“Ah but you see, a long time has passed by! There’s generations [of settler-colonialists] that have already lived through these times, and the people of today have nothing to do with their past!”
Motherfucker, landback means the LAND which is rightfully the Indigenous’ is taken BACK, and it means you GO BACK too, no one should give a fuck about which gen. you’re currently a part of.
They’re going to say the exact same shit for Palestine if it’s allowed to be festered long enough by settler-colonialists, as if it already hasn’t been festered.
I agree with your points entirely, it’s just amusing to see the people who do disagree experience a tiny iota of the fear and despair that the indigenous peoples of America and beyond had to feel when their world was destroyed and stolen.
It is really telling that suddenly they fear for their lives once they think they will be victims of the same colonization that gave them privilege. They’ve internalized that this process only functions through mass slaughter and terror and start waxing poetic about “human nature”
Realistically and logistically speaking, if they were ever to retrieve their land back, the Native Americans would probably be MORE accepting of the idea to live amongst the working class that don’t originate from their land rather than “evicting” the population, basic infrastructure (that’s already replaced native tribes’ land) would need maintenance, first of all.
The fact that it scares them that this highly unlikely scenario of reclaiming land then the Indigenous do whatever they want with it is very poetic. The fact that they’ve probably also imagined dramatically violent scenarios of this is also funny, funny strange.
and it means you GO BACK too, no one should give a fuck about which gen. you’re currently a part of.
This would mean that like 99.9% of Earth’s population has to move somewhere. Almost all land was fought over endlessly and changed metaphorical hands multiple times over. What we call “indigenous people” in a territory is usually just whoever was winning those wars before written history began.
What “landback” actually means is recognizing the systemic racism that was and still is perpetuated against the indigenous people by means of taking away their ancestral lands, slaughtering and enslaving their ancestors, and destroying their way of life; and addressing that racism by giving jurisdiction and sovereignty over their lands back to them. It doesn’t mean that everyone but the indigenous people have to move out; descendants of colonizers born there are technically natives of that land too. The difference is that they get systemic advantages from their ancestry whereas indigenous people get systemic discrimination. This is the thing that ought to be addressed. (well, the horrifying economic and governance system that the colonizers brought and festered must be addressed too, but all three are tightly coupled together)
In the case of Israel the difference is that a lot of colonizers are first gen, they are not natives, they do have somewhere to “go back to”, and they are actively perpetuating colonization and genocide rather than simply getting an advantage from their ancestors doing so. In such cases it of course makes sense for the decolonization effort to focus on direct expulsion of invaders.
In the extremely unlikely event that indigenous people got direct executive control over what happens in the continental united states, I don’t think they’d even want the mass exodus of all white people. Nor do I think they’d want full cultural assimilation. My entire life, the prevailing narrative has always just been the end of systemic oppression. Very frequently I’ve heard indigenous rights activists demand the free use of/free travel across land for things like hunting, which is a pretty small ask. Just because this or that action would be justified, doesn’t mean it’s the action people want. IMO the second minority ethnic groups feel safe and represented these kinds of mass exodus narratives will fade away. Doubly so if there was a transition to socialism that went with it, and some thought went into identifying the different national identities (so something akin to a soviet of nationalities could be formed).
The last will be first. Landback and decolonization means putting the reigns into the hands of the indigenous people’s hands, and letting go of the reigns, not just holding onto the reigns but giving the colonized people some of the reigns. The best settlers can hope for is to be treated kinder than they have treated the people whose land they stole. I myself was born in the US, and am still a settler here, just because I was born here does not absolve my role. It means I have a historic duty to help carry out decolonization and land back, from the back, not as a leading role.
are actively perpetuating colonization and genocide rather than simply getting an advantage from their ancestors
USAmericans are also doing this too. The overconsumption done by yankees would require multiple planet earths if everyone were allowed to consume as much as they do and the US government is guilty of exporting a capitalist system that causes climate change, not to mention the imperialism abroad. There is no functional difference between the US and Israel, just “Big Satan” vs. “Little Satan.”
USAmericans are also doing this too. The overconsumption done by yankees would require multiple planet earths if everyone were allowed to consume as much as they do and the US government is guilty of exporting a capitalist system that causes climate change, not to mention the imperialism abroad.
I mentioned this as another thing that needs addressing in a timely manner.
Very few countries currently are based on native eviction, where settlers have nearly replaced the indigenous peoples. The US, canada, australia, new zealand, israel are the main ones.
I think it’s projecting western colonial guilt to claim that all countries are equally based on indigenous eviction. Even colonial projects like Spain’s in South America did not do to their indigenous peoples what the british did to north america.
Very few countries currently are based on native eviction, where settlers have nearly replaced the indigenous peoples.
As a founding point? Yes, I agree. I also agree that colonization scale done by British was greater than anything ever done before.
However, that wasn’t my point. My point was: almost everyone on Earth lives where they do because their ancestors killed or evicted the people that lived there previously. This is in particular is not unique to any western country. Hell, reading the history of Russia, my home country, makes it pretty clear that my own deep ancestry did plenty of killing and evicting too, mostly of themselves, to get to where they all ended up (not even talking about Siberia here). It wasn’t at the founding point of Russia though, and none of the peoples who lost their wars are culturally alive anymore. Does it matter if all the conquest led to the foundation of a modern country, or just different tribal lands (or later city states)? I don’t think it does.
