This Article builds on existing approaches to collective reparations to consider how we can provide redress for inequality rooted in interlocking histories and legacies of racial violence. It tells the story of Allensworth and the greater Tulare Lake Basin of California’s Central Valley: A story that crosses time and space within communities, uncovering histories that are often made invisible by the Central Valley landscape yet permeate the once nutrient-rich earth of the Basin. This Article attempts to translate not only the harm, but also the resistance and dignity of the communities that are already working to ensure their lives are more than mere survival. Repair, as the communities of the Tulare Basin demonstrate, can start by healing the land.

Reparations stories often involve throughlines from specific events of violence and seemingly isolated historical moments of legalized oppression — aiming redress at victims and survivors. Collective reparations, in contrast, are commonly understood as redress to restore a community, including rebuilding communal ties. This Article lends support for even broader visions of collective community repair. It argues for understanding how systems of oppression, ranging from settler colonialism to Jim Crow, are interrelated and employ similar systems of harm that are imbricated from one generation to the next. This Article serves as a call for collective reparations for the Black and Latiné communities of Allensworth, as well as the Tachi Yokut tribe of the Tulare Lake Basin, by showing how healing the land can be a first key step to rebuilding communities struggling under calamitous climate change.