2024-11-15
American empire, settler colonialism and indigenous resistance
I began my morning with a recent episode of The Red Nation podcast, a panel discussion, Indigenous Peoples’ Day vs. Empire. Over the past year I've been contemplating, almost daily, the role of the US as an empire. Really, it's something I've been thinking about for the past 30 years. For me it began with the first Gulf War in 1990. From that point on I began a process of reframing my perspective and understanding of the US as an imperialist power.
It was a stark contrast to what I'd been taught which was that America was a positve force for good in opposition to communism. That it provided order, safety, security and aid while serving as the best example of democracy. It's this view of the US as a democratic and benevolent super power that most Americans seem to hold on to. You know: "Truth, Justice and the American Way", America as the super hero.
But for those of us that have reframed our perspective, Israel's most recent escalation against Gaza and the West Bank has served as a brutal reminder that, at its heart, America is a violent empire engaging in imperialism. It is a deeply uncomfortable truth but it is the truth and hiding from it only allows the violence to continue.
The other core truth, what I've been lately referring to as a foundational truth of the US, is that from the first steps of Europeans onto the soil of what we call the Americas, a process of violent settler colonialism was initiated.
Of course, the public school system of the US teaches a romanticized, deeply distorted version of US history told from the European perspective. Which is to say, plainly, it is taught to legitimize the colonization. As a child, I was presented with visions of the early colonists celebrating Thanksgiving peacefully with the "Indians". Over the years of my early education, I was given carefully curated bits of a narrative of the founding of the colonies and early America, always presented without any hint of criticism of the process. It is not presented as a violent process of subjugation, land theft and profit seeking. At every turn the settlers are presented in pursuit of the just and good. Opposite of this, the resistance of the indigenous people, their struggle to defend their homes, communities, culture, and way of life from an aggressive invading force is presented as unwarranted violence.
To this day the popular story of early America is not one of genocide perpetrated upon lands already inhabited by people but of righteous European settlers toiling to tame the wilds of the Americas. In as much as the indigenous people are acknowledged in the history they are still not actually respected as humans that still have claim to what was taken. Put another way, as I write this in 2024, I am still an active participant in land theft and subjugation. This is unfinished business. This is ongoing.
A small sampling of quotes from the above linked panel discussion:
“We've seen Indigenous Peoples' Day become a part of kind of settler state mechanics around the politics of recognition. And while it is important to celebrate Indigenous resilience, we must never forget, right, the anti-colonial and the anti-imperial spirit that is Indigenous Peoples' Day. And so Red Nation has not held an Indigenous Peoples' Day event, whether virtual or in person, in several years.
And so we wanted to come back in 2024, especially in light of what is happening in Palestine, where decolonization and anti-colonial struggle undertaken by our Palestinian relatives has completely changed the world. And now that we understand moving forward, right, as Indigenous people, it really is decolonization or extinction.”
-Melanie Yazzie
“So when we are talking about imperialism, we need to remember that those ideas that came to promote this colonial imperialism 500, more than 500 years ago, are still alive. I mean, they are still prosecuting people, taking the land, taking the resources, taking the in identity.”
-Vivian Tatiana Camacho-Hinojosa, Bolivia
“If you look at the elite journals like the Atlantic Magazine, these East Coast liberal journals, they're attacking this concept of settler colonialism. Most people in their everyday lives don't use that term, but Indigenous people knows what that term means. Settlers come to colonize, to eliminate, to replace, to destroy.
And the reason why this term is under attack is because it's awakened a generation of young people in the West to what not only their country is, the United States, but also what the Zionist entity called Israel is. It's both countries are premised on the destruction of Indigenous people...
“And so it should be a lesson not just to, you know, Indigenous people, but to everyone, because this system is also about controlling the thoughts and the minds of European people, as much as it's about controlling the thoughts and the minds of the people that attempt to colonize. And lastly, I'll just say that when we think about this idea, you know, when the, when Israel constantly says over and over and over again, it has the right to defend itself, it's doing so by killing and eliminating and genociding, you know, the Indigenous population of Palestine, right? So we have to understand that settler self-defense is actually invasion, right?
And decolonization or Indigenous self-defense is always criminalized. It's always dehumanized. So just to articulate the idea that there can be an alternative makes you criminal in the eyes of the system.”
-Nick Estes, Lakota
“When I think about an Indigenous definition of imperialism, that's where we're on, right? We're on the first question, right? When my mind is flooded with words, it's relentless, it's ongoing, it's intimate to us, it's massive, and it happens through all of these violent modes of land occupation, land theft, genocide, and the poisoning of our lands and waters through military occupation.
Military occupation to me equals imperialism. As we're watching the hyper-militarization of our island, the contamination of our land and waters, the desecration of our ancestors here, we know it's directly connected to the genocide in Palestine. Right now, our island is being built up, again, to be a site for war, being made for a target for war, through increased military occupation.”
-Monaeka Flore, Oceania
“It's about collectively terrorizing and punishing the idea of Indigenous resistance, right? It's colonizing our minds to say, hey, this is what happens to you. When you, you know, take up a gun, when you take up a pen and to try to defend your homelands, you have every right to do so.
They want to make it in your mind to, like, so you're literally self-gaslighting. Nobody has to gaslight you because the first voice that prevents you from an act of freedom is your voice. It's not the colonizer's voice.
It's your voice. And that's, that's what I was thinking about when I was rereading Basil's words and thinking about how they've demonized any sort of form of resistance. And the last thing I'll say is that even with this demonization and criminalization and dehumanization of, you know, whether it's Indigenous, Palestinian resistance leaders, something that also happens is that it's the media, it's Western society that's also choosing those people and those individuals as leaders.”
-Nick Estes, Lakota
“I am disgusted even after seeing limbs hanging from ceiling fans, seeing people's heads exploded, seeing bulldozers run over our people in the Gaza Strip, seeing our men, our political prisoners raped in Israeli prisons. There has not been a threshold for people whose ambition does not extend beyond their careers. There has not been a threshold for them to say no, to risk their institutional backing, to risk the seats that they hold, and to situate themselves in the position of the Palestinian that decides to pick up the rifle, that decides to say no to occupation.”
-Mohammed El-Kurd, Palestine
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