I think what does matter is justice for those descendants of the colonized who are still alive, and if there’s noone left, at least understanding and recognition of the horribleness that lead up to the point of your birth.
Colonialist Spain formally recognized in 1542 Indigenous peoples as “free vassals of the Crown” as Spaniards themselves, not slaves. Of course, as in The Mission movie portrayed, many colonialists violated the Crown’s laws (Columbus himself was imprisoned for violating a Crown law from 1495 banning enslaving Taíno people). The Spanish crown wanted conversion + integration whereas British sought *erasure * of the Indigenous. But it was not just the Crown laws, individuals from Spain easily intermarried from early on, the English did not.
This distinction of the Spanish colonist vs all their norther neighbors that were far more repressive. I attribute this to the Spanish experience under Islamic rule for 8 centuries, where differences were highly tolerated and conversion was ‘only’ mandatory for those not considered as “peoples of the Book” mentioned on the Islamic scriptures.
To conclude, Spanish colonialism, from the Americas to the Philippines, was abusive, sometimes heavily, but the centuries later the ‘civilized’ British one was plainly genocidal from beginning to finish and the independent United States, continued with the legacy if not increasing it. In word of historian James Axtell: “The Spanish asked Native people to become something else [Christians]; the British demanded they vanish.”
This is an extremely white washed version of land back. Pretty sure land back means full control over what happens on that land, including what kind of people can live on it, something that is currently controlled exclusively by the colonial government.
If they’re feeling generous they might give you the option to stay on the condition that you assimilate into their culture.
You know, the thing Europeans forced Indigenous peoples to do. Not saying settlers should be forced through violence to do so, but I think it’s more than fair that if you’re going to stay, you have to assimilate.
But you’re not entitled to even assimilation if they just don’t want you here. And they have plenty of reason not to want you here.
I know that as a 1st gen Chinese immigrant to Canada (I came here as a kid so wasn’t my choice), if all the Indigenous groups where I live unambiguously told me to GTFO. I would in good conscience have to do so and hope I can use my birth certificate to reclaim Chinese citizenship. I’m by every definition a settler so it’s only fair. Whatever struggles I have in China (namely language barrier since I can barely read Chinese) I will have to deal with and it’s not on the Indigenous people to let me stay just because I can’t survive anywhere else.
Where you go back to and what happens to you isn’t the problem of the people you colonized. And by transferring that problem on to them, you are in fact perpetuating colonialism.
As far as I can tell, I’m being told that in this hypothetical scenario, it’s okay for me to be jailed or removed from my home because I’m not indigenous. Am I misreading it?
If you’re so concerned about it, maybe go talk to some of the Indigenous people in your area and work with them then. Give them a reason to let you stay. You complaining to two other settlers on Lemmy certainly won’t help your case.
Thanks for your concern, I’ll make sure to double check my standing with them but I think I’ll be alright. Maybe if I’m lucky, I can do a DNA test and find some indigenous ancestry that I didn’t know about, the thresholds would probably have to be pretty low but it’s possible I could squeak in there and get to be on the ruling side instead.
Tbh if you’re ever told to leave, this kind of mentality will probably be why.
Every Indigenous person I’ve ever met has been super nice and welcoming. They’re not out for revenge like you seem to think they are. I obviously can’t and shouldn’t speak on their behalf, but just from my limited experience talking to Indigenous people where I live, they’re perfectly willing to work with the people living here, Indigenous or not. Indigenous peoples have also been some of the first groups to advocate for the government to accept refugees, using the fact that it’s their land as an argument for people from elsewhere to live here. Your strawman notion of the racist, exclusionary Indigenous person who seeks to do to white people what they did to them is just that, a strawman.
You’re also working under the assumption that they will treat you worse than the current government treats you. News flash, even with white privilege, you’re currently being treated like you don’t have a right to the land. How much is your landlord charging you to live here? Do you have a right to a home under the current laws? No you don’t. If you lose all your money, you will become homeless, and plenty of jurisdictions outright criminalize homelessness and will throw you in jail because of it.
As far as I know, my ancestors didn’t steal anything. It’s possible they did, and I’m sure they unfairly benefitted from systemic injustice and oppression of others, and I’m happy to help address that at the expense of my own privilege, but I don’t see how that makes it okay to literally deport me to some strange country for their hypothetical crimes.
I don’t have another country waiting to accept me, and I don’t particularly want to leave the only place I’ve ever lived, so if they want me gone, it is their problem. Are they tossing me in jail because I have the wrong ethnicity? Deporting me to a place I have no connection to?
I have no right to say what they should do and neither do you.
Do you think all indigenous people can do whatever the fuck they want, as long as they are on their own land, and noone has any right to judge their actions?
1930s germans were indigenous people on their own land, after all.
I agree that cultural assimilation requirements and dealing harshly with white nationalists are ok; mass expulsion is not.
