ProbablyKaffe

Kaffe: The author of the CPUSA article I responded to the other day has issued a response, here it is with my in-between responses. I had to transcribe the response from an image with some software so there might be mistakes, please check the source first if something looks weird, it could be my mistake.

Recently, a twitter user by the name of @probablykaffe released a criticism of my article "Questions of Settler-Colonialism in the U.S." on the party website (https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5450487). The criticism was posted on Lemmygrad, a Marxist-Leninist substitute for Reddit founded in 2019 in response to Reddit's crackdown on Marxist content on their platform. I don't plan to respond to all points made, as I do not believe that is productive and would lead to a back and forth conversation that I do not have the energy for. However, I do see this as an opportunity to elaborate on some points within the article a little further. This is not a formal response, nor is this representative of the Communist Party USA.

It should be noted that my article is meant to be a sort of starter in the analysis of settler-colonialism in the U.S. I absolutely could have gone more in-depth and technical, however my main focus of this article was to be as accessible about this theory as possible while still giving enough theoretical substance. And 1 think 1 largely succeeded on that front considering all the positive reception the article has received online and within the party itself.

With that said, let's get into the critique and address the most important points. Keep in mind that their criticism wlill be quoted at-length, as they did with my article, in order to keep full context when addressing arguments.

The piece posits that "regular" Colonialism intends to exploit the Indigenous population, while settler-Colonialism intends to expropriate and remove them. That both of these behaviors exist in all colonial structures is ignored. The settlers of Rhodesia not only violently occupied land used by Africans, they also exploited African labor by continuing to deny them access to resources except through wage labor or zero-wage labor, slavery. Whether exploitation or expropriation is used is actually an evolution in the relations between Indigene and the Occupation. Under English colonization, the Pequot people were first exploited for their productive capacities, then removed from their lands where a significant portion of them were sold into slavery to be exploited away from their land-relations. Smashing the Pequot came about because they stood in the way of settler control over regional trade, a condition that developed from relations where Pequot and English traded in mutually beneficial relations.

This is absolutely a fair criticism which I take full responsibility for. I should've been more clear in my article that, while settler-colonialism is distinct from franchise colonialism, it still does feature the aspect of exploitation of indigenous populations, especially in the monopoly capitalist context we exist in with the U.S. today. I will say, however, that they do make an interesting dichotomy between expropriation and exploitation of indigenous lands and peoples. It should be noted that the expropriation of indigenous lands, and the horrible structures of oppression and atrocities that result from this process,are an integral part to what makes settler-colonialism distinct from franchise colonialism. They do not choose and pick whatever at a whim, expropriation is a fundamental characteristic of settler-colonialism, and I feel that is negated with their statements.

Kaffe: Agreed, though I do say exploitation and expropriation are relationships that evolve (as in, not chosen by a thinking entity) in a colonial context. I agree that the way I wrote about it made it seem like I think these are two distinct modes, rather than processes under constant expression of varying degrees.

The first part of this segment tries to answer the chicken-egg of Colonialism and Capitalism by putting one before the other, when only in certain situations is that apparent, and broadly, these are co-constitutive processes.

No, no I don't. I clearly make it known in this section that these two processes happened simultaneously and fed into each other.

Kaffe: You said: "It must be stressed that settler-colonialism laid the basis for the further development of capitalism as a mode of primitive accumulation, and settler-colonialism only came into existence due to the development of capitalism and the pursuit of profit." It's this latter part of the statement that I take issue with considering the English settlers in Ireland preceded capitalist relations in Ireland and were sent to police expropriated territory from the Irish. I want it clear that Settler-Colonialism does not need Capitalism, or vice-versa, but if your statement is directly about Turtle Island, I agree. This relates to all colonization that require hired policing (French in Vietnam, Kanaky). This means we have to piece out the difference between a Franchise Colony, a Settler-Colony, and a Settler-State. Permanence of settling pushes a colonial regime towards being dominated by settler interests, and potentially these interests imposing themselves over the sovereignty of their mother country, developing into a Settler-State with independently exercised interests (but tied generally to Imperialism, as with Israel and Kanaky). What makes a settler is the (continued) act of staying (including reproducing). In terms of studying the political economy of a colony, there is use in distinguishing frontier settlers and colonial police from others, but frontier settlers who are in it for the money or colonial expansion replace themselves spatially with new settlers who are there to stay. The Occupation's polity is subject to evolution but all of these moving parts remain settlers in the ongoing Occupation, outside of a new Colonialism (chattelization, apartheid) that distinguishes "arrivants", that population will be made of settler classes until the Occupation is abolished.

Incorrectly posits that the class of settlers is distinctly those who have taken land. Says nothing about their relationship as continued occupiers, and says nothing about their relation to the broader network of property relations that is the Settler-Colonial Capitalist system. These frontier-persons are simply one way in which the Occupation came to control resources. The more common manner towards the "end of the frontier" (an event that was claimed by said entity, not found in reality) was sending the standing army, men such as the so-called "Buffalo Soldiers" or George "Hang Them All" Wright and his Military Division of the Pacific. In fact, nearly all of those who were profiting off of settler expansion were members of the colonial militias and later US standing army.

I do mention in my article that indigenous land is occupied, but you are correct that I should've gone alittle more in-depth regarding that specific characteristic. Regarding your point, however, settlers, as I define in my article, are those who "[are] outside these land-relations, and plays an active role in negating them. This does not mean that one has to personally enforce colonial laws, rather it means that they directly benefit from the participation in the destruction of these land relations

Indigenous struggles for landback and decolonization are all about rebuilding land relations on occupied land, and gaining sovereignty over the land they currently inhabit. This is something that I will go more in-depth over later in the article. The settler's job is to destroy these land relations, occupy the land that indigenous people inhabited, and stop indigenous people from their struggles to rebuild land relations. Occupation is an inherent characteristic of settler-colonialism.

Kaffe: "The settler's job is to destroy these land relations, occupy the land that indigenous people inhabited, and stop indigenous people from their struggles to rebuild land relations." Which is why settlers as a class continues into time as long as the occupation exists, they are expected to and primed to continuously reject Indigenous land-relations. One isn't a settler just because they decide to act in that way, it's not a choice, getting their reproductive resources from the settler-regime is enough for them to reflexively defend it. Anyone can choose to break out of their class relations (Class Suicide, Marooning), but only in so far as they are bound by a decolonizing community.

It's extremely disingenuous to compare the estimated (by Ortiz) total population of the Americas in 1492 to the population of Indigenous people in the US in 1900. The founding of the US in 1776 is closer to us now in time than it was to Columbus's landing. The total native American population in 1900 was some 4-5M people, it is now up to some 45M people. In the US alone it went from some 240k to some 7 million-people today. It's estimated that over 100k Indigenous people in the US (claimed territory) died from 1860 to 1900 due to colonial policies such as boarding schools (40k children dead or missing from the start of the schools to today). Settler-Colonialism was not just the theft that causes death, but the continued exclusion that prevents populations from recovering to pre-disaster levels. This continued exclusion raised the white/settler population of the US by hundreds of millions over this period.

This part just makes no sense. Columbus' voyage marked the start of settler-colonialism in the USA and the genocide of the indigenous population. Of course l'm going to show how disastrous settler-colonialism as a structure of oppression is to my people by showing how it's affected my people's population. This is such an absurd point.

Kaffe: My first issue was the comparing of two different population segments through time. The next issue is that for the disaster that was Columbus's landing, the peoples oppressed and imprisoned by the "13 Colonies" and later the US were free communities/nations until the English took land or otherwise subjugated them to the rule of England. That was the point at which they became Indigenous (a colonized population).

Contradictions make the system living. There are classes of Indigenous and "arrivant" populations that can benefit from the motions of settler-colonial development. These are contradictions we well understand when we are talking about "regular" Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism, yet for some reason we have to revise such notions when speaking of Settler-Colonialism. The development of one's class can contradict the development of their nation. Though it is not wise to limit such notions to "race", which is a product of national antagonisms and not the source. Former slaves working to subjugate other Indigenous peoples including their own kin is one of many really existing contradictions that give Settler-Colonialism and Capitalism life

Keep note of this. Though it should be noted that Kaffe is using contradictions incorrectly here. The context is that I am trying to find a solid way to define being a socio-political citizen of the U.S. and what a settler is.

