ownership of land

The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?


Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. St. Martin's Press, 2007. p.7

we are neither birds nor fish

Brother, we give up to our white brothers all the land we could and how spare, and have but little left… and we hope you wont let any people take any more from us without our consent. We are neither Birds nor Fish; we can neither fly in the air nor live under water…. We are made by the same hand and in the same shape as yourselves.


Cherokee chief to George Washington as found in W.W. Abbot, Dorthy Twohig, eds., The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, 6 vols. (Charlottesville, 1987-). Quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington. Alfred A. Knopf. 2004. p.212

a place of residence

Tanacharison… made it clear that all Indian alliances with European powers and their colonial kinfolk were temporary expediencies: “Both you & the English are White. We live in a Country between, therefore the Land does not belong either to one or the other; but the GREAT BEING above allow’d it to be a Place of Residence for us.”


Tanacharison or Tanaghrisson (c. 1700? – 4 October 1754) was an American Indian leader who played a pivotal role in the beginning of the French and Indian War. He was known to European-Americans as the Half King. Personal correspondence to George Washington as found in W.W. Abbot, Dorthy Twohig, eds., The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, 6 vols. (Charlottesville, 1987-). Quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington. Alfred A. Knopf. 2004. p.6

What people don’t want, [planner Anton] Nelessen affirms, are places that look like strip malls. They don’t want concrete islands or wide streets. What they do want are older places, the shaded sidewalks, houses with detail, Main Streets with life and texture. They want the amenities of car-free architecture on the small scale. This is what altering zoning to allow a new kind of land use can allow.


Jane Holtz Kay, an author, journalist and architecture critic for The Nation, has written widely on the built and natural environment. Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back. New York: Crown, 1997. p. 298

We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.


Aldo Leopold (1887 - 1948) was a United States ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. A Sand County Almanac (1949)

If we are to foster a culture of love and respect for land, land can no longer be an item to buy and sell on the market.


Aldo Leopold (1887 - 1948) was a United States ecologist, forester, and environmentalist.