And I’m also pretty sure that most native Americans don’t want mass expulsion, so this whole discussion is moot.
The aggressor, in the process of atoning for their atrocities, has no right to say that the recourse proposed by the victim is unreasonable.
We are the colonial aggressors, Indigenous people are the colonized victims.
Let’s say a man and a woman live in the same house, and the man hits the woman. If the man is truly seeking to atone for his crime, and the woman tells him to move out because even seeing his face is traumatic for her, would it be reasonable for the man to complain that he has nowhere else to go? To ask the woman where she thinks he should go? To try and guilt the woman into letting him stay? If he does any of those, is he truly sorry for what he did?
You’re right that most Indigenous people don’t want mass expulsion. We should be incredibly grateful for that and it’s a testament of their compassion and desire for equality among all people, even after all we did to them. What we shouldn’t do is tell them that they can’t tell us to leave or that we’d refuse to leave because we have a rightful claim to this land. Doing so is completely unproductive and will only serve to make us less deserving of staying.
As if indigenous societies never fought wars and claimed land between eachother. Send all of humanity to Africa and let the squirrels and birds take back their land while we’re at it.
As if indegenous societies never fought wars and claimed land between eachother.
Not at the scale colonialism has, no. Skirmishes and even conquest between individual tribes is fundamentally different from the systematic genocide of an entire continent’s population.
I really didn’t think I was being subtle here. I’m going to stop “just asking questions” and instead say that I’m surprised to see, in this of all threads, a sincere argument that there are some circumstances where it is okay for one ethnic group to systemically displace another, despite both groups only having that place to claim as a homeland.
despite both groups only having that place to claim as a homeland.
Your claim isn’t even close to the magnitude of their claim. They’ve been here for over ten thousand years. They. Own. This. Continent. And. Always. Will.
And again, we displaced them. We are the colonizing class. I am calling for the reversing of what was done to them, which necessarily includes giving them back control over the land. I’m not saying they should displace anyone, but they alone have the choice.
Instead of complaining that indigenous people don’t have the right to remove you, maybe you should focus on contributing to decolonization so they have a reason to let you stay.
where it is okay for one ethnic group to systemically displace another
Ah the old “reverse ethnic cleansing”… all you white supremacists are coming out to play.
The absolute gall of westerners whose ancestors literally did ethnic cleansing, to then yell that at their victims at the hint of returning stolen land back to indigenous sovereignty.
Basically, read it as “you should kill yourself if you’re not exactly where your ancestors lived 10000 years ago”. That’s what these people seem to think, they just don’t want to say the quiet part out loud.
I live in a country where we have a very large amount of Russians, many of whom completely lack citizenship because they moved here during the soviet occupation so didn’t get automatic Estonian citizenship after our independence, but also haven’t gotten Estonian or Russian citizenship after the fact. This number has decreased over the years because most people have acquired some citizenship, but we still have tens of thousands with no state at all. I can’t imagine simply deporting all of those people. In fact, we’re now giving out citizenship to children of non-citizen parents who have lived in the country for at least 5 years, to avoid creating more stateless people. This is despite the fact that a lot of those people getting citizenship are also the descendants of settlers, with roots in a country hostile to our own. Those people’s entire lives are here, who are we to uproot them just because we were here first? It’s too late now.
I call this the finders keepers rule of colonialism. The western supremacists think that as long as you
Kill a large enough percentage of the native population, and
Wait long enough
Then the finders keepers rule kicks in, and you get to keep anything you stole. They even will yell “no ethnostates!!” at indegenous peoples they evicted and stole land from.
The main point is that its not for anyone but indigenous peoples to determine what they want to do with their land.
I agree that colonizers have harmed indigenous people, but find the argument anyone has a birth right claim to property proposterous. As Proudhon proclaimed, “Property is theft!”. I expect any revolution toward anarchy to remove property from the owning class.
I am less knowledgable than you about “land back”. How does “land back” differ from other ethno nationalist movements like “blood and soil”?
Do you think that some far-away land with a different culture, that hates immigrants, would accept someone in just because of blood relation?
That’s not the Indigenous peoples’ problem. They might even think it’s poetic justice for how European culture treated them. Europe, for its part, also has no right to complain about the influx of North Americans because they started this whole thing.
Are you familiar with “moral desert”? I’m legitimately quite curious about your system of ethics. I don’t really believe in moral desert myself; instead, we should try to improve the lives of everyone, and in particular increase equality and if necessary equity.
In my opinion, land back is important because it will help bring equality back into balance. It’s just one of many steps to repairing society into an equitable state though. The “righting” of historical wrongs is not necessary for this; and I honestly don’t think such a thing even makes sense as a concept. Should we hunt down descendents of nazis and kill them for the crimes of their ancestors?
I’m not saying that I’d necessarily agree with the expulsion of all settlers, but I’m saying it’s not my place to pass judgment and if they tell me to leave, it’s definitely not my place to argue why I have a right to this stolen land.
The “righting” of historical wrongs is not necessary for this
Yes it is. Some things are unforgivable and must be made right in its entirety. The people who benefited from that wrong, myself included, have absolutely zero right to comment on what that should entail.
myself included, have absolutely zero right to comment on what that should entail
Can you please explain why you said this, then?