Most of this segment of the article is correct, however, reduced. For fear of contradiction (that give life), they'd like to argue that Indigenous people with government jobs are settlers. They are however, not settlers, even though they are in class relations antagonistic to decolonization and ultimately to the liberation of their nations. This contradiction exists because of the under-development of their nations due to Settler-Colonialism. The US government onboarding more and more Indigenous people is also a contradiction for itself, as writers like Red Nation have access to means of production to facilitate revolutionary study and spread it amongst the population. So too, did Fanon have the bourgeois education and employment, partially colonizing his own continent, but contradictorily gaining skills that eventually helped his people overthrow their colonizers.

In the previous quote, Kaffe relishes on how contradictions give life to our system, yet seems to believe that going so far as to say that social relations such as settler and indigenous aren't static and can change is too far. Saying that an indigenous person participating in the destruction of their own land relations therefore makes them a settler is a contradiction that Kaffe doesn't seem to like.

Kaffe: My opposition is with settler being applied to Indigenous people through splitting hairs in employment to avoid applying the label to all non-colonized people in a settler occupation. My position is that all of those Bordertown occupants are indeed settlers as reproducers of the settlement. Indigenous individuals still have national relations that tie them to Indigenous Liberation struggles, the contradiction of them being employed by the occupation could be described as dual Indigenous-settler relation, but since employment is situational and nations generally are not, it seems unnecessary to apply the term when economic class as a worker in the US describes enough. Especially since if we use Red Nation's definitions, even reservations are Bordertowns (history shows this to be quite literal in cases). If we are not to contradict RN, then we'd have to apply settler to all Indigenous people in the US. The other aspect is that limiting Indigeneity to essentially "social formations before colonization", makes it a lot easier to erase Indigeneity, for the colonizers to "write away" their problems by perpetually claiming the resistance illegitimate (which it already does).

Land-relations are not confined to reservations whatsoever. If that were the case, the Bolt-Decision would not even exist. As well, continued land-relations exist for all Indigenous communities, threat from the settler-society for performing such relations is ongoing. The NoDAPL protest would not have occurred because it does not cross existing reservation lines. Yet, the Oceti Sakowin rallied by the thousands to protect the water. This is a very confused point, which again relies on events-thinking to comprehend. White workers (in fact, all USians) in this one example, would continue to benefit by having more control over the global value of the dollar with access to fuel provided by DAPL. This is again contradictory for even the Lakota people on the Standing Rock Reservation. This leads to the broader contradiction, that US Imperialism relies on the continued subjugation of Indigenous national interests to provide high wages and excessive consumption to the vast majority of US workers. But again, using the corrected definitions, the idea that Indigenous land-relations are marginal and "vanishing" ignores facts like the US nuclear capable submarine base lying directly in a former Pequot village (whose refugees are in a nearby reservation). Also, notice that Gaza's fighters are predominantly refugees, which "descendent" is one of the ways Palestinian refugees are defined by the UN.

This point misunderstands what indigenous land-relations are, and confuses it for an indigenous connection to ancestral homeland. I will quote Nodrada at length here:

"They do not understand the social relation of Indigenous peoples to their homelands, which extends into the aspects of ecology, history, spirituality, etc. That is, Indigeneity as itself a social relation. Indigenous peoples explicitly refer to their nations and homelands as relations. Their relation to land is not to land as an abstract thing, but to specific spaces that are inseparable from their specific communal lives.

...

Identity and mode of life in communalist societies is specific to spaces, because keeping in the 'rhythm' of these spaces is a basic guiding logic of life. Because land is a relative, there was and is significant resistance among Indigenous peoples to the settler seizure of land and commodification of their non-human relative. The European bourgeoisie, meanwhile, was more concerned with what value could be extracted from the land, their worldview being based in abstract concepts of Right, Justice, Liberty and so on.

The faction in question does not understand setler-colonists as part of social relations which seek to negate that communal land social relation for concrete aims. They lack broad perspective, they only see society as a collection of atoms, falling into micro-categories, bundled together."

Here, it is clear that indigenous land-relations refer to the relations that indigenous people build towards the land they inhabit through the building of communal society and a common mode of life. This is integral to the definition of indigeneity itself, which is "a social relation defined by the persistence of long-standing communal links and Indigenous identities in a specific place."

The whole point of settler-colonialism is to destroy these land relations and drive the indigenous people off of their land. This is what happened when the indigenous people of the US were driven off of their lands and pushed into reservations. They were driven off of the land, their communal land links were destroyed and so too were the land relations. This is distinct from a connection to ancestral homelands, which is in essence the resistance to settler-colonialism, the struggle to rebuild land-relations in their ancestral homelands. If indigenous land relations were not vanishing and being destroyed, then there wouldn't be a struggle from indigenous communities against settler-colonialism. This is where occupation comes in. Occupation is about stealing and inhabiting indigenous land after the process of driving them off of their ancestral homeland, the exploitation of this land and indigenous labor, and the repression of indigenous peoples' attempts to rebuild their land-relations on this ancestral homeland.

Kaffe: Now here is something interesting. Land-relations are internal to a community. External factors, such a settlers, can only induce evolution within these communal relations. Land-relations are practices, the amount of time between practices of these relations is not relevant, as long as the community at some point can resume those relations. The reason they cannot resume is because of continued occupation. Rhythmic relations can be obstructed through non-human processes as well, the community then adapts according to their ongoing social processes, and such is the case with Colonization. While these aspects are components to how an Indigenous nation understands itself, it does not apply to their Indigeneity (status of being colonized). There should be no reason why Indigeneity is defined for Settler-Colonialism differently than other Colonial structures. The relationship of an imposed regime of one or many oppressor nations over oppressed nations. This definition allows for Indigenous nations to split (or merge) and form distinct communities during the duration of their colonization. Some of these communities are absorbed into the colony and put under a system of apartheid where they become vacillating "arrivants" in other Indigenous-Settler antagonisms (communities such as the so-called "Praying Indians" of 17th century New England). That is, arrivants are Indigenous too, but dislocated and/or atomized. We need definitions that account for many different social formations, and aren't limited to individual communities' systems of self-regulation. Communities have memories, and communities have lives larger than individuals, we must view these relations at the community level, ultimately.

I also brought examples in the original thread (tbf, in a later edit) of concrete land-relations continuing by shared practice with an example using Randy Lewis (Wenatchi). That's not an abstract "homeland" connection, but a communal connection between elder and youth in a place at a specific rhythm. I of course recognize that the land is relative, which is fully accounted for in saying land-relations are internal to a community and subject to evolution, none of which negates Indigeneity unless an internal trend is liquidationist.

Rest of the response:

As I said in the beginning of this response, I do not want to respond to all points made in the critique, as it would take forever and most of them come from a misunderstanding of my point, straight up lying about my positions, and a lack of reading comprehension. Most of these mistakes are almost obvious to most people. The ones that are not as obvious and require an elaboration of my arguments are the ones that I responded to here.

Criticism of "Questions of Settler-Colonialism in the U.S."

The article in question: https://www.cpusa.org/article/questions-of-settler-colonialism-in-the-u-s/

This is a response to a CPUSA published article concerning the topic of Settler-Colonialism in the US. I quote the article at length so you cannot miss any points they have made. Wrote this right after reading, there's likely mistakes in here. Feel free to crit me and ask for sources and stuff.

To let the piece open itself:

The question of settler-colonialism and its place in the web of contradictions in the U.S. have resurfaced, and of the Communist Party’s position, so it bears addressing. Without a concrete answer to these questions, our party’s ability to help build a mass movement and unite the working class will be weakened significantly.

