Land Tenure Center Newsletter
Number 76, Spring 1998, p. 1-2

Who Owns America?

by Gene F. Summers

Who owns America now? Precisely how the lands and natural resources of North America are owned and controlled is the focus of speeches, discussions, films, and debates at the Who Owns America? II conference, programmed for 3-6 June 1998, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Organized and hosted by the Land Tenure Center's North American Program and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, this is a sequel to the 1995 conference. Who Owns America? II (WOA?II) continues investigation with an exploration of the following themes:

• A Bundle of Rights: Law, Policy and the Politics of Land;
• Culture, Ethics, and the Land;
• For Land and Money: Economic Realities and Alternatives;
• This Land Was My Land: Land Loss Prevention and Recovery; and
• Natural Resource Ownership and Management.

The primary goal of the 1998 conference is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information about land and natural resource tenure issues in Canada, northern Mexico, and the United States. Within this forum, we assemble a diverse group of interested parties for a variety of activities: a town meeting, panel discussions, paper presentations, plenary speakers, social hours, a banquet, celebrations of cultural diversity, networking, video and film screenings, and a resource center.

Who Owns America? II features the following speakers.

• Andrew Cuomo (invited) is the Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Development.
• H. James Brown is President and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
• Harvey M. Jacobs is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, and Professor in the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Bernice Johnson Reagon is Distinguished Professor of History at American University, Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution, a composer and recording producer, and founder and singer with the internationally acclaimed acapella ensemble, Sweet Honey In The Rock. Reagon's cultural activism began with her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and continues through her work as a scholar, artist, and organizer.
• Winona LaDuke is an Anishinabekwe (Ojibwe) who lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota (she was US vice-presidential candidate in 1996).
• Gary Grant is the Director of both Concerned Citizens of Tillery and Halifax Environmental Loss Prevention, and President of Black Farmers and Agriculturist Association.
• Patricia Quintana is a state legislative specialist, agricultural educator, community development activist, and sheep farmer.
• Patricia Marchek is a Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia and a pioneer in the field of natural resources sociology.
• Jim Sessions is the Executive Director of the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, a community organizing institute working in the Deep South and Appalachia.
• Antonio Azuela de la Cueva is the Attorney General for Environmental Protection in the federal government of Mexico. Previously he was legal advisor to several state governments and federal government agencies on planning law.

Special efforts are being made to involve community-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and grassroots activists. Travel scholarships are available to support their participation. Financial support for the conference is being provided by The Ford Foundation, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Otto Bremer Foundation, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

For registration and other conference-related information, contact:
Lynn Meinholz/Robin Gigot
North American Program
Land Tenure Center
1357 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53715
Phone: (608)262-3658
FAX: (608)262-2141
Email: ltc-nap@facstaff.wisc.edu
http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/nap

Copyright © 1998 by Land Tenure Center and Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin. All rights reserved.
Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for noncommercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies.

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