“Turtle Island” and the legitimacy of America

In December, federal law enforcement disrupted what they alleged was a plot to conduct a series of ideologically-motivated bombings across parts of California on New Year’s Eve. Four defendants were arrested and subsequently indicted on terrorism charges, three of whom have pleaded not guilty as of mid-January 2026.

The defendants were said to have been members of an obscure far-left extremist group called the Turtle Island Liberation Front, which (among other things) aims for what it calls “liberation through decolonization and tribal sovereignty.” An FBI affidavit asserted that the Turtle Island Liberation Front “publicly posts content that advocates for violence against United States officials,” that it has called “for the working class to rise up and fight back against capitalism,” and that it believes “that liberalism and peaceful protest will be the downfall of those who believe it is enough…that ‘direct action is the only way.’”

While the terrorism charges certainly place the Turtle Island Liberation Front in its own unique category, the term “Turtle Island” has become widely employed by those who share the broader anti-American and (often) anti-Israel ideology to which the group evidentially adhered—even if they oppose its alleged embrace of violence. In the activist context, “Turtle Island” has been incorporated into a spectrum of worldviews that, to one degree or another, view the United States and the global influence it exerts as malign and illegitimate.

“Turtle Island” in the activist context

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This radical-left manifestation of the Turtle Island concept has, perhaps unsurprisingly, found fertile ground in academia. The Atlantic quoted University of Minnesota professor Melanie Yazzie as explaining that “the goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States…”

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“Turtle Island” most properly refers to a traditional mythology common among certain American Indian cultures, holding that the land beneath them had been formed on the back of a gigantic turtle. Geographically, it is generally understood to refer to North America. In this benign context, “Turtle Island” is an expression of those cultures’ socioreligious heritage.

More recently, the term has also become associated with a particular vein of radical-left activism that views so-called “settler-colonialist” countries as illegitimate. These activists typically direct particular ire toward the United States and Israel, while purporting to draw parallels between the Native American and Palestinian “indigenous” peoples each is respectively alleged to have displaced from their rightful lands. Bard College professor Roger Berkowitz explained the phenomenon to The Atlantic in this way: “The left has replaced its faith in proletarian subjects and utopian solutions with a view of the Indigenous as innocent and oppressed. It’s an ethics rather than a politics.”

This radical-left manifestation of the Turtle Island concept has, perhaps unsurprisingly, found fertile ground in academia. The Atlantic quoted University of Minnesota professor Melanie Yazzie as explaining that “the goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States,” and that “we want U.S. out of everywhere. We want U.S. out of Palestine. We want U.S. out of Turtle Island.” In a declaration of breathtaking absurdity, she characterized the United States as “the greatest predator empire that has ever existed.” Yazzie’s statements were made at an event hosted by an explicitly communist activist group called The Red Nation, which contends that “for our Earth to live, capitalism and colonialism must die.”

These words have been echoed by Nick Estes, The Red Nation’s co-founder and another University of Minnesota professor. Estes has declared that the United States “sits atop stolen Native lands” and written of what he called “compelling critiques of imperialist state sovereignty and the very idea that the United States is a legitimate nation. After all, conquest is considered an illegitimate form of government.” In addition to claiming that the United States captured erstwhile Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro because he was “refusing to be a slave to a white supremacist [American] empire,” Estes has attempted to justify the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel (which he refers to as “Al Aqsa Flood”), asking rhetorically: “Did you expect the oppressed would hold hands and hug the murder out of their oppressors?” Later, he wrote that “the Zionist-led genocide against Palestinians” had “firm roots in Turtle Island.”

Estes was an inaugural 2020 recipient of the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s Freedom Scholar award, which provides $250,000 in unrestricted funds to radical activist-academics.

