Chris, I sure like your anger, and I need to hear it. When the land acknowledgement thing started up, I wasn't sure how to respond. It has always felt hollow to me, most of what's on social media does, which is one reason I finally made my escape from every platform. Social media is a place where people can persuade themselves they have acted, when really, they have done nothing but scream, shame, and act concerned. That doesn't give me insight into what is right and good action, but I know that piling on hollow statement after hollow statement is utterly pointless. I want connection with real people. I want to talk--for real--about hard stuff and good stuff and worthwhile stuff. And, btw, reading your book made my life a little better for a while--hard, real and worthwhile. I loved it. I'm going to read it again.
Thank you, Naomi, for all of this. I look forward to having these conversations face to face. I prefer that too.
Social media stresses me out. I can't deny that it has been good to me in getting my work out to people. And I feel an obligation when someone pays me to do a workshop or something—like this upcoming Freeflow thing—to do everything I can to promote it. But as a tool for activism, whatever it does is negligible. I've learned a lot via Twitter from some brilliant people I follow. But real time, on the ground stuff, nope. I hear of actions days later. Or I spend a month like Indian Appreciation month or whatever getting lectured by people half my age whose only investment is that it's the flavor of the month for meme action. I still need to find some balance with it.
You know I'm ambivalent about social media and/but I often find good poems in my feed, which I value. This is not the same as meaningful political action, of course. I am isolated even in non-Covid times and aware that my existence is fairly segregated: the folks I see in daily life look a lot like me, even if we're not otherwise aligned, and so I've decided that I can follow folks I don't know--how would I ever meet them?--and this exposes me to other cultures, points of view, experiences, ways of life, and so on. This is worth something to me. I hardly ever comment or engage, though. And of course I only do this on IG. I have no use for the other platforms.
Yes, that's the best part of social media and what I enjoy when I don't let my own head get in the way. Because the reality for me is that I don't live around Indian people like me. You can count on basically one finger the only other Little Shell I feel deeply connected to, and my other Indian friends live far away. So it's really, really hard, and often incredibly lonely because I'm never face to face with someone seeing the world as I do.
That said, I do take great solace in some of my online friends. Like you, Holly, and your wonderful, soulful newsletters and the work you do. It's a gift. But I don't really consider you just an "online" friend because we've known each other face to face. I hope we can see each other again too, sooner than later. Truly.
I don't consider you only an "online" friend either and I sure look forward to when we back in a field surrounded by mountains and other in-the-flesh-folks of the kind that we'd want to talk and argue with (not the ones who inspire rage and exasperation).
I really appreciate your thoughts, Naomi. I've been considering the value of social media "actions". Petitions? Posts? Forwards? Then, of course, there's the bickering pwning that is considered debate anymore. None of it seems valuable. I don't think anyone's mind's been changed by a social media post at all. Like you said, it's where we can feel like we've done something good, and then go back to sleep.
IMO acknowledgement is necessary but not sufficient. As are small steps like recognizing nations and returning land (eg the Bison Range). It's obviously not my place to decide what *is* sufficient, but a blind man can see what is insufficient. They certainly should have done more at the inauguration.
In contemporary white America, we're struggling to get as far as virtue signaling, rather than the vice signaling we've been wallowing in.
The bison range being returned to the CSKT was huge, thanks for bringing that up. So was the water compact. Obviously the Little Shell's recognition was huge. We need more, though, obviously, as you say. I don't know if my opinion re: acknowledgements is a minority one in the Indigenous community or not. I suspect it depends on if the question is posed privately or publicly. They just fill me with rage, especially when they start wandering into the cybersphere.
The Bison Range should be a prototype of things to come. The recognition shouldn't have taken generations. Obviously a big deal for the people involved, but it terms of what we as a country should be doing, not even the least of it.
On the attitudes of acknowledgments, I had to write one for a non-profit. I had the idea that we shouldn't be using colonial names (we'd been given a text that the authorities of one Indigenous nation had signed off on -- it used the correct name for that nation, but colonial names for several others.) So I had to call around, looking for cultural directors and the like. Bemused politeness is what I'd call most reactions. All but one gave me a name, spelling, and had me repeat the pronunciation. The one was busy with other stuff, and didn't want to use her time with me. Which, yes.
Absolutely. The hole is pretty deep. We can try to stop digging it deeper, and maybe work towards filling it in. There's no way we get to level ground any time soon; but we can't let our inability to quickly/easily cure the inumable sins in our past demoralize us to the point where we don't even try. My six decades as a white person in America leads me to think that giving up, or worse, is a bigger danger than prematurely congratulating ourselves. (Not that we have cause for self-congratulation!)
I think cynicism lies in thinking we can only expect the little nudges here and there. Going big, going for the good stuff, that is what I'm for. Let it be the elected officials who quit on trying, we'll just go around or over them.
I totally get where you’re coming from re: land acknowledgements as hollow empty, virtue-signaling gestures. Still, on formal, public occasions (like city council meetings where they could do that instead of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance), I don’t think you can remind people enough that the foundation of this country was theft. Most land acknowledgements I hear, though, are too passively worded. They should also acknowledge the acts of violence that enabled the theft. Like Missoula area LA’s should mention the Hellgate Treaty and the bullshit coercion that underpinned it.
Aren't they renaming the Higgins Bridge to something related to the Salish once it's finished? I've always been frustrated that there is no public mention anywhere in Missoula that I know of to that part of our sordid history. Let alone that the exact same thing happened six years later to Métis and others who were rounded up for shipment to Canada.
I'd sure hate to have to endure a land acknowledgement while standing in the same room with that smug turd Jesse Ramos, though. Ugh.
