Barely two centuries ago, most of the world's productive land still belonged either communally to traditional societies or to the higher powers of monarch or church. But that pattern, and the ways of life that went with it, were consigned to history by, Andro Linklater persuasively argues, the most creative and at the same time destructive cultural force in the modern era-the idea of individual, exclusive ownership of land. Spreading from both shores...

After their father's death, two children and their invalid mother head south to the rugged mountains of southwestern Virginia to live with their great-grandmother. They flourish until the local coal-and gas company comes around conniving to seize their property.

Exploring the relationship between Aboriginal people and their land, Walya Ngamardiki was inspired by Silas Roberts' submission to the 1976 Australian Government inquiry on uranium mining. Silas, whose tribal name is Ngourladi, is an elder of the Allawa clan and was the first chairman of the Northern Land Council, established to assist Aboriginal people make land claims based on traditional ownership. The film, which moves from Arnhem Land in the...

At Ngurgdu (Spring Peak) in the Northern Territory, an area soon to be irrevocably disturbed by uranium mining, 80-year-old William Alderson (known as “Yorky Billy”) reflects on his life in the outback. His father was an Englishman from Yorkshire (hence Yorky’s nickname) who spent 45 years in Australia and “tried everything” – working as a prospector, a railway worker, drover and buffalo hunter. After only 3 years of school, his only son,...

President Andrew Jackson wanted to secure all 25 million acres east of the Mississippi River. When the indigenous tribes balked, Jackson offered treaties that promised a farm to each head of an Indian family in exchange for the remaining land. Mary Elizabeth Young details the repercussions of these treaties for American Indians and Anglo-Indian relations. Few if any Indians ever saw that promised farmland, but the United States received its share...