In 2024, the Marguerite Casey Foundation awarded another Freedom Scholar prize to University of Illinois Chicago professor Nadine Naber for her work on “decolonial abolition” and disrupting “nationalist myths” from “Turtle Island to Palestine.” Months before her award was announced, Naber wrote (in an article that used the phrase “Turtle Island” five times) that “the existence of the U.S. nation-state is based on colonialism, empire-building, war-making and enslavement.” Elsewhere, she has advocated for abolishing capitalism, international borders, “heteropatriarchy,” the United States military, police, prisons, and “the very ideas of a crime and a criminal,” alongside “the return of lands to decolonizing Indigenous stewardship.” Functionally, Naber supports an end to the United States itself. Indeed, she has written of dismantling “the structure of the U.S. nation-state,” suggesting that “perhaps we don’t need [it] anymore.”

Use by activist nonprofits

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. . . the NDN Collective has called for the closure of Mount Rushmore National Memorial—which it attacks as a “symbol of white supremacy and colonization”—and for the “stolen” land the monument occupies in the Black Hills to be turned over to the Lakota people.

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The phrase “Turtle Island” is also employed by nonprofit advocacy groups.

Sometimes, these groups have missions that are directly connected to American Indian activism. For example, before 2017 the Indigenous Environmental Network filed its Form 990 tax forms under the legal name of Indigenous Educational Network of Turtle Island. Today, its logo remains a turtle with an image of North America superimposed on its shell. The Indigenous Environmental Network supports Green New Deal-style eco-socialism from a Native American perspective. It claims that “the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas have lived for over 500 years in confrontation with an immigrant society,” which it asserts has produced a contemporary “environmental crisis.”

The NDN Collective, a 501(c)(3) whose mission is to “build the collective power of Indigenous Peoples, communities, and Nations to exercise our inherent right to self-determination,” explains that its “geographic grantmaking focus is Turtle Island (also known as North America).” Among other things, the NDN Collective has called for the closure of Mount Rushmore National Memorial—which it attacks as a “symbol of white supremacy and colonization”—and for the “stolen” land the monument occupies in the Black Hills to be turned over to the Lakota people.

Others use “Turtle Island” to signal their general antipathy toward the United States and (usually) Israel, which they view as forces of unmitigated global malevolence. The full-spectrum anti-American agitation group Code Pink includes the phrase in its “manifesto” against “the colonial domination of the U.S. empire.” On Independence Day 2024, Jewish Voice for Peace posted that “this July 4th, we contemplate parallels between the colonization of Turtle Island (“North America”) and Palestine,” alongside a series of maps of Israel and the United States purporting to show the progression of “native land dispossession” in each. The Twin Cities chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America used the term in its “Statement of Solidarity with Palestine” after the October 2023 Hamas terror attacks.

Perhaps the best illustration of how some left-wing activist groups have used the Turtle Island concept to synthesize anti-American and anti-Israel activism is Honor the Earth. A 501(c)(3) public charity, Honor the Earth sees itself as part of “a political movement of returning land to Indigenous people whose land and sovereignty were stolen by settler colonialism.” It declares that “the formation of Israel, much like the United States, was predicated on the theft of Indigenous land and destruction of Indigenous livelihoods.”

Honor the Earth writes on its website:

From Palestine to Turtle Island, Indigenous struggles for sovereignty, land, and basic human dignity are intertwined. Our peoples both face violent settler-colonial regimes, rooted in racist supremacist systems, that enact programs of extermination and land theft. These regimes – so-called “Israel” and the so-called “United States” – share strategies, ideologies and resources to enforce global dominance over Indigenous peoples.

Founded in 1993, Honor the Earth’s activism was traditionally centered on the intersection of environmental and Native American causes—the archetypical example being its heavy involvement in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests of 2016-2017. For years the group was led by its co-founder Winona LaDuke, who most famously was Ralph Nader’s running mate on the Green Party ticket in both the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections. LaDuke resigned as Honor the Earth’s executive director in 2023 amid an organizational sexual harassment scandal, after which the group was extensively overhauled.