Ha! That reminds me of a council meeting I went to where they had a motion to make a statement of solidarity with the Standing Rock protesters. It was supposed to be one of those unanimous consent motions but he asked for a roll call vote instead so he could vote "no." The only one. Also, I think I'm going to refer to Ramos as "Smug Turd" from here on out.
Thanks for the surprise shoutout Chris. One of the many frustrations of the "give Biden time" comments is how they derail discussion, which is what happened in that Twitter exchange - suddenly it's about Biden and not about the education offered by an incredibly well respected writer and teacher. It's a total whitewashing (and it took me two comments before I realized "hey wait a minute!") I only discovered Estes a few months ago and I really admire his work. I'll probably be adding Our History is the Future to my tall stack of reading soon!
Thanks for your anger Chris, so important to hear. During that entire ceremony I was wondering “where are the Indigenous Americans?”
The path forward is so overwhelming—there is so much wrong in this country! When I first heard an acknowledgement of “the land we stand on...” (a few years ago at a conference
in Colorado) I thought, wow, we’re finally getting somewhere. But now I hear it and I cringe. It’s like: well, the Blackfeet used to live here a long time ago but, too bad, they don’t anymore; we do. Pisses me off!
I so appreciate your writing. Thank you for all your words.
My main thoughts right now regarding Biden are simple: forward progress right now is simply turning away from the cliff we've been trying to fling ourselves off. True progress is a ways off. It's not helpful that there are many who feel that a Blue Congress and White House means there's no more work to be done.
I’ve been thinking a lot about being a good ancestor recently. The dominant culture is so focused on success for yourself, or self-actualization, that trying to think of being a good ancestor takes extra effort. But when I think of the grandparents whose characters and choices push me to be better, I realize that the examples of humanity they left me with was worth far more than any personal achievements.
This has been my biggest disappointment with the LST recognition: members "wanting theirs" rather than seeing it as an opportunity to create a better world for those who come after us. It has been very frustrating.
Maybe it just takes time for that worldview to come back to the fore. It's been repressed and oppressed and punished for so long. And for everyone on this continent, it's been at least a 100-year drumbeat, if not longer, of "get yours before anyone else takes it," which makes the concept of creating a better world for future generations as opposed to just piling up material wealth to pass on to them feel risky.
Exactly. Sometimes I hate doing it, but I try to focus on 30 years: "What do I want X to look like in 30 years?" and then think backwards to what I can do today, this week, next month, to help forward that vision.
Honestly, I think that's how people like the Koch brothers managed to mind-wipe this society about what really matters. They, and other groups, took the long view. But we can do that same to forward a better vision of the world, one that gives primacy to kinship and relationship, including with land and life. I want it *now* but if I can make it more possible for 3 or 4 generations down the line, I'll take that option over the status quo.
Speaking of land, I finished that book we were talking about and the response that comes most to mind is "unconscionable." Picked up N. Scott Momaday's "Earth Keepers" afterward and it was a good antidote.
It's more like poetry. I had to slow myself down and space it out because it's easy to read in like a minute but I feel like it might be the kind of thing to absorb a tiny bit at a time and then walk with.
This post and Estes’s book (which I am so glad you prompted me to read!) reminded me of Sherrie Mitchell speaking at Breton Woods: how can we say this society is post-colonial? There is no greater form of colonizaton than poisoning water and air.
Hi Chris - as a "Colonial" (or so i am constantly pushed to accept these days) i am overjoyed that the indigenous were instrumental in shutting down the Keystone XL. I am also an Albertan, by the way, a member of the community poised to be most economically compromised by this decision, one that not a few indigenous peoples up here are NOT happy about. They'd rather have the pipeline, factions of them. But hey, the entire machine age has been a disaster to the living planet. Good riddance to the Alberta oil industry, come what may. (Good riddance to the machine age, whenever that happens. It will.) These not my people for the most part anyway, these Albertans. Pretty sure i have no people. Scattered sympathetic individuals is as good as it gets.
Pertaining to "stolen land" on the this continent. I would really enjoy hearing an indigenous take - cleansed of rancor, of clouding emotion, a "just the facts" take - on this subject placed not in the accepted political context of our time, which is at least 50% emotion/outrage-driven, but rather in the full quiet context of history. For instance, I am native to what was once Attawondironk land, land of the "Neutrals." They were once the largest Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nation of the eastern woodlands, with permanent settlements of thousands in what is today southern Ontario. They were ended up slaughtered to extinction by other, genocidal Haudenosaunee nations. Their land not just taken, but made extinct as a people. A total genocide. Then how about Lakota? As recently as the earlier 19th century, while colonials were wrapping-up their stealing of land in the east, the Lakota were in a profound expansion phase on the plains. Where were they expanding to? Other indigenous lands, lands they stole, driving out the former occupants. Why were the Lakota on the plains in the first place? Their original lands were stolen from them, by the Ojibwe. How about the Comanche, rulers for hundreds of years of a vast southern plains empire known then as Comancheria? How did this empire come to be theirs? They stole these lands - from the Apache whom they drove remorselessly onto the most marginal desert wastes to sink or swim.
I am honestly not trying to inflame here, i am significantly on the indigenous side of things. I would like to know how they are so upset over this "stolen land" thing when the people who stole it were simply behaving as they had behaved not just for a few hundred, but for some 14,000 years, more or less. A standing policy of land theft, and if genocide was the cost, was there any sleep lost over this, by the Haudenosaunee say? We came here, we did just like you did only on a much larger scale, (and this also goes for exterminating the bison, a whole rich assemblage of other plains megafauna having already disappeared at indigenous hands long before the place got even a whif of a European colonial.) And you hate us for it. What about this double-standard? Where is the discussion here? Can we address this without losing it? I grant it's all profoundly inconvenient to the pure, black/white victim/oppressor narratives that are all the fashion right now.
Anyways, my guess is few of