The document provides its preferred definition of Settler-Colonialism:

Settler-colonialism is a form of colonialism that is different from regular, or franchise, colonialism. Rather than wanting to exploit the Indigenous population, like in franchise colonialism, settler-colonialism seeks to drive an indigenous population off their land by any means necessary and exploit it for the profit of the private owners of the means of production.

The piece posits that "regular" Colonialism intends to exploit the Indigenous population, while settler-Colonialism intends to expropriate and remove them. That both of these behaviors exist in all colonial structures is ignored. The settlers of Rhodesia not only violently occupied land used by Africans, they also exploited African labor by continuing to deny them access to resources except through wage labor or zero-wage labor, slavery. Whether exploitation or expropriation is used is actually an evolution in the relations between Indigene and the Occupation. Under English colonization, the Pequot people were first exploited for their productive capacities, then removed from their lands where a significant portion of them were sold into slavery to be exploited away from their land-relations. Smashing the Pequot came about because they stood in the way of settler control over regional trade, a condition that developed from relations where Pequot and English traded in mutually beneficial relations.

The United States was formed on a settler-colonial basis. What is a more disputed question, however, is whether settler-colonialism still exists. It should be clear that setter-colonialism still exists in this country, exemplified by Indigenous communities’ constant and ongoing struggle against it and for their rights and sovereignty. Indigenous communities have to fight for recognition of their treaties, defend from environmental degradation by illegal pipelines, medical and police malpractice and racism, theft of community resources with legal rights totally disregarded.

Indeed these are many ways Settler-Colonialism still exists, but these are each individual events and the article has not yet described the structure. Even within the definition of simply removal, the continued state of removed perpetuates the colonization. Indigenous people face hardships like disrespected treaties and police violence because they are continuously removed from their land-relations. They venture into bordertowns because they are deprived of sustenance. They are exploited if not destroyed because they were expropriated.

The trail of tears and the near extinction of the buffalo serve as examples of historical atrocities committed by settler-colonialism, though it should be stressed that settler-colonialism is not an “event” but actually a structure of oppression. Individual white settlers were incentivized to settle land based on price, entrepreneurship, and the competition with other sources of labor such as the influx of immigrants and slaves. We’re seeing the atrocities of settler-colonialism right now in Israel, with the settlements in the West Bank, the genocide in Gaza, the 76 years of occupation, and the constant violation of Palestinian rights within Israel itself as well as apartheid. Settlers without a direct connection to the state will steal homes, block aid trucks going into Gaza, or produce fabricated stories and videos for news and social media to justify the atrocities. If this represents contemporary settler-colonialism in Israel, how then does it appear in the U.S.?

The article attempts to address the structure, and here acknowledges that settlers are incentivized (by labor conditions internal to the occupation) to settle new lands. Sure, but this is not a full picture. In locations where the settlements are already established, where land has been deprived from Indigenous people and settled, why then, would the standing army of the United States be [vanguarding the extermination of buffalo]? (hint, it might have to do with the resistance) Do settler interests fundamentally define the nature and behavior of the US state? Is the settler civil-society a component of statehood? Why does the IDF shoot to kill Palestinians who dare to fight back against the Israeli squatters? Why do these squatters burn fig orchards and pour concrete into wells? These settling interests must be intertwined with statehood on a deep level. These questions can be answered with another, why is Gaza bombed when these "settlement events" are taking place in distant regions of Palestine? The answer is resistance, Settler-Colonialism is a structure because its basis is perpetually questioned by resistance. If we look to the definition by Wolfe:

In short, elimination refers to more than the summary liquidation of Indigenous people, though it includes that. In its positive aspect, the logic of elimination marks a return whereby the native repressed continues to structure settler-colonial society. It is both as complex social formation and as continuity through time that I term settler colonization a structure rather than an event, and it is on this basis that I shall consider its relationship to genocide. The IDF defends people filling wells in arid regions (that they themselves could be using!) because Palestinians resist and pose a threat to any settler. The US military sponsored ecocide, and maintains a heavily armed population because Indigenous resistance remains, there is something to competing in land-relations to the US, perpetually altering the structure of US society.

The article continues:

It must be stressed that settler-colonialism laid the basis for the further development of capitalism as a mode of primitive accumulation, and settler-colonialism only came into existence due to the development of capitalism and the pursuit of profit. Capitalism drove the process of settler-colonialism. However, as Lenin noted, American capitalism developed at a rate never seen before and ultimately, as settler-colonialism “closed the frontier” and Indigenous people were driven onto reservations and more of their land became occupied, settler-colonialism as a system began to shrink.(1) The amount of land-relations to be destroyed and exploited became increasingly small.(2) As monopoly capitalism developed within the U.S., settler-colonialism evolved within the context of this development. The enforcement of colonial law no longer was done by individual settlers, but by the capitalist class.(3) It became primarily driven not by the homesteader and the pioneer, the petty landowners of the 18th and 19th centuries, but the big landowners of agricultural and industrial capital.(4) Especially when putting into consideration the rapid industrialization of the country, the proletarianization of most of the population, and the shrinkage of the petty-bourgeoisie.(5)

The first part of this segment tries to answer the chicken-egg of Colonialism and Capitalism by putting one before the other, when only in certain situations is that apparent, and broadly, these are co-constitutive processes. Then let's address the next five points:

1. Incorrectly posits that the class of settlers is distinctly those who have taken land. Says nothing about their relationship as continued occupiers, and says nothing about their relation to the broader network of property relations that is the Settler-Colonial Capitalist system. These frontier-persons are simply one way in which the Occupation came to control resources. The more common manner towards the "end of the frontier" (something that was claimed by said entity, not found in reality) was sending the standing army, men such as the so-called "Buffalo Soldiers" or George "Hang Them All" Wright and his Military Division of the Pacific. In fact, nearly all of those who were profiting off of settler expansion were members of the colonial militias and later US standing army.
2. Land-relations here is seemingly referring to Indigenous individuals, by claiming the amount of land-relations and stolen labor had been decreasing. In the sense that there were less land to steal, because more and more land had been stolen, this somewhat makes sense. However, is it reasonable to define the structure of theft by how much left there is to steal, and ignoring the mountain of already stolen things? This is the problem with limiting definitions of Set-Col to land-theft and murder, because in this frame we can only describe individual events of stealing, failing to describe the structure.
3. All settler classes have relations as a civil-society to colonial law. Rarely has any capitalist themselves personally been the executor of state law. This point doesn't make sense. All settlers are in different contexts, executing Settler-Colonial law.
4. How did big landowners come into existence? Buying land from small landowners if they did not take it themselves. Accumulation of this property is a relation internal to the Settler Colony. The total wealth of the colony did not change unless resistance was able to remove that property from the settler occupation's grasp.
5. The petty-bourgeoisie has never shrunk. Land-ownership rates are at an all time high in the 2nd half of the 20th century and this first part of the 21st century. In fact, the PB has grown if we are including definitions of Labor Aristocracy (workers who are paid more than the global value of labor). In the 2010 the 210M landowners (representing the bottom 80% of the population) and business owners in the US owned more wealth than all publicly traded companies in the world combined. Such fantasies of a "disappearing middle-class" is just one revisionism Settlerism brings to the movement.

This became evident by big companies taking over the role in exploiting Indigenous lands rather than individual settlers with the permission and helping of the capitalist state. There are many judicial cases concerning oil and land rights that could be looked at. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes about this in her book An Indigenous People’s History of the United States.

US civil-society no longer exists on Indigenous lands, because Capitalism developed?

By the 20th century, settler-colonialism had done its dirty work by almost wiping out the Indigenous population, from a population of over 60 million before Columbus’ voyage in 1492 to 237,196 in 1900. The struggle against settler-colonialism and capitalism became increasingly intertwined, more so than ever before.