Motherfucker, landback means the LAND which is rightfully the Indigenous’ is taken BACK, and it means you GO BACK too, no one should give a fuck about which gen. you’re currently a part of.
Maybe you should get off your armchair and go to a protest
(I admit I probably violated rule 1; my apologies to @Samsuma for that.)
What I mean by this is that people who are actually involved in these issues out on the street talk very differently than people do on lemmy. Or reddit for that matter. I go to some Indigenous issues protests in British Columbia now and then, usually it’s street blockades; “land back” is a very common rallying call. I’ve chatted with many protesters; what they mean by this is “the landlords should be indigenous” essentially. And also that much more territory should be transferred back to the reserves. Some people even put the goal at replacing the government entirely. But nobody is talking about ethnic cleansing.
By finders keepers, what I thought you meant was “it was done in the past, by different people, so it’s not a problem that can be solved anymore.” That’s different from “we have to completely erase all people descended from settlers/colonists.”
Hi there I am one of those people with over 20 years of direct action work on this topic and some of my best friends are Lakota, if they wanted me to leave with the rest of my settler kin I would honor that and keep fighting for revolution elsewhere God knows if I got sent back to Ireland or Wales I would have plenty work to do. You should think very hard about why you are so defensive about this.
That said chances are if you actually put in the work and shut the fuck up about impracticality or whatever else excuse you use, you’d probably be allowed to stay. Hell my friends family invited me to a wedding out at Pine Ridge but sadly I could not afford the travel expenses to attend because my last trip out there to help them with the sun dance cost me a couple grand.
In conclusion stop white-splaning land back it is not up to us what it means.
Also to the point of “go to a protest” I would ask you to go to a reservation if they want your help and do something more meaningful than some toothless march.
I didn’t give impracticality as an excuse. I just don’t agree with ethnic cleansing. Everyone has a right to live where they were born. Furthermore, it just doesn’t track with the indigenous people I actually know in real life. I can’t imagine any of them wanting to expel most of their friends.
do something more meaningful
I help with language revitalization on occasion, there are places coders like myself can help there. I’ll admit it’s not exactly a full-time job, but it has its value. But in general I don’t want to bother people who live on reserves. Regardless, I reject the notion that you need to actually be helping in order to have an opinion.
And also that much more territory should be transferred back to the reserves.
Correct and it leads to a simple question: If the tribal governments decide that all land claims and titles in the county upon which your house resides are null and void, they’re beginning a land reclamation project, current title holders have no rights to the land, what are you going to do? Fight them? Claim ethnic cleansing? It’s their land, not yours.
Right. That’s my point. Land back ≠ ethnic cleansing. I’m not sure we actually disagree with each other? The comment I posted, which is now deleted, was entirely just saying “no, land back does not mean ethnic cleansing” in response to @Samsuma.
what are you going to do
I don’t have any rights to the land to begin with. I’m not a home-owner. What would be different? If nobody gives me a home, then I’m homeless. As a ~socialist, I don’t believe we should have homelessness, but that’s not what you asked
I didn’t suggest ethnic cleansing in the meaning of land back, nor does land back suggest ethnic cleansing. ONE of the scenarios of land back means you (as in the settler populus) would have to start pack up your stuff and leave, if this is what the Indigenous would want with their land reclaimed, then it’s not up to you or me.
This is of course highly, highly unlikely and as others and I have mentioned in other threads, the Indigenous majority would actually realistically want people to stay, most probably including you (idk, I’m not a USian, never mind a Native American), if this is what you’re worried about.
If I was a USian, I’d thank my lucky stars that they’d be this kind and HAVE BEEN despite them sustaining centuries of one of, if not the most brutal ethnic cleansing, land desecration and genocide, which is still ongoing to this day.
Not just reddit but very lib brain behavior. They need material support for people on the rez not some cracker with a white savior complex holding a sign at a rally.
By all means sure protest and use it to get people to do something more but telling Dessalines who literally created this platform and did more actual work than most of us ever had to get off their chair and go protest strikes me as lost liberal behavior.
@Nakoichi@hexbear.net
that was actually to me. But even then, assuming I’m not already engaging in real-life activism to downplay the point I was making isn’t really a valid criticism of the point, but ig looking at other threads you seem to get that by now so it’s w/e really.
There are people still alive who grew up in residential schools. There are even people alive who knew survivors of the Trail of Tears. The genocide of Native Americans really wasn’t that long ago and (like you said) still ongoing.
Obama forced an oil pipeline through indigenous land in what? 2014?
“Ah but you see, a long time has passed by! There’s generations [of settler-colonialists] that have already lived through these times, and the people of today have nothing to do with their past!”
Motherfucker, landback means the LAND which is rightfully the Indigenous’ is taken BACK, and it means you GO BACK too, no one should give a fuck about which gen. you’re currently a part of.
They’re going to say the exact same shit for Palestine if it’s allowed to be festered long enough by settler-colonialists, as if it already hasn’t been festered.
