In broad swathes of the United States, government policy towards Indian land has been to try to take as much of it away as possible. It could now be easier for tribes to reclaim and protect their land. We have to fight for every single inch.
History does not demonstrate that we have left anything in our past. We are only accumulating.
Now is the time to pull the emergency brake.
Really it’s a conversation for Indigenous communities ourselves. What is authentic, as we move through colonization? And how do we ensure that the future we’re creating for our children and grandchildren is an authentic one that’s true to our ancestors?
Slavery itself is a state of war. The only way one could subject people to the absolute will of a master is through massive amounts of violence. There is no slavery without violence and terror.
Climate change is just the latest phase of colonial dislocation, and the latest phase of the disruption of what had been long-standing ecological systems on this continent.
The Thanksgiving myth makes light of Indigenous people’s very real historical traumas. It depicts the only authentic Indians as frozen in time at the moment of contact. It blinds Americans to the existence of Native people in modern times and to the ways Native people have resisted the colonial apocalypse for centuries.
Even if the Sámi here are pushing for a greater consciousness of what Norwegians are doing abroad, there is still the minister of finance dressing up like Pocahontas.
We will fight the forces of death with life! We will fight colonial violence, capitalist greed, and ecological destruction with our memories, our witness, our songs, and our bodies! We will not give up! We will stop Line 3, and we will build a better future without it!
I’m here to remind you to expect resistance. We’re out there. We’re tired of the racist resource colonialism that is continued by your company.
Some converted happily. But many said things like, “We are being swept away by the torrent. We are men reduced to ashes. Everything has been turned on its head.” People were terrified.