It's extremely disingenuous to compare the estimated (by Ortiz) total population of the Americas in 1492 to the population of Indigenous people in the US in 1900. The founding of the US in 1776 is closer to us now in time than it was to Columbus's landing. The total native American population in 1900 was some 4-5M people, it is now up to some 45M people. In the US alone it went from some 240k to some 7 million people today. It's estimated that over 100k Indigenous people in the US (claimed territory) died from 1860 to 1900 due to colonial policies such as boarding schools (40k children dead or missing from th start of the schools to today). Settler-Colonialism was not just the theft that causes death, but the continued exclusion that prevents populations from recovering to pre-disaster levels. This continued theft raised the white/settler population of the US by hundreds of millions over this period.

This leads into the most controversial question, who constitutes a settler in the United States today? Are all white workers settlers like some believe? We first have to understand what it means to be Indigenous, and what it means to be a settler. As these two social relations are linked to each other through the dynamics of settler-colonialism. Nick Estes, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, said in Our History is the Future regarding the history of our people:

“Next to the maintenance of good relations within the nation, an individual’s second duty was the protection of communal territory. In the east, the vast wild rice patties and seasonal farms that grew corn, beans, and squash demarcated Dakota territory. In the west, Lakota territory extended as far as the buffalo herds that traveled in the fertile Powder River country. For Dakotas, Lakotas, and Nakotas, territory was defined as any place where they cultivated relations with plant and animal life; this often overlaid, and was sometimes in conflict, with other Indigenous nations.”

With this, we can conclude that Indigeneity is a social relation defined by the persistence of long-standing communal links and Indigenous identities in a specific place. The relationship to a specific homeland or territory is important, but the loss of direct ties to land does not rule out Indigeneity. Rather, the continuity of belonging to a particular mode of life and community is essential.

Here is a conflation of the definition of nationhood as organized by the Oceti Sakowin, with a definition of Indigeneity. The quote is almost irrelevant to the conclusion drawn. Where the conclusion fails is the insistence that a "particular mode of life and community is essential" (which works better for nations, but not Indigeneity). This insistence posits that Indigeneity ends when a particular mode of living ends, say, if every time you go to collect your three-sisters, a settler shoots you. Rather, it's the continued threat of being shot by an occupier (or other forms of exclusion) that makes one's interrelations (nation, community, tribe, lands) Indigenous. It also insists that if a Dakota person starts growing, Eurasian wheat or African rye, a practice learned from outside their internal national relations, they cease being Indigenous. What if the nations starts using Dutch firearms, or starts to grind their corn with water-mills? Such definitions posit that Indigenous nations are only Indigenous if they are frozen in time, which is convenient towards events-thinking rather than systems-thinking. A structural relationship, like that between an oppressed people and an oppressor people, where both are subject to internal and external relational evolution, escapes the definitions pushed by the article.

A settler is a one who is outside these land-relations, and plays an active role in negating them. This does not mean that one has to personally enforce colonial laws, rather it means that they directly benefit from the participation in the destruction of these land relations. There are many factors to being a settler. An important factor of being a settler, though this is not the sole characteristic, is being a socio-political citizen of a settler-colonial society. This means that “in law and in social practice, one has the full rights of belonging to the settler-colonial nation, and is recognized as such in ideology.”

Nowhere did the article define what a settler-colonial society is, we have to assume from what came before that they mean the interrelations internal to the occupation. They are defining a nation of settlers. So then, how does one fall outside of this nation, by not benefitting directly, apparently. However, the food one eats, the place one sleeps, all of this property was accumulated by the settler occupation, how are these not direct relationships to the total relationship between settler-colonial society and Indigenous societies? One must think Proletarians as a class did not benefit from the expropriations of peasant-lord relations, even if they were once peasants themselves. Directness is never defined.

The question arises: what does it mean to be a socio-political citizen in the US? What does that entail and what defines it? If we go based solely on race lines, arguing that being white is what makes one a socio-political citizen and therefore all white people are settlers, then we have to ask: what about the Black bourgeoisie? We could go based solely on class lines to define this, but that also carries contradictions. What about those who objectively enforce colonial laws but aren’t bourgeois? Like the police or the army? All these factors have varying weights, but none are the sole nor main characteristic of being a settler as they’re all important and interact with each other.

Contradictions make the system living. There are classes of Indigenous and "arrivant" populations that can benefit from the motions of settler-colonial development. These are contradictions we well understand when we are talking about "regular" Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism, yet for some reason we have to revise such notions when speaking of Settler-Colonialism. The development of one's class can contradict the development of their nation. Though it is not wise to limit such notions to "race", which is a product of national antagonisms and not the source. Former slaves working to subjugate other Indigenous peoples including their own kin is one of many really existing contradictions that give Settler-Colonialism and Capitalism life.

Being a settler depends on actively exploiting a dominant population in active use of the land, expropriating their agriculture, and laboring them upon their soil. Even with the force of its armies, the capitalist class could not have completed the task of violence on its own since there was simply too much to be done. In that sense, being a settler played a unique role. As we witnessed later in Klan deputies and today’s armed West Bank settlers, it was an early manifestation of a fascist paramilitary that was de facto supported by the state. It has evolved in the current context of the development of monopoly capitalism in the US.

The existence of an army, and of settlers (a form of army), is a definite sign that the Capitalist class cannot meet all ends by their own means. Class collaboration is always necessary for Imperialism, whether a joint venture from the start or by engaging in relations with expropriated property afterwards. At that point the Imperialism is validated. Any class of settler is capable of starting an Imperial venture (and they have), but all classes need to validate it eventually (there is room for struggle here). The average settler-worker does not put much effort into upholding settlerism, because their interests as a class are efficiently organized in the settler-state.

The capitalist class are very much settlers, as they directly profit from the destruction of Indigenous land relations and the violation of their sovereignty and drive settler-colonialism in the US. Those who are part of arms of the state, such as the army or police, are settlers as they are involved and work within a system which personally enforces colonial laws, and soldiers and officers harass tribal members daily and incarceration rates for Native American people are 4 times higher than the rate of white people. Native Women are particularly targeted. We also see those workers who work under companies who exploit Indigenous lands and engage directly in the destruction of these land-relations as settlers, as these workers directly benefit from it and participate in the destruction of these land-relations. We should also include those who gain residencies or employment at the expense of Indigenous land-relations, as well as those in bordertowns and engaged in bordertown violence. Bordertowns, as defined by The Red Nation in their book The Red Deal, are:

“…settlement[s] sitting outside of a Native reservation. Some examples include Gallup, New Mexico, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Winslow, Arizona, and Rapid City, South Dakota. Bordertowns emerged from the dispossession, relocation and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous people. The function of a bordertown is to exploit the identity, labor, and death of Indigenous people.”

Most of this segment of the article is correct, however, reduced. For fear of contradiction (that give life), they'd like to argue that Indigenous people with government jobs are settlers. They are however, not settlers, even though they are in class relations antagonistic to decolonization and ultimately to the liberation of their nations. This contradiction exists because of the under-development of their nations due to Settler-Colonialism. The US government onboarding more and more Indigenous people is also a contradiction for itself, as writers like Red Nation have access to means of production to facilitate revolutionary study and spread it amongst the population. So too, did Fanon have the bourgeois education and employment, partially colonizing his own continent, but contradictorily gaining skills that eventually helped his people overthrow their colonizers. The last segment, defining Bordertowns, misses an extended manifesto by Red Nation that defines:

All land is Native, and all settler towns and cities are bordertowns. There is no "rural" or "urban," no "rez" or "city"; there is only the border­town. The border exists everywhere settler order confronts Native order. Everything in a settler world is a border. Our persistent survival is the primary contradiction and the unresolvable crisis of settler colonialism. Settlers enforce the logic of bordertowns to overcome this contradiction. This is their primary job and the essence of their existence as settlers. They are born vigilantes in the making, taught to fear Native people and to see Native society as a threat. These are the conditions that give life to the vio­lence of settler society. The Indian must be eliminated for no other reason than that we represent an alternative political order, one that precedes settler society and that holds within it the destruction of settler reality.

