Settler Colonialism, Mutual Stakes, and Land Back: a brief introduction

John Gast, "American Progress," 1872.

What is Settler Colonialism?
 
Keywords:

• Colonization
• Settler-Colonization
• Genocide
• Assimilation
• Manifest Destiny
• Doctrine of Discovery
• Decolonization

 
“Land is life or, at least, land is necessary for life. Thus contests for land can be contests for life.”
- Patrick Wolfe, Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native
 
 
Colonization and Settler-colonialism are about land because land is where everything comes from. There is no wealth, power, food, shelter or technology without land. The computers we're using, the servers that run the software, the water that cools the server and the food that fed the people who built and maintain those objects all come from the land.
 
 
"Colonization is as horrific as humanity gets: genocide, desecration, poxed-blankets, rape, humiliation … Settler Colonialism, then, [is] not just the nefarious way nations are born, it is an ongoing horror made invisible by its persistence"
- Eve Tuck & C.Ree, A Glossary of Haunting
 
"Settler colonialism destroys to replace”
- Patrick Wolfe, Settler colonization & the elimination of the native.
 
Genocide is the complete destruction of a people (the “destroy,” half of the settler-colonial equation).
 
Assimilation is a kind of genocide in that it "kill(s) the Indian", (destroy) in order to "save the man." (replace)
 
The Department of Interior was created within the Department of, War and housed the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This is because the Department of Interior was created to manage Westward Expansion, or  Manifest Destiny 
 
 
Manifest Destiny has its roots in the "Doctrine of Discovery"
 
The "Doctrine of Discovery,” written by the Catholic pope in 1095 AD, declared (any land in which Christians didn't live "empty' & open to conquest”. A 1452 follow-up document gave Christian explorers "full and free power to invade, conquer, fight, subjugate enemies of Christ and to lead their persons in perpetual servitude."
 
The U.S. Supreme Court has cited this "doctrine" to deny land rights to the Oneida Nation as recently as 2005.
 
 
Decolonization "brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to improve in our societies and schools.”
“Fanon told us that decolonizing the mind is the first step, not the only step.”
“Decolonization necessarily involves an interruption of the settler colonial nation-state, and of settler relations to land... Decolonization must mean attending to ghosts, and arresting widespread denial of the violence done to them. We are in relation to it whether we are aware or not.”
​- Eve Tuck & K: Wayne Yang, Decolonization is not a metaphor

click to read this article

---Mutual Stakes and LandBack---
 "While (settler colonial) culture affects us all, harms us all, and is toxic to us all, it does not affect, harm, and violate us in the same way. (Settler colonialism) targets and violates (Indigenous) people and communities with the intent to destroy them directly; (settler colonialism) targets and violates (Euro settlers) with a persistent invitation to collude that will inevitably destroy their humanity.”
- adapted from Tema Okun's White supremacy culture characteristics

Indigenous Peoples make up about 5% of the world's human population and protect about 80% of it's remaining biodiversity on about 25% of its lands.

They're also the people on the frontlines protecting the land, air, and water we all need to live.
 
This is evidenced by the fact that regions with high biodiversity hold 70% of the Earth's languages which are predominantly Indigenous languages -- languages which, like biodiversity, are being destroyed.

Indigenous Peoples know how to care for their lands because they have millenia of generational experience with it. This experience is often recorded in their languages as an archive of ecological, place-based knowledge. 
 
LANDBACK is a call-to-action from many Indigenous leaders.

"We can't have LANDBACK without WATERBACK"
- Pueblo Action Alliance
 
As the Red Nation writes, "DECOLONIZATION OR EXTINCTION" we know this means LANDBACK is climate policy. (see: "The Red Deal" from The Red Nation)
 
 
Nick Estes of The Red Nation writes: “A 'caretaking economy', is the antithesis to a militarized extractive economy, what we Lakotas call 'owasicu owe,' ‘The fat-taker,’ the colonizer, the capitalist economy … If prisons, police, and the military are the caretakers of violence, then educators, health-care workers, counselors, Water Protectors, and Land Defenders are caretakers of human and non-human.
 
"This Caretaking Economy is already in place. 3/4 of land based environments and 2/3s of marine environments have been affected by capitalist development, but environmental degradation has been less severe in places managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities." - Nick Estes
 
Contribute to local Indigenous-led LANDBACK efforts in your area as well as the place(s) you call home to act in mutual stakes with those who have the most experience protecting the land, air, and water we all need to live.

• In the so-called NYC area you can contribute to the Manna-Hatta Fund
• In the so-called San Francisco Bay area you can contribute to the Sogorea Te Land Trust's Shuumi Land Tax
• In the so-called Albuquerque / Santa Fe area you can contribute to the Honor Native Land Tax