Decades of political debate and conversation have been devoted to addressing the many flaws of our capitalist system, including its tendencies to promote material gain as a central value, exacerbate class-based inequality, and favor economic gain for the few, even as the basic needs of the many often go unmet.

Moving from radical theories and debates toward implementation of new models for economic prosperity can be achieved by uprooting the values inherent in our current economic system. In The Whiteness of Wealth, author and Emory University law professor Dorothy Brown documents how basic systems in US society, such as the tax code, often serve to entrench class and racial divides. Changing these patterns requires doing something different.

An example of collective land ownership at scale can be seen with the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, which has legal title to 28,000 acres (43.75 square miles) of land in California’s western Coachella Valley—including portions of Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, and unincorporated Riverside County. The Cahuilla maintain ownership of land but have entered into 1,175 commercial, 7,671 residential, and 11,118 timeshare leases—typically with 99-year terms. All of this is notably under the jurisdiction of the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, rather than more direct independent Indigenous control. Newly appointed Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland is the first Indigenous cabinet member ever to oversee the Bureau of Indian Affairs, opening the possibility for more serious transformative change based on communal values.

The collective values evidenced by community ownership, as maintained by the Cahuilla, stands in opposition to the common US legal and tax systems which favor individual property ownership, with the ability to earn money from the land by extractive uses. We must seize this moment to encourage and fully support leaders who question and firmly reject the continual buying and selling of land itself as the primary means to increase individual wealth.

Fully realizing the potential of social change to build community wealth and increase prosperity requires that adequate philanthropic resources be made available using an equitable selection process. The power of communal land ownership, as envisioned and valued by communities of color, can offer a path forward if philanthropy has the courage to embrace and proactively fund leaders of color at the forefront of the change. A similar challenge and critical response are also needed to shift our nation’s public policy framework to appropriately address race rather than continuing to promote the use of an ineffective color-blind policy lens. Our BIPOC struggle for control of land and resources is intimately tied to increased federal protection of voting rights, in the face of numerous state legislative efforts to limit or reduce voting access.

The next several years will prove to be crucial to discovering if our nation can truly overcome the multiple legacies of racism by collectively uniting to demonstrate a consistent commitment to advancing racial equity and justice which measurably benefit people of color.

Read the full article about land ownership by Tony Pickett at Nonprofit Quarterly.