All settlements within US claims are Bordertowns. All USians who are not Indigenous are settlers. Other Colonialisms, such as slavery and apartheid, are sometimes sources for a third, "Arrivant", population in the dynamic, but what is actually going on is the vacillation of this segment of classes between decolonization and colonization. This contradiction surfaces in reality such as when the Buffalo Soldiers, former slaves, were fighting Indigenous peoples on behalf of the Texan regime in the Texan "frontier", which was simultaneously practicing settler colonialism against Freed communities in East Texas.

Most white workers do not see the benefits of settler-colonialism because it is no longer dominant or ubiquitous as it once was. Land relations have continuously been destroyed, confined to the land within reservations. Due to the dominance of capitalism, and the finiteness of these land relations in modern day, most white workers do not see the direct benefits of settler-colonialism and neither do they participate in the destruction of these relations.(1) White workers, of course, do benefit from the ideological superstructure of white supremacy which has maintained itself in a systemic form, defined by the dominance of capitalism However, while white supremacy is a tool used to oppress Native Americans, it is different from settler-colonialism, though both are connected.(2) Ultimately the working class has a material interest in ending capitalism and any system of oppression as it divides the working class and makes their collective power weaker.(3)

A 3-point response:

1. Land-relations are not confined to reservations whatsoever. If that were the case, the Bolt-Decision would not even exist. As well, continued land-relations exist for all Indigenous communities, threat from the settler-society for performing such relations is ongoing. The NoDAPL protest would not have occurred because it does not cross existing reservation lines. Yet, the Oceti Sakowin rallied by the thousands to protect the water. This is a very confused point, which again relies on events-thinking to comprehend. White workers (in fact, all USians) in this one example, would continue to benefit by having more control over the global value of the dollar with access to fuel provided by DAPL. This is again contradictory for even the Lakota people on the Standing Rock Reservation. This leads to the broader contradiction, that US Imperialism relies on the continued subjugation of Indigenous national interests to provide high wages and excessive consumption to the vast majority of US workers. But again, using the corrected definitions, the idea that Indigenous land-relations are marginal and "vanishing" ignores facts like the US nuclear capable submarine base lying directly in a former Pequot village (whose refugees are in a nearby reservation). Also, notice that Gaza's fighters are predominantly refugees, which "descendent" is one of the ways Palestinian refugees are defined by the UN.
2. White-supremacy is an ideology, developed in to handle two simultaneous colonialisms, chattel-slavery and Settlerism, referring to Red Nation's work again:

The language of disparities depicts the logic of elimination at the heart of settler colonialism as a kind of historical or political accident or aberration that should be confronted not through decolonization strug­gles over land but, rather, through political reforms to existing systems and institutions. The "white supremacy as aberration" logic seeks to blunt Native resistance to the settler state. Liberalism, in other words, is offered as the solution to white supremacy. Among the solutions liberalism offers are assimilation and state recognition, which is to say that the solution to white supremacy is found in the expansion of the settler state, which is based on and can't exist beyond white supremacy. White supremacy, however, is better understood as an organiz­ing logic of settler and slave society-a logic that gives meaning and momentum to settler colonial violence.

White supremacy is not an aberration of the liberal capitalist state; it is its mirror image. After all, settler colonialism destroys to replace. The "disparities" that appear to describe white supremacy are not aberrations at all but, rather, reflect settler colonialism's unfinished and ongoing goal of the total dissolu­tion of Native society. The "solutions" the liberal capitalist state offers to white supremacy are the smallpox-infected blankets of ongoing settler colonialism.

3. Sure, but this is also reductive, because it ignores contradictions! The same questions as to why the German working class ended up on the side of Nazism is the same question why Israelis and Americans have yet to throw away their states and Bourgeois classes. What is missing from this, is a study of these contradictions and a strategy to parse friend from foe, change the conditions, and then again pick friend from foe! Missing from most of CPUSAs work on the subject is the realm of strategy. Questions such as how do we fracture the elements of the working class upholding Imperialism from the elements of the class seeking to destroy it? Some workers right now are enemies, but we can remove the conditions that reproduce enemies amongst that class through struggle. Trying to pick the biggest majority of allies is the stench of Trotskyism clouding the movement's vision. CPUSA tells us we are dividing the movement, but they have never gathered more than a few thousands "revolutionaries" at any given time, never bigger than what showed up to NoDAPL. Contradictions within the movement is what makes it weak. We must struggle through the most coherent relationships to change the base of society, to create more allies.

If white workers aren’t settlers, what are they? Some analysts of settler-colonialism use a third term, arrivants. Coined by Kamau Brathwaite and elaborated on by Jodi Byrd, the term is used to “signify those people forced into the Americas through the violence of European and Anglo-American colonialism and imperialism around the globe.” This is still, however, unsatisfactory because it still produces a non-answer when non-Native folks of white descent don’t actively exploit Native lands or play an active role in the negation of Indigenous land-relations as part of their social relation.

All social relations, as Marx outlines in the German Ideology, depend upon one’s relations to the means of production. White people are only exposed to the ideology in the predominate quality and quantity determined by the material conditions to which they are subjected. Therefore, an individual’s “choice” regarding how they relate to the means of production is determined by their level of consciousness. This decision is a privilege. Regardless, this only indicates that, at best, their privileged opportunities expose them to a higher degree of bourgeois class entry (more often than not, this embodies them into the petty bourgeois in an attempt to attain that higher level). This still remains the basic concept of false consciousness that Engels categorized, even if there is a crumb of truth in factors of luck.

Already addressed above, white workers are settlers (they also aren't the only settlers that are also workers), Arrivants are a vacillating set of classes dependent on the motions of the Indigenous-Settler relation. We are only confused here because we are afraid to have contradictions within our (attempted) Marxist definitions. The continued deprivation of the Indigenous land-relation is a definite part of the settler and arrivant state of being. Attempting to offload Settlerism onto property ownership fails to acknowledge that one's whole nation can rise on the backs of others, i.e. Imperialism and Labor Aristocracy, or even simply settler-workers.

There were settlers who oftentimes were promised their own land and homes in order to escape being poor. That’s what the ideological basis of settlerism was alongside the invention of racism, it has simply changed form today. Today, in an attempt to escape “the rat race,” white people can struggle with their other oppressed workers or adopt a false white supremacist consciousness, but they will always be workers until their class relations change.

Settlerism is not an ideology, and ideologies that advance Settlerism were developed after settlement was underway. Settlerism is a form of Imperialism.

We can tweak the definition of arrivant to be something more broad to fit this analysis, such as those who are part of social structures which dissolve those land-relations, but lack the citizenship and agency of settlers, or we can coin a new term to define those who do not fit into any of the existing three categories such as descendant. A descendant is one who is a descendant of any of the other three categories, whether that be indigenous, settler, or arrivant, but do not fit into either of these three categories. This new term would take the definition of the former suggestion. That being, those who are part of social structures which dissolve those land-relations, but lack the citizenship and agency of settlers. However, this is not conclusive.

Re: Palestinian refugees example.

The rest of the article:

Therefore, I call on the party to continue discussing this issue to develop these theories through the process of democratic centralism, and applying theory to practice. I also call on the party to focus its sights on the development of an Indigenous Commission which would work on developing theories relating to settler-colonialism and indigenous liberation, as well as focusing on the work of indigenous struggles.

We should recognize that these categories are not static. They can change and have done so. For example, there are historic examples of arrivants becoming settlers due to their participation in the destruction of indigenous land-relations. Like the Black buffalo soldiers who fought on the side of Manifest Destiny. All of this ultimately leads us to the conclusion that to end settler-colonialism in the United States, realize self-determination for the Indigenous nations, and decolonize the U.S., capitalism itself must also be ended. Socialism cannot be realized without decolonization, without addressing the settler-colonial question. We must tear down the prison house of Indigenous nations. Landback and the restoration of Indigenous sovereignty is only the start of it, rather than the end. It is a part of the minimum program. As Joe Sims said in his Main Report to the 32nd National Convention:

“And we know that a huge debt still has to be repaid to the victims of the genocide and slavery. And that repayment must include upholding Native peoples’ demand for Land Back, restoration of sovereignty and compensation for its violations, upholding treaty rights, harm reduction, and shared responsibility. I mean at a minimum. And that’s a beginning, not the end.”