LaDuke was replaced by Krystal Two Bulls, who years earlier had allegedly been involved with some of the most radical elements of the Dakota Access protests. Under Two Bulls, Honor the Earth quickly incorporated pro-Palestinian activism into its core mission. It became the new fiscal sponsor of the pro-terrorist Palestinian Youth Movement, which had formerly been housed at the WESPAC Foundation. Palestinian Youth Movement organizers currently hold positions on Honor the Earth’s board (which the group says is now “composed entirely of Indigenous women”) and in its senior management.

Of the 39 “news” posts available on Honor the Earth’s website dating from December 2022 through January 2026, all but three included the word “indigenous.” Nearly 70 percent featured some variation of the word “colonial,” while over 60 percent explicitly used the phrase “Turtle Island.” 28 percent used the word “Palestinian” or a variant. Five posts included all four terms. More than one post has used the word “fascist” to describe the policies of the Second Trump Administration.

In its 2024 tax filings, Honor the Earth reported $3.65 million in total revenue, down from $6.2 million in 2023. Its major funders in 2024 included the WESPAC Foundation ($1 million, earmarked for the Palestinian Youth Movement), ImpactAssets ($534,500), the Freedom Together Foundation ($500,000), Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors ($250,000), the California Endowment ($100,000), the Groundswell Fund ($100,000), and Possibility Labs ($100,000).

Relationship with land acknowledgements

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In 2024, Bay Area Legal Aid received 90 percent of its $31.4 million total revenue from government grants, yet it openly disputes the sovereignty and legitimacy of the very authorities colleting the tax dollars which underwrite its operations.

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Use of the phrase “Turtle Island” can also be loosely connected to the separate phenomenon of land acknowledgements, whereby an individual or institution publicly declares that a given geographic location in what is now the United States (or Canada) was once inhabited by one or more indigenous cultures. Their wording and length vary considerably, though most tend to follow a general template.

Land acknowledgements have become especially associated with colleges and universities, some of which have evidently dedicated considerable resources to their development and implementation. Brown University’s official 98-word statement was the product of a year-long effort by a specially formed seven-member Land Acknowledgement Working Group. Evergreen State College provides four different acknowledgements to be used depending on the specific location in which the statement is being made.

Columbia Law School’s land acknowledgement reads:

The Lenni-Lenape and Wappinger people lived on this land before and during colonization of the Americas. We recognize these Indigenous people of Manhattan, their displacement, dispossession, and continued presence. We are reminded to reflect on our past as we contemplate our way forward to support Indigenous people and other marginalized communities of this land and advance our commitment to justice.

Some land acknowledgements explicitly refer to Turtle Island, such as the particularly inflammatory language adopted by Loyola University Maryland:

Across Turtle Island, known to settlers as North America, the racist violence of settler colonialism past and present has led to the traumatization and destruction of millions of Indigenous bodies, communities, cultures and resources. . . This acknowledgment is a small and insufficient step toward correcting the racist narrative and actions of white supremacy and colonialism.

Nonprofit activist groups also occasionally perform land acknowledgements. A Thanksgiving post on the Liberty Hill Foundation’s website stated that the group was “on the land of the Tongva/Gabrieleño Nations.” The far-left Alliance for Global Justice has declared its “solidarity with all the Indigenous people of Turtle Island…the land some call the Americas,” while asserting that “we stand on land that is stolen, land that is exploited. We occupy the land that is the rightful home of Indigenous people.” The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance announced that its 2022 membership assembly would include those from “Turtle Island, Puerto Rico, Hawai’i, and Guam, along with international allies,” and would take place “on Ohlone Territory in Oakland, California.”

Indeed, Oakland is notable both for the preponderance of left-of-center activist groups headquartered there, and for being located within the territorial boundaries ostensibly subject to the Shuumi Land Tax. This is a voluntarily levy (not a genuine tax) paid to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that reported $12.5 million in revenue and $54.2 million in net assets in 2024. The stated purpose of this contribution is to facilitate the “rematriation” of “stolen” and “unceded” land back to the Ohlone people, who traditionally lived in what is now the heavily urbanized Easy Bay. The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust describes Oakland and surrounding locales as “one of the most inflated real estate markets on Turtle Island.”