I agree with your points entirely, it’s just amusing to see the people who do disagree experience a tiny iota of the fear and despair that the indigenous peoples of America and beyond had to feel when their world was destroyed and stolen.
It is really telling that suddenly they fear for their lives once they think they will be victims of the same colonization that gave them privilege. They’ve internalized that this process only functions through mass slaughter and terror and start waxing poetic about “human nature”
Realistically and logistically speaking, if they were ever to retrieve their land back, the Native Americans would probably be MORE accepting of the idea to live amongst the working class that don’t originate from their land rather than “evicting” the population, basic infrastructure (that’s already replaced native tribes’ land) would need maintenance, first of all.
The fact that it scares them that this highly unlikely scenario of reclaiming land then the Indigenous do whatever they want with it is very poetic. The fact that they’ve probably also imagined dramatically violent scenarios of this is also funny, funny strange.
This would mean that like 99.9% of Earth’s population has to move somewhere. Almost all land was fought over endlessly and changed metaphorical hands multiple times over. What we call “indigenous people” in a territory is usually just whoever was winning those wars before written history began.
What “landback” actually means is recognizing the systemic racism that was and still is perpetuated against the indigenous people by means of taking away their ancestral lands, slaughtering and enslaving their ancestors, and destroying their way of life; and addressing that racism by giving jurisdiction and sovereignty over their lands back to them. It doesn’t mean that everyone but the indigenous people have to move out; descendants of colonizers born there are technically natives of that land too. The difference is that they get systemic advantages from their ancestry whereas indigenous people get systemic discrimination. This is the thing that ought to be addressed. (well, the horrifying economic and governance system that the colonizers brought and festered must be addressed too, but all three are tightly coupled together)
In the case of Israel the difference is that a lot of colonizers are first gen, they are not natives, they do have somewhere to “go back to”, and they are actively perpetuating colonization and genocide rather than simply getting an advantage from their ancestors doing so. In such cases it of course makes sense for the decolonization effort to focus on direct expulsion of invaders.
In the extremely unlikely event that indigenous people got direct executive control over what happens in the continental united states, I don’t think they’d even want the mass exodus of all white people. Nor do I think they’d want full cultural assimilation. My entire life, the prevailing narrative has always just been the end of systemic oppression. Very frequently I’ve heard indigenous rights activists demand the free use of/free travel across land for things like hunting, which is a pretty small ask. Just because this or that action would be justified, doesn’t mean it’s the action people want. IMO the second minority ethnic groups feel safe and represented these kinds of mass exodus narratives will fade away. Doubly so if there was a transition to socialism that went with it, and some thought went into identifying the different national identities (so something akin to a soviet of nationalities could be formed).
Yes, this is exactly my point.
The last will be first. Landback and decolonization means putting the reigns into the hands of the indigenous people’s hands, and letting go of the reigns, not just holding onto the reigns but giving the colonized people some of the reigns. The best settlers can hope for is to be treated kinder than they have treated the people whose land they stole. I myself was born in the US, and am still a settler here, just because I was born here does not absolve my role. It means I have a historic duty to help carry out decolonization and land back, from the back, not as a leading role.
Read Fanon.
USAmericans are also doing this too. The overconsumption done by yankees would require multiple planet earths if everyone were allowed to consume as much as they do and the US government is guilty of exporting a capitalist system that causes climate change, not to mention the imperialism abroad. There is no functional difference between the US and Israel, just “Big Satan” vs. “Little Satan.”
I mentioned this as another thing that needs addressing in a timely manner.
Very few countries currently are based on native eviction, where settlers have nearly replaced the indigenous peoples. The US, canada, australia, new zealand, israel are the main ones.
I think it’s projecting western colonial guilt to claim that all countries are equally based on indigenous eviction. Even colonial projects like Spain’s in South America did not do to their indigenous peoples what the british did to north america.
As a founding point? Yes, I agree. I also agree that colonization scale done by British was greater than anything ever done before.
However, that wasn’t my point. My point was: almost everyone on Earth lives where they do because their ancestors killed or evicted the people that lived there previously. This is in particular is not unique to any western country. Hell, reading the history of Russia, my home country, makes it pretty clear that my own deep ancestry did plenty of killing and evicting too, mostly of themselves, to get to where they all ended up (not even talking about Siberia here). It wasn’t at the founding point of Russia though, and none of the peoples who lost their wars are culturally alive anymore. Does it matter if all the conquest led to the foundation of a modern country, or just different tribal lands (or later city states)? I don’t think it does.
I think what does matter is justice for those descendants of the colonized who are still alive, and if there’s noone left, at least understanding and recognition of the horribleness that lead up to the point of your birth.
Colonialist Spain formally recognized in 1542 Indigenous peoples as “free vassals of the Crown” as Spaniards themselves, not slaves. Of course, as in The Mission movie portrayed, many colonialists violated the Crown’s laws (Columbus himself was imprisoned for violating a Crown law from 1495 banning enslaving Taíno people). The Spanish crown wanted conversion + integration whereas British sought *erasure * of the Indigenous. But it was not just the Crown laws, individuals from Spain easily intermarried from early on, the English did not.