The one thing of importance to pick out here is the question of Buffalo Soldiers becoming settlers. I agree, that a segment of the Freed-Black (New Afrikan) nation joined in on Settler-Colonialism. The New Afrikan nation should have, and should, consider the Buffalo Soldiers internal enemies, subject to eradication. Ideologies that celebrate them should be rooted out and destroyed. Such is the power of nationhood, regulated kinship, and the internal struggle amongst classes in an oppressed nation.

X-posting late, but in preparation of a post on Captain Cook incoming. CLN posts have been covering a narrative leading into the Occupation of the Wounded Knee hamlet by AIM in 1973.

OG Post on Hexbear: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3566703?scrollToComments=true

From perspective of @[email protected]:

We last left you discussing the concept of the bordertown and the racialized violence enacted there through settler vigilantism, which is obvious through physical violence. In a new era, however, what about online discourse? This is one thing I’d like to introduce to our discourse and hopefully help settler allies understand when they might accidentally dawn a hood and cape for the state. I see settler vigilantism as synonymous with Kluxism, or at least they stem from the same psyche. The spirit of Manifest Destiny seemingly possesses these settlers to act out in monstrous ways, depriving us and themselves of humanity and life. There are no more bounties to collect for a scalp, so this shows these actions to murder Indians are deeper than just monetary gain. It is always about the land. Briefly we spoke on Raymond Yellow Thunder and Wesley Bad Heart Bull, both victims of settler vigilantism. Raymond died due to injuries sustained in a fight, and Wesley was stabbed in a fight at a bar. Both resulted in AIMs activism, and ultimately pushed them further to Wounded Knee. Raymond Yellow Thunder was killed before the Trail of Broken Treaties in 1972, and inspired the famous “AIM Song” which is actually the Raymond Yellow Thunder Song and should be respected as such.There is a great deal of controversy still surround Raymond’s death, but from every perspective I’ve heard one thing remains true; it is colonialism that murdered him.

Colonialism’s claws come from many directions, and it brings death in a systemic, planned and targeted manner, contrary to Engels' view of social murder. In a colony that target gives a slight reprieve for the colonizing nation’s working classes, and seemingly at the root of every boot strap story, is a mystified deluge of the eldritch horrors of capitalism and colonialism. These horrors which possess, steal, and murder are often described as primitive accumulation by contemporary Marxists (or the motor of capitalism), the tongue-in-cheek humor often becomes lost. Primitive accumulation which once derided the ruling class's view of themselves, now it is used by chauvinists to be synonymous with pre-Columbian political-economy. In the case of the Oceti Sakowin, we remained primitive in the eyes of these chauvinists until 1868. The people who make these arguments don’t seem to realize the cloak and hood they have proudly proclaimed as their own, but to us the colonized, we see the same two mouths our white siblings have become known for.

English is known for its one word with many meanings, or perhaps many words with the same sounds, but each uniquely specific. In the case of Wesley Bad Heart Bull we can see this most clearly in the settler’s courts, which proclaim law and order, but really only on behalf of the landowner. When there is no clear land owner, it's about which party most represents the landowners. In a settler-colony with a case of assault with prior consideration to ‘kill him an Indian’ it is of course manslaughter when you kill somebody who was fighting another person. This is of course sarcasm, generally speaking when you “accidentally” kill someone it is still a degree of murder especially with prior expression to want to kill an Indian, and when the assailant wasn’t involved in the fight. Murdered in the street like so many before and after, and that was a well known fact of life in South Dakota. You could be murdered and like Raymond or Wesley, your attackers might get charged with a small fine and manslaughter, but when you ask every settler when justice comes they all play innocent. This is why AIM went to the streets. When you ask Pine Ridge elders when AIM became a symbol, you are told the Gordon protest. When Russell Means took the Chief of Police’s hat and threw it, David Swallow Jr recounted his feelings as “we can do that?” This is where a fire was reborn that still carries on today, as my nation’s president banned Kristi Noem from our reservation after she tried to stoke xenophobic fears at a rally. We are standing once again, and it is time to stand with us and learn our revolutionary history.

So today on February 6th was the day of the Bad Heart Bull trial in Custer, South Dakota. To this day as landback grows more prominent and our elders and leaders move forward with decade old plans and conversations, the contradictions here grow. Because of this I’ve sought to see the perspective of various communities and generations, on the ‘Indian problem’ as it has always been called here. The Indigenous question is only the colonial question, and the communist movement has had a century, decade, and a year to discuss this since Stalin's publishing on the subject (1913, of course the conversation predates Stalin). One of Lenin’s last works was on this specific topic, and the question of who should be okay with having an autonomous region of their own in a larger state: is one that places great nations at the whim of the nations they oppressed.

Because of the words Lenin has spoken on the subject, people like Ho Chi Minh froze all night just for a chance to see the great man’s body. The pan-African revolution, the third world movement, fourth world theory and so much more have a red light shining on them from the star that is Lenin streaking across the sky: calling us to revolution. We don’t know if that star was shining at the time the molotov was thrown, but when the court house went up in flames, it certainly caused a stir. Nobody knows who threw it either, I’ve talked to a considerable bulk of living participants, but it was thrown after the cops pushed Wesley’s mother down the stairs with a billy club. Only 3 people were going to be allowed into the courtroom, and when Dennis Banks, Russell Means, and David Hill entered the cops stood in the way of the mother of the victim, and brutalized her. David punched that pig-fucker in the face and the riot ensued. Custer is THE symbol of settlement in the Black Hills, it's one of the first towns, and to this day makes its money from exploiting the land and treating it like an amusement park. While people on my reservation don't have water, Rapid City has a water park. Custer had a literal amusement park that flew a replica of the 7th Calvary's flag; we already had the real one, so during the riot that replica flag was also taken. Cy Griffin was a film maker from the video freak movement that was there, he went back to New York and told his friends about everything happening there. A war in South Dakota is how he described it. We call it the Reign of Terror. See, it wasn’t just in the bordertown we were being murdered in the street, on Pine Ridge a seemingly innocuous man named Richard Wilson (only one parent was Lakota) became Tribal chairman. He employed his family (legal in our laws) , began embezzling money (not legal) and established a right-wing paramilitary called the GOONs (Guardians Of the Oglala Nation, questionably legal). The GOONs would enact violence on Dick Wilson’s political opponents by firebombing, drive-bys, and gunning people down in the street. This spurred the organization OSCRO (Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization) to form, and begin collecting signatures to impeach Wilson. They were successful in collecting the signatures, however Dick was the one who presided over the impeachment, and of course found himself not guilty. OSCRO is an often overlooked organization, and I believe this to be the goal of federal agents to remove the grassroots elements from these struggles and obfuscate the lessons we could learn. As mentioned in a previous post, Dick Wilson would oversee the equivalent amount in deaths to Pinochet’s first 3 years. This is in South Dakota, and nobody knows these facts, and pretend colonialism is some bygone era. Because of the fire lit in Custer, in Gordon, in the Pacific Northwest, in DC and so many more places, we see the modern land back movements stem. Those movements stemmed from the wars, those wars stemmed from the early capitalists accumulation of wealth to jump start global capital today. In these circles we see how yesterday is today, and only by understanding both can we move on to tomorrow. We must pull capitalism up from its roots which are soaked in the blood of the colonized, until we do that we are doomed to fail. We mentioned briefly how these concepts go beyond physical violence, and one way is the erasure and silencing of Indigenous and other marginalized voices. This might sound farfetched to the insensitive, but in a critical period of rupture, we have to make sure we don’t get bogged down in what is socially mainstream. If the mainstream is saying our talking points then we have failed to stay at the head of the movement, and are merely another voice consumed into the acceptable protest movement. We have to stand arm and arm with trans comrades as opportunists and state agents both turn their sights on them across the country, seeking to separate them from would-be allies who are worried they will lose mainstream support for daring to stand against the face of oppression. Those who can’t stand in solidarity with everyone, yet voice opposition to Israel in this critical moment, are capitalizing and being opportunists. This has to be combatted. People like Jackson Hinkle make Trans and Indigenous people their target for a reason and you should learn why. Especially if folks like Hinkle can sell stolen Palestinian Gold, and people give passes to communists defending him. The movement is in a critical moment where it has to struggle with the colonial contradictions, failure to do so, means failure to form a vanguard. In our next post we will discuss Captain Cook and his death on February 14th, my birthday is then next so y’know if you like these posts and the work we do I recommend supporting us! We have a linktr.ee/chunkalutanetwork with all of our social media, gofundme efforts we are engaged in, a liberapay and a patreon that all go to supporting the work CLN does. This post was short as it's mostly a timely bridge to send us on our way to the real Wounded Knee 1973 post at the end of the month, so lots of learning to do. I also recommend checking out the Indigenous Anti-Colonial Institute podcast and the CLN podcast for more education. Our patreon also has a ton of episodes, and there’s also Marx Madness where we read you theory. Right now we are reading a custom Gramsci Reader that you can check out in our library listed on the linktr.ee. I also want to stress, don't wait for us to learn about this stuff, start with Blood of the Land by Rex Weyler, read the Erdoes biographies, and then ask what a Marxist perspective on this stuff should be. I will be releasing a companion to the book later this month hopefully, of a stream of thought journal kept on my 3rd read through.

