The Land Is Not Ours to Own: Leah Penniman on Power, Food Apartheid, and What It Means to Belong

About this episode

What if one of our most fundamental assumptions about land is wrong? For centuries, land in the United States has been tied to wealth, power, race, and who gets to belong. But for farmer, food justice activist, and author Leah Penniman, the very idea that land is something we can own demands a deeper examination. In this episode, Leah and I explore the systems and histories embedded in our relationship with the earth, from food apartheid and Black land dispossession to the Afro-Indigenous traditions that offer a radically different understanding of ownership, responsibility, and belonging. But beneath this conversation is an even bigger question: What changes when we stop asking what…