A calculator on the Land Trust’s website provides institutions (including nonprofits) with their recommended annual Shuumi Land Tax contribution.

The Sierra Club—which has promoted land acknowledgements alongside efforts to “decolonize” and “indigenize” the environmental movement—is headquartered in Oakland. Its 2024 total expenses would warrant an annual Shuumi contribution of $1.7 million.

The University of California, Berkeley’s undergraduate admissions department has declared that its campus sits on “the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo Ohlone,” that the school benefits “from the use and occupation of this land,” and that “we affirm Indigenous sovereignty.” The recommended Shuumi contribution for the University of California Berkeley Foundation in 2024 would be $4.4 million.

One notable charity which has recommended the Shuumi Land Tax as a method of contributing “to the reparation of Indigenous sovereignty and the rematriation of Indigenous land” is Bay Area Legal Aid. Asserting that its own offices are located on “stolen land” that “was never ceded,” the group blames “the United States and previous colonizers” for inflicting “generational harms” upon “the original stewards of Turtle Island.” In 2024, Bay Area Legal Aid received 90 percent of its $31.4 million total revenue from government grants, yet it openly disputes the sovereignty and legitimacy of the very authorities colleting the tax dollars which underwrite its operations.

Thoughts and questions

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Speech is not violence, and violence is not speech.

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The point here is certainly not to minimize any of the historical sufferings endured by American Indian nations, or any of the socioeconomic issues many Native Americans currently face. Nor is it to question their legitimate right to tribal sovereignty. Like every assemblage of people in the history of humanity, America never has been and never will be infallible in its conduct. Whether a performative land acknowledgement serves any purpose in ameliorating this is a separate question.

Rather, it’s about those who dispute (or outright deny) the very right of the United States to exist—and by extension the right of those of us who proudly consider ourselves Americans to live here. Charges of white supremacist genocide and settler-colonial illegitimacy on “Turtle Island” seek to paint the United States as a singular force of destructive and racist avarice. Typically, Israel gets lumped in as well. It’s a false and tremendously harmful narrative, which has continued to gain traction in the often-symbiotic worlds of academia and left-wing nonprofit activism.

With respect to the Turtle Island Liberation Front specifically, California State University, San Bernardino professor Brian Levin told the Los Angeles Times that the allegations reminded him of the 1970s Weather Underground. An offshoot of peaceful protests against (among other things) the Vietnam War, the “Weathermen” planted bombs at government buildings and other targets.

This is a good comparison. Both were fringe groups that emerged out of an increasingly agitated and radical—though largely peaceful—ideological environment characterized by marked hostility toward the United States and its global influence. If the allegations against the Turtle Island Liberation Front are valid, then—like the Weather Underground—they (allegedly) took a fateful step toward violence.

Do those who contribute to that volatile environment through their inflammatory rhetoric bear any responsibility for violent or otherwise illegal acts carried out in accordance with the radical ideology that they espouse?

Not in any legal sense, generally—and rightfully so. The First Amendment’s protections are broad, which is something all Americans should be grateful for. Outside of some very specific circumstances, the government has no business restricting or regulating political opinions, even offensive or corrosive ones. Speech is not violence, and violence is not speech.

But perhaps such groups and individuals do bear a certain moral responsibility for the fallout from their reckless language—assigned in the court of public opinion rather than a court of law, with the consequences being scorn and opprobrium rather than censorship and liability. Free speech cuts both ways, and deleterious extremism should be called out for what it is. This applies in equal measure to both the right and left.

The members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front—and they alone—are responsible for any alleged crimes that may have been committed. That said, those who invoke the phrase “Turtle Island” in a conscious effort to delegitimize the United States (and often Israel too) in the most outrageous and incendiary language would do well to look themselves in the mirror and ask: what did you expect would happen?

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/turtle-island-and-the-legitimacy-of-america/