"Land Is Life": Why Selling Indigenous Land is Selling Our Future

by Elder Wewo Kotokay, Melanesian Conservation Elders, Inc.

The Land is Not a Commodity—It is Life Itself 

Across Melanesia, from the highlands of Papua New Guinea to the islands of Vanuatu and the Solomons, the earth beneath our feet is more than just soil—it is our ancestors, our identity, and our survival: our own life. The campaign slogan "Land Is Life" promoted by the Melanesian Indigenous Land Defence Alliance (MILDA)  is not just a phrase; it is the unshakable truth of Indigenous existence. 

When an Indigenous person or tribe sells their land, they are not just trading dirt for money—they are selling their children’s future, their culture, and their own identity and dignity. The land holds our history, our sacred sites, our food, and our medicine. We all came from land, and live over land, and finally go back to be the land. Once it is gone, we become strangers in our own home, and we spiritually and culturally die. 

Selling Land = Selling Our Livelihood 

For Indigenous Melanesians, land is not just property—it is the foundation of life. It provides: 

• Food (gardens, hunting grounds, fishing waters) 

• Medicine (plants, traditional healing knowledge) 

• Economy (sustenance farming, local trade) 

• Spirituality (sacred sites, connection to ancestors) 

When land is sold to corporations, foreign investors, or private buyers, Indigenous communities lose everything. They become dependent on cash—a temporary resource that disappears, leaving them with no food, no heritage, and no power, which means no integrity and dignity as the land-owners. They become foreigners on their own ancestral land they inherited from the ancestors.

Selling Land = Selling Our Dignity 

Land ownership is not only selling our livelihood, but also it tied to identity and self-determination. Indigenous peoples who lose their land often face: 

• Loss of cultural knowledge (elders can no longer pass down traditions tied to the land) 

• Broken communities (displacement leads to social problems, alcoholism, and violence) 

• Dependence on outsiders (no land means no self-sufficiency, making people beggars in their own country) 
• Depressed and lost communities (no land means no life as indigenous peoples and tribes). Being indigenous means very related to and supported by their land. Non-indigenous means, no having ancestral land. The souls of the living and dead ones become orphaned, they become lost or wandering spirits, that demonstrate their lost-ness in those who are still alive as well as after they die. This is gross loss, humanitarian catastrophe that cannot be explained in any human language.

Worst of all, selling land is irreversible. Once it is gone, it rarely comes back. Future generations will grow up landless, rootless, and disconnected—a fate worse than poverty. 

The "Land Is Life" Movement: A Call for Unity and Resistance 

The Melanesian Land Defence Alliance (MILDA), Melanesian Spirit and Nature (MSN), and other Indigenous rights groups across Melanesian islands and tribes must unite to fight against the reckless sale of customary land. Here’s how: 

1. Strengthen Legal Protections 

• Push for laws that ban or restrict the sale of Indigenous land to non-customary owners. 

• Establish community land trusts where land is held collectively and cannot be sold. 

2. Educate and Mobilize Communities 

• Run awareness campaigns explaining the long-term consequences of selling land. 

• Highlight success stories of tribes that resisted land sales and thrived. 

3. Promote Sustainable Alternatives 

• Encourage land leasing (not selling) for development, ensuring Indigenous people retain ownership. 

• Support eco-tourism, agroforestry, and traditional farming as ways to earn income without surrendering land. 

4. Expose and Resist Exploitation 

• Name and shame middlemen, corrupt leaders, and foreign companies pressuring tribes to sell. 

• Organize peaceful protests, legal challenges, and media campaigns to defend Indigenous land rights. 

Conclusion

1: The Land is Our Mother—We Must Protect Her 

The "Land Is Life" movement is not just a slogan—it is a war cry for survival. Melanesian Indigenous groups must stand together, because once the land is sold, life as we know it is over. 

We must resist short-term greed and fight for long-term sovereignty. The land does not belong to us—we belong to the land. And if we sell it, we sell our souls. 

The choice is ours: Will we be the generation that saved our land, or the one that betrayed it? 

2: The Land is Life —We Must Protect Our Own Lives

The land is not a commodity; it is ancestor, mother, provider, identity that gives, identifies and welcomes back life itself. To sell it is to sever our roots, to betray the blood and sweat of those who came before us, to finish our own life. When land is sold to outsiders or left barren, we don’t just lose soil—we lose our stories, our food, our medicine, our future.

Selling land is worse than prostitution—because a prostitute can reclaim their body, but stolen land is rarely returned. It is a permanent surrender of sovereignty, a slow suicide of a people, committed by our own ignorance, or due to our greed and lust.

Protecting the land is not just an act to protect biodiversity for sustainability as promoted many environmental organisations, but it is more as a respect to our own heritage, integrity and dignity as human beings, and as integral, inter-related and inter-dependent parts of Nature.

#LandIsLife #MelanesiaRising #NoLandNoLife