bitterly about the "resettlement" of the Cherokee and the abuse of the settlers and native people in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Michigan, Illinois.... wherever the Brits followed up and administered settlement of newly acquired land, the story was always the same.
It was always brutal, always unjust, always criminal, just as the British Raj behaved in India, they behaved the same way here.
By the time a new State of the Union could be organized and enrolled, it was too late to prevent a lot of damage that had already been done by the "territorial administration".
Brutal open air concentration camps called "reservations" had been opened. Brutal "residential schools" bent on cultural genocide had been put in place. Brutal anti-native propaganda campaigns had been unleashed and pursued, portraying every native, even little children, as "blood-thirsty savages".
This is the legacy of the British (Commercial) Empire staring at us, and we, the actual Americans, have a right to feel confused, just as the native nations have been confused.
Fortunately, there were good people among the others out on the American Frontier, and they saw what was going on. They understood how "Washington" appeared to be speaking with a forked-tongue, or as the settlers called it, "talking out of both sides of their mouth" --- peace and love one day followed by brutal suppression and injustice the next.
The Great-Grandsons and Great-Granddaughters of those American Settlers are still here to bear testimony to what these British-directed mercenary forces did here in this country, how they criminally commandeered things, how they harmed the people they were supposed to serve, all in the name of a "King" whose office on land ceased to exist more than a century before the Trail of Tears began.
It wasn't the American Government doing all these terrible things and telling all these terrible lies, but owing to their own pre-existing obligations, their hands were tied until the new State of the Union could be enrolled. It was the hope of that and the hope that peace and justice for all could ultimately prevail, that kept us under the spell of nice words and guarantees from the British Government despite their evil deeds.
In the winter of 1861, a shopkeeper of a small general store in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, opened his back door one winter morning and ten Winnebago Indians literally fell into the back corridor running from his locked store room to the front of his shop. They were frost-bitten and starving, smelling of death. They just stared at him, numb, and he stared back at them. Silent. No explanations needed. One of them shut the door on the cold wind and the outside world and in the quiet marked only by everyone's breathing, something happened.
My Great-Grandfather, Julius Alfred Schnur, slumped down and sat on the bare floor with his guests. The ten Winnebago men could have easily killed him, stolen his horses and wagons, loaded up all sorts of provisions, and escaped in the snow. Instead, they just looked at him as he muttered, "My God, my God, my God.....!"
He was a good man, one who could think for himself, see for himself, and in that moment, all he saw were ten starving people who were almost frozen as well. His heart went out to them. He got up. He busied himself. He got them moved into the main part of the store. While they warmed up, he loaded his wagon with food and other provisions, filled it up to the top. Then he brought his own team and told them to bring the wagon back in the morning, and he'd fill it up again, using hand gestures.
He didn't speak Winnebago and they didn't speak much English.
When he died, many years later, the Winnebago quietly honored him. They called his son "Wonk Guashushaga". They brought a meal of his favorite foods to share. They told jokes and remembered funny stories. They didn't speak about that first cold morning, not at his funeral dinner where only good thoughts and happy memories are allowed to remain.
So now everyone is all concerned about "who owns the land?" and certain parties are questioning me for supporting so-called "indigenous claims" but the Winnebago would just tell you, quietly, and surely, that we are the land, each one of us. We come forth from the Mother of us all and in the end, we return to her.
Put another way, "The land doesn't belong to us, we belong to the land."
Like so many things that should be obvious, and which the modern world has contrived to turn upside down and backwards, we still need to be reminded of what is simply and forever true.
Issued by:
Anna Maria Riezinger - Fiduciary
The United States of America
In care of: Box 520994
Big Lake, Alaska 9
August 12th 2026
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