og on hexbear

Sungmanitu of Chunka Luta Network: Would it surprise you that I had more to say? Due to the character limit, this wonderful and relevant story had to be broken into 2; this one I called the 1973 part, well almost. The day I released the first part[hex] was not on the massacre date, but instead the day they assassinated Tatanka Iyotake, Bull Who Sits on Hind-legs or Sitting Bull. This name is given to him by a Canadian Mountie officer ignoring the commands of his higher officers, to offer refuge to the radical band of Tatanka Iyotake who were waiting to rendezvous with Tasunka Witiko, Crazy Horse. This rendezvous never happens as they are able to trick him, arrest him, and then kill him on his way into the jail. If you believe our Medicine Men, he saw this, and on Bear Butte he did only 3 days of a traditionally 4 day vision quest called hembleycha, in hopes he would be spared to finish the ceremonies. Where we last left off was the aftermath of this assassination, where their brother-in-arms Unphan Gleske, Spotted Elk (or “Bigfoot”) then fled to seek refuge with Mahipya Luta, Red Cloud, at Pine Ridge agency. This brings us to the infamous massacre of 1890, but the blowback of this act wouldn’t be faced for another 80 years.

Between then and 1973, we have several land grabs, the kidnapping of children into boarding schools, border towns rising off the exploitation of us and our lands, planned genocide through make-work programs of the New Deal like the Pick-Sloan plan, and so much more happen, that it makes sense why Cap. R. H. Pratt and the common sense of the time acknowledged the “students” openly as hostages.

According to Ezra Hayt, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1843–1893, “the children would be hostages for the good behavior of their people.” (To read more here is my former employer’s award winning article on the subject of bodies in boarding schools, years prior to the mainstream news of the fact at High Country News and for the full context to the quote)

Even after the boarding school practices mostly ended (I say mostly as the recent federal report shows 90 of those schools still operate), this program of holding children hostage manifested itself in the selling of our children into what amounts to slavery. It cost only $10 to buy an Indian child as recently as 1952, and many who were bought were used as cleaning servants. Instead of this practice ending, it developed into the modern foster care and adoption system we know today. Even my brother has been enslaved in this system. On top of this, you have a continued mass incarceration and atrocious education statistics that all stem from their attempts to “save the man.” The tipping point came in the Termination era and essentially provided a liberally condonable means of genocide, via pen and paper. If it wasn’t bad enough to force different cultures and peoples into conglomerate nations for your convenience in managing our concentration camps, they began to declare nations non-existent or even completely eradicated with the case of the Ohlone and many California groups. The most famous case however is the Pacific Northwest's termination of fishing rights and Wisconsin's attempt to do something similar with the Menominee people, and an added land grab.

In 1954 the Menominee Termination Act would be passed under Public Law 280, which would remove nations' rights to determine their affairs, let alone their futures. In 1963, three Menominee would be charged in violation of Wisconsin state laws, while hunting on land distinguished as Menominee land. They were found not guilty, only to have the case brought to the state’s supreme court, where they ruled that they no longer had hunting rights. The historiography available places the onus of the overturning of this decision in 1968, thanks to the efforts of Ada Deer, who should not go unmentioned. But reformism is hardly why I write and the hunting and fishing rights were not the end-all issue of the Termination of the Menominee (but we will continue in a minute). In the PNW as I mentioned, the hunting and fishing rights issue was rearing its head in the famous fish-in struggles led by Billy Frank Jr who was arrested over 400 times for fishing on the dock his family has lived on since time immemorial along the Nisqually River.

“As long as the rivers run, as long as the tide flows, and as long as the sun shines, you will have land, fish, and game for your frying pans, and timber for your lodges.” -Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens 1855

He wasn’t the only person the promise made was broken, and so it became a form of civil disobedience to fish, and fish they did. They were beaten, threatened, and even people like Leonard Peltier would be radicalized at these ‘fish-ins’. Peltier wasn’t the only one finding inspiration there either; in fact some Oceti Sakowin students attending Berkley at the time were so inspired that they staged an action on Alcatraz, symbolically reclaiming it under the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty. This was in 1965, and most people forget this initial inspiration for the later 1969 occupation on the island. The 1969 occupation utilized the same method of claim, only this time they refused to allow the coast guards removal to be the end. At first, organizers were only going to sail a boat near the Island and then give a press statement on land. But when the boat came close enough, a young Mohawk organizer named Richard Oaks leapt over the edge and swam to the prison. Generally speaking, most people swimming around Alcatraz were swimming away from the island towards their freedom; but to him and everyone who followed, freedom was the prison, so they swam. The coast guard quickly removed them and on land, Oakes read what is called The Proclamation to the Great White Father. I recommend everyone read it for yourself as there is a lot of clever phrasing. Or you can wait until the audio documentary we are making on this era fully releases. The part I’d like to highlight is why they saw this prison as freedom:

We feel that this so-called Alcatraz Island is more than suitable as an Indian Reservation, as determined by the white man's own standards. By this, we mean that this place resembles most Indian reservations, in that:

1. It is isolated from modern facilities, and without adequate means of transportation.
2. It has no fresh running water.
3. The sanitation facilities are inadequate.
4. There are no oil or mineral rights.
5. There is no industry and so unemployment is very great.
6. There are no health care facilities.
7. The soil is rocky and non-productive and the land does not support game.
8. There are no educational facilities.
9. The population has always been held as prisoners and kept dependent upon others.

Further, it would be fitting and symbolic that ships from all over the world, entering the Golden Gate, would first see Indian land, and thus be reminded of the true history of this nation. This tiny island would be a symbol of the great lands once ruled by free and noble Indians.

This place has become a practical Mecca for us and it is no wonder, when we place this occupation in its full historical context, why 71 occupations happened between 1965 and 1973 (and many more after). However this isn’t a story about these 71 occupations; it’s about Wounded Knee specifically (for the 71 story, join the patreon) and the overarching blowback that will be covered in more depth in our upcoming series; yes this is an ad, a 20k word ad. What we want to focus on however is the American Indian Movement. Jumping back to 1968 and over to Minneapolis, a meeting was held after several prison organizers were released from Stillwater prison. Each of them started in boarding school, and ended in prison, before being thrown to the wolves in the Twin Cities. At that time it was routine for the police to systematically arrest Indian bar patrons under drunk and disorderly charges; every Friday at 9pm- you could count on it. They would utilize kettling tactics, driving them from the front out the back, where the van was waiting for a mass booking. Over the weekend, they would be used as slave labor then, released on Monday without seeing the courtroom. This became routine, and must have been informed by some sick joke that we liked keeping the Earth clean. Editorializing aside, this was a systemic issue, and that's how AIM was formed. The night the meeting was held, Dennis Banks was speaking to a coalition of groups in the cities, when a familiar voice spoke up asking, ‘what do you plan to do about those cops?’ That night they formed the red car patrols, and began filming the cops actions, and before long they were at Alcatraz to make connections. Upon doing so, consecutive actions took place. A group known as United Native Americans, led by Lehman Brightman, would stage a takeover of “Mt. Rushmore'' renaming it Crazy Horse Mountain; the sentiment was okay, but really this site is known to my people as the Six Grandfathers. This term refers to the four directions, the sky, and wakan tanka (the great mystery, our closest approximation to a “god” which really collapses the expanse of the idea).