This distinction of the Spanish colonist vs all their norther neighbors that were far more repressive. I attribute this to the Spanish experience under Islamic rule for 8 centuries, where differences were highly tolerated and conversion was ‘only’ mandatory for those not considered as “peoples of the Book” mentioned on the Islamic scriptures.
To conclude, Spanish colonialism, from the Americas to the Philippines, was abusive, sometimes heavily, but the centuries later the ‘civilized’ British one was plainly genocidal from beginning to finish and the independent United States, continued with the legacy if not increasing it. In word of historian James Axtell: “The Spanish asked Native people to become something else [Christians]; the British demanded they vanish.”
This is an extremely white washed version of land back. Pretty sure land back means full control over what happens on that land, including what kind of people can live on it, something that is currently controlled exclusively by the colonial government.
If they’re feeling generous they might give you the option to stay on the condition that you assimilate into their culture.
You know, the thing Europeans forced Indigenous peoples to do. Not saying settlers should be forced through violence to do so, but I think it’s more than fair that if you’re going to stay, you have to assimilate.
But you’re not entitled to even assimilation if they just don’t want you here. And they have plenty of reason not to want you here.
I know that as a 1st gen Chinese immigrant to Canada (I came here as a kid so wasn’t my choice), if all the Indigenous groups where I live unambiguously told me to GTFO. I would in good conscience have to do so and hope I can use my birth certificate to reclaim Chinese citizenship. I’m by every definition a settler so it’s only fair. Whatever struggles I have in China (namely language barrier since I can barely read Chinese) I will have to deal with and it’s not on the Indigenous people to let me stay just because I can’t survive anywhere else.
Where you go back to and what happens to you isn’t the problem of the people you colonized. And by transferring that problem on to them, you are in fact perpetuating colonialism.
Pretty much this, you read my mind here.
Spot on comrade.
I couldn’t name a single ancestor of mine that wasn’t born in America, so where would I get shipped off to?
Funny, when indigenous peoples from the americas asked that question, the US settlers just killed them.
Are you really doing a “reverse ethnic cleansing” rn? Lord free me from redditors.
As far as I can tell, I’m being told that in this hypothetical scenario, it’s okay for me to be jailed or removed from my home because I’m not indigenous. Am I misreading it?
If you’re so concerned about it, maybe go talk to some of the Indigenous people in your area and work with them then. Give them a reason to let you stay. You complaining to two other settlers on Lemmy certainly won’t help your case.
Thanks for your concern, I’ll make sure to double check my standing with them but I think I’ll be alright. Maybe if I’m lucky, I can do a DNA test and find some indigenous ancestry that I didn’t know about, the thresholds would probably have to be pretty low but it’s possible I could squeak in there and get to be on the ruling side instead.
Tbh if you’re ever told to leave, this kind of mentality will probably be why.
Every Indigenous person I’ve ever met has been super nice and welcoming. They’re not out for revenge like you seem to think they are. I obviously can’t and shouldn’t speak on their behalf, but just from my limited experience talking to Indigenous people where I live, they’re perfectly willing to work with the people living here, Indigenous or not. Indigenous peoples have also been some of the first groups to advocate for the government to accept refugees, using the fact that it’s their land as an argument for people from elsewhere to live here. Your strawman notion of the racist, exclusionary Indigenous person who seeks to do to white people what they did to them is just that, a strawman.
You’re also working under the assumption that they will treat you worse than the current government treats you. News flash, even with white privilege, you’re currently being treated like you don’t have a right to the land. How much is your landlord charging you to live here? Do you have a right to a home under the current laws? No you don’t. If you lose all your money, you will become homeless, and plenty of jurisdictions outright criminalize homelessness and will throw you in jail because of it.
Step 1: Steal something.
Step 2: Give it to your kid.
Step 3: The kid whines finders keepers, and that they shouldn’t have to give it back.
As far as I know, my ancestors didn’t steal anything. It’s possible they did, and I’m sure they unfairly benefitted from systemic injustice and oppression of others, and I’m happy to help address that at the expense of my own privilege, but I don’t see how that makes it okay to literally deport me to some strange country for their hypothetical crimes.
Bruh, coming here was the theft itself. What part of stolen LAND do you not understand?
Not the indigenous people’s problem. If they tell you to leave, it’ll be up to you to figure it out.
I don’t have another country waiting to accept me, and I don’t particularly want to leave the only place I’ve ever lived, so if they want me gone, it is their problem. Are they tossing me in jail because I have the wrong ethnicity? Deporting me to a place I have no connection to?
I have no right to say what they should do and neither do you.
Do you think all indigenous people can do whatever the fuck they want, as long as they are on their own land, and noone has any right to judge their actions?
1930s germans were indigenous people on their own land, after all.
I agree that cultural assimilation requirements and dealing harshly with white nationalists are ok; mass expulsion is not.
And I’m also pretty sure that most native Americans don’t want mass expulsion, so this whole discussion is moot.
The aggressor, in the process of atoning for their atrocities, has no right to say that the recourse proposed by the victim is unreasonable.
We are the colonial aggressors, Indigenous people are the colonized victims.
Let’s say a man and a woman live in the same house, and the man hits the woman. If the man is truly seeking to atone for his crime, and the woman tells him to move out because even seeing his face is traumatic for her, would it be reasonable for the man to complain that he has nowhere else to go? To ask the woman where she thinks he should go? To try and guilt the woman into letting him stay? If he does any of those, is he truly sorry for what he did?
You’re right that most Indigenous people don’t want mass expulsion. We should be incredibly grateful for that and it’s a testament of their compassion and desire for equality among all people, even after all we did to them. What we shouldn’t do is tell them that they can’t tell us to leave or that we’d refuse to leave because we have a rightful claim to this land. Doing so is completely unproductive and will only serve to make us less deserving of staying.
As if indigenous societies never fought wars and claimed land between eachother. Send all of humanity to Africa and let the squirrels and birds take back their land while we’re at it.
Not at the scale colonialism has, no. Skirmishes and even conquest between individual tribes is fundamentally different from the systematic genocide of an entire continent’s population.
I really didn’t think I was being subtle here. I’m going to stop “just asking questions” and instead say that I’m surprised to see, in this of all threads, a sincere argument that there are some circumstances where it is okay for one ethnic group to systemically displace another, despite both groups only having that place to claim as a homeland.
Your claim isn’t even close to the magnitude of their claim. They’ve been here for over ten thousand years. They. Own. This. Continent. And. Always. Will.
And again, we displaced them. We are the colonizing class. I am calling for the reversing of what was done to them, which necessarily includes giving them back control over the land. I’m not saying they should displace anyone, but they alone have the choice.
Instead of complaining that indigenous people don’t have the right to remove you, maybe you should focus on contributing to decolonization so they have a reason to let you stay.
Ah the old “reverse ethnic cleansing”… all you white supremacists are coming out to play.
The absolute gall of westerners whose ancestors literally did ethnic cleansing, to then yell that at their victims at the hint of returning stolen land back to indigenous sovereignty.
Basically, read it as “you should kill yourself if you’re not exactly where your ancestors lived 10000 years ago”. That’s what these people seem to think, they just don’t want to say the quiet part out loud.
I live in a country where we have a very large amount of Russians, many of whom completely lack citizenship because they moved here during the soviet occupation so didn’t get automatic Estonian citizenship after our independence, but also haven’t gotten Estonian or Russian citizenship after the fact. This number has decreased over the years because most people have acquired some citizenship, but we still have tens of thousands with no state at all. I can’t imagine simply deporting all of those people. In fact, we’re now giving out citizenship to children of non-citizen parents who have lived in the country for at least 5 years, to avoid creating more stateless people. This is despite the fact that a lot of those people getting citizenship are also the descendants of settlers, with roots in a country hostile to our own. Those people’s entire lives are here, who are we to uproot them just because we were here first? It’s too late now.
You’re talking to someone from .ml.
You should probably choose your battles on this one, the amount of people there that can’t see double standards or hypocrisy is astounding.
What percentage of Israelis do you think are born there?
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I call this the finders keepers rule of colonialism. The western supremacists think that as long as you
Then the finders keepers rule kicks in, and you get to keep anything you stole. They even will yell “no ethnostates!!” at indegenous peoples they evicted and stole land from.
The main point is that its not for anyone but indigenous peoples to determine what they want to do with their land.
I agree that colonizers have harmed indigenous people, but find the argument anyone has a birth right claim to property proposterous. As Proudhon proclaimed, “Property is theft!”. I expect any revolution toward anarchy to remove property from the owning class.
I am less knowledgable than you about “land back”. How does “land back” differ from other ethno nationalist movements like “blood and soil”?
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That’s not the Indigenous peoples’ problem. They might even think it’s poetic justice for how European culture treated them. Europe, for its part, also has no right to complain about the influx of North Americans because they started this whole thing.
Are you familiar with “moral desert”? I’m legitimately quite curious about your system of ethics. I don’t really believe in moral desert myself; instead, we should try to improve the lives of everyone, and in particular increase equality and if necessary equity.
In my opinion, land back is important because it will help bring equality back into balance. It’s just one of many steps to repairing society into an equitable state though. The “righting” of historical wrongs is not necessary for this; and I honestly don’t think such a thing even makes sense as a concept. Should we hunt down descendents of nazis and kill them for the crimes of their ancestors?
I’m not saying that I’d necessarily agree with the expulsion of all settlers, but I’m saying it’s not my place to pass judgment and if they tell me to leave, it’s definitely not my place to argue why I have a right to this stolen land.
Yes it is. Some things are unforgivable and must be made right in its entirety. The people who benefited from that wrong, myself included, have absolutely zero right to comment on what that should entail.
You get it. I just responded something similar in this same thread.
Can you please explain why you said this, then?
I didn’t?
Oh, I’m really sorry! I got mixed up.
You’re just being a debate pervert now. Seriously you should go back. At least go back to reddit.
fuck reddit
(also, this isn’t even your instance.)
The fuck does that matter?
Not up to you or me, that’s up to the indigenous tribes themselves to decide.