In Minneapolis, you had the takeover of Ft. Snelling. In California, you have a take over of an electric company and enforcement of national sovereignty through the enforcement of tolls on the Pit River nations land. In Milwaukee however is where one of the more important (and ignored) events happen. Herb Powell was a visionary, who after Alcatraz seized an abandoned lighthouse in Milwaukee, which resulted not in eviction, but land back for the very first time in 1970. There they built the first ever Indigenous spirituality based alcohol treatment, that has since spread across the continent, and is the most successful form of rehab for Indian people. They did a breakfast program similar to the Black Panthers, which they learned in Oakland during solidarity trips from Alcatraz, and this is directly where the survival school concept was born. Herb’s wife claims prior to the Nixon admin ending the termination era Then when the occupants were finally removed from the island, a takeover of the Nike missile site was staged due to its closeness to Alcatraz. From 1969 to 1971, Alcatraz was ours. They kept this occupation alive through mailed envelopes of money, solidarity festivals hosted, barges donated by Creedence Clearwater Revival (the barge was then named The Clearwater), and from families who dedicated their time to caretaking the warriors on the island.

The era of Red Power had officially begun, and that’s exactly why, despite in 1971 COINTELPRO and CHAOS were declared over, and the show commission of Church occurred, the program lived on and sought to focus on the growing Red Power movement. Black Power had been so thoroughly entrenched in combating the original forms, it was easily subsumed by the Black elites and whatever homunculus replaced the CIA, FBI, and NSA’s counterintelligence programs. We know for fact these programs merged thanks to the history of AIM. All these fires were being lit across Turtle Island, a national Indian organization, and it was quickly realized that now was the time for unified action, not just the basic call to consciousness (read more in Akwesasne Notes book Basic Call to Consciousness). The International Indian Brotherhood (led by George Manuel), National Congress of American Indians (led by Vine Deloria Jr and Hank Adams), and many other Indigenous led groups that were very wary of AIM joining.

Despite being wary, they were allowed to join and it was common practice for them to send groups ahead to secure housing, food, etc for the children and elders who often came in the caravans with their younger family members engaged in direct action, as they offered support in a variety of ways including moral and inspiration to action. Despite these efforts the Nixon admin pressured the churches and people who agreed to deny us access, and forced elders and children into a dingy basement filled with rats (to read more see Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties by Vine Deloria Jr. Eventually they went to the BIA headquarters in DC, and just never left. It wasn’t supposed to be an occupation, it was supposed to be an airing of grievances that, due to the stonewalling and neglect of the US government, forced these families to occupy. This is obviously not about this story, but it should be noted the Black Panthers and AIM became even closer with offers of dynamite, infiltration of police lines by BPP, and as an alternative to the dynamite strategic pouring of gasoline around building while literal tons of documents about the stealing of land and resources were loaded into a Uhaul to Pine Ridge and sent with various groups they were relevant to. The government claims 700k in damages were done, mind you many of this is “theft” of things they stole from us originally, but with a suitcase full of cash- Nixon sent the Indians home.

For us Lakota, and frankly any Indigenous people, home meant coming back to the same problems the US government just denied to help with (it took the a day to respond to the 20 points of the Trail of Broken Treaties which were all very milquetoast liberal demands, that any communist today should use as a bear minimum for what we should uphold). These problems are still relevant today if you read Red Nation Rising: Bordertown Violence in America by Melanie Yazzie and co. but beyond the explicit state violence, the overall superstructure is built on a phenomenon known as settler-vigilantism where settlers act on behalf of the state, to quell Indigenous resistance. At the center of the bordertown is this phenomenon, and the result is the bordertown becoming more than a place, but an idea. This idea being one that the bordertown arises anywhere settler order is confronted by Indigenous order to paraphrase a line from RNR:BVA. It's the violence the bordertown brings with things like starlight tours (where police in Canada bring Indigenous people who might be intoxicated into the wood to walk miles home during winter, usually dying to exposure) or Indianrolling. Indian is a legal term defining us based on a level of blood quantum, we use this word still as those laws still exist, Indianrolling is when settler vigilantes take it upon themselves to ruthlessly assault or kill Indigenous people in bordertowns or even on our reservations.

The most famous cases relevant to this discussions would be Raymond Yellow Thunder (murdered 1971 prior to the Trail of Broken Treaties, chronology doesn't matter in oral histories, this is written to be an oral history) and Wesley Bad Heart Bull (murdered 1972 prior to the Wounded Knee Occupation).

To go into these important events at the end of this effortpost would cause a disservice and dishonoring of these martyrs. In a time when Palestine is being butchered, I see constantly what happened in the 70s, and settlers here try to downplay the social murder, explicit genocide, and vigilantism (see the West Bank for Palestinian examples where settlers deny ongoing genocide). There is a book called The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder which is named that because the conclusion is; it wasn’t murder. However, having read the book, his manuscripts, and listened to his cassette interviews which we plan to digitize and release with the help of my nation's college, I do not agree. We will address this in the actual 1973 part, as this is unfortunately the end of our story for now. However please go research this stuff yourself, there are so many sources like Blood of the Land by Rex Weyler, the various biographies of AIM leaders and activists, and so many other resources everyone who organizes in North America should be familiar with- and I would die on that hill gladly. You can find these resources and more in our developing public access library on our linktree, where I will also make the audio files and archive footage I’ve gathered over my 3 year, cross country, investigation of this exact story. A lot of the people we will discuss are family, there is a yearning for truth I have to demystify what is or isn't real, and so I pride myself with being able to openly criticize AIM in a principled way (I have yet to hear someone in the pod sphere actually offer worthwhile criticism beyond the errors of leaders, ya know, like strategy) because I have taken extreme care to meet the people. To hear their story for myself, to gather as much as I possibly can to help the movement advance. I want to see us overcome the great hurdle of American chauvinism, and see the end of settler-colonialism and the global project of Imperialism it helped birth.

The real reason for this post besides more suspense towards the Wounded Knee documentary and actual post, is to talk about our winter fundraiser which the immediate needs have been handled! We were able to get our organizers who deliver and cut the wood a new vehicle after theirs broke down (and 1200 in repairs already this year we fundraised), secure a Uhaul to deliver a ton of wood, pallets, clothes, water barrels, cases of water bottles (water there will give you cancer in 10 years due to Uranium mines runoff, so its only good for washing stuff really. We got it shut down in 2018 but there's been no clean up besides us growing Hemp and Sunflowers) blankets, and whatever else we could gather that could be useful there. We were also able to pay for the cameraman to tag along and document the whole trip, so look forward to that content as it releases overtime. The best way to see these updates first would be our patreon but they take a big cut! So if you dont mind waiting for a public release, liberapay is a much better way to support our efforts directly. Our plan with the money is to enable several organizers to work consistently on our fundraising through other means, and organizing the soft infrastructure to enable a mass org, functional steering cadre, and help grassroots organizers do their thing. We only need 1800/month in order to accomplish this and some peoples allyship is based on whether or not we don’t criticize their favorites; but here at Hexbear and Lemmygrad we seem to have found actual class traitors who see the principled nature of the stances we take. I am sure there is something I forgot to mention but you will hear from us more 2024 and beyond, especially once the 5 year plan is ready for publication.