Less than half an hour later, the finders keepers rule I talked about elsewhere in this thread gets invoked.
Extremely redditor behavior
(I admit I probably violated rule 1; my apologies to @Samsuma for that.)
What I mean by this is that people who are actually involved in these issues out on the street talk very differently than people do on lemmy. Or reddit for that matter. I go to some Indigenous issues protests in British Columbia now and then, usually it’s street blockades; “land back” is a very common rallying call. I’ve chatted with many protesters; what they mean by this is “the landlords should be indigenous” essentially. And also that much more territory should be transferred back to the reserves. Some people even put the goal at replacing the government entirely. But nobody is talking about ethnic cleansing.
By finders keepers, what I thought you meant was “it was done in the past, by different people, so it’s not a problem that can be solved anymore.” That’s different from “we have to completely erase all people descended from settlers/colonists.”
Hi there I am one of those people with over 20 years of direct action work on this topic and some of my best friends are Lakota, if they wanted me to leave with the rest of my settler kin I would honor that and keep fighting for revolution elsewhere God knows if I got sent back to Ireland or Wales I would have plenty work to do. You should think very hard about why you are so defensive about this.
That said chances are if you actually put in the work and shut the fuck up about impracticality or whatever else excuse you use, you’d probably be allowed to stay. Hell my friends family invited me to a wedding out at Pine Ridge but sadly I could not afford the travel expenses to attend because my last trip out there to help them with the sun dance cost me a couple grand.
In conclusion stop white-splaning land back it is not up to us what it means.
Also to the point of “go to a protest” I would ask you to go to a reservation if they want your help and do something more meaningful than some toothless march.
I didn’t give impracticality as an excuse. I just don’t agree with ethnic cleansing. Everyone has a right to live where they were born. Furthermore, it just doesn’t track with the indigenous people I actually know in real life. I can’t imagine any of them wanting to expel most of their friends.
I help with language revitalization on occasion, there are places coders like myself can help there. I’ll admit it’s not exactly a full-time job, but it has its value. But in general I don’t want to bother people who live on reserves. Regardless, I reject the notion that you need to actually be helping in order to have an opinion.
Damn almost took you seriously for a second.
imo if people are talking about kicking you out of the place you were born, you are warranted an opinion.
Not in this case you really arent
Reclaiming stolen land is not ethnic cleansing.
Correct and it leads to a simple question: If the tribal governments decide that all land claims and titles in the county upon which your house resides are null and void, they’re beginning a land reclamation project, current title holders have no rights to the land, what are you going to do? Fight them? Claim ethnic cleansing? It’s their land, not yours.
Right. That’s my point. Land back ≠ ethnic cleansing. I’m not sure we actually disagree with each other? The comment I posted, which is now deleted, was entirely just saying “no, land back does not mean ethnic cleansing” in response to @Samsuma.
I don’t have any rights to the land to begin with. I’m not a home-owner. What would be different? If nobody gives me a home, then I’m homeless. As a ~socialist, I don’t believe we should have homelessness, but that’s not what you asked
I didn’t suggest ethnic cleansing in the meaning of land back, nor does land back suggest ethnic cleansing. ONE of the scenarios of land back means you (as in the settler populus) would have to start pack up your stuff and leave, if this is what the Indigenous would want with their land reclaimed, then it’s not up to you or me.
This is of course highly, highly unlikely and as others and I have mentioned in other threads, the Indigenous majority would actually realistically want people to stay, most probably including you (idk, I’m not a USian, never mind a Native American), if this is what you’re worried about.
If I was a USian, I’d thank my lucky stars that they’d be this kind and HAVE BEEN despite them sustaining centuries of one of, if not the most brutal ethnic cleansing, land desecration and genocide, which is still ongoing to this day.
it’s almost like the most thought-terminating cliches absolutely HAVE to be said and mentioned in the slightest available opportunity 🤣
Not just reddit but very lib brain behavior. They need material support for people on the rez not some cracker with a white savior complex holding a sign at a rally.
So you’re saying that we shouldn’t have protests…?
By all means sure protest and use it to get people to do something more but telling Dessalines who literally created this platform and did more actual work than most of us ever had to get off their chair and go protest strikes me as lost liberal behavior.
I didn’t say that to Dessalines.
@Nakoichi@hexbear.net that was actually to me. But even then, assuming I’m not already engaging in real-life activism to downplay the point I was making isn’t really a valid criticism of the point, but ig looking at other threads you seem to get that by now so it’s w/e really.
Relocating what would likely end up being hundreds of millions of people at once, or in any reasonable time-frame, doesn’t seem realistic imo.
Not only is it unrealistic it would lead to the death of millions. Millions of elderly and disabled people would just die from such a relocation.
Well luckily that isn’t what most indigenous people want but if they did that is not our place to disagree. Fuck your settler grandparents.
Also it’s very much actively going on and the current generation is totally involved.
There are people still alive who grew up in residential schools. There are even people alive who knew survivors of the Trail of Tears. The genocide of Native Americans really wasn’t that long ago and (like you said) still ongoing.
Obama forced an oil pipeline through indigenous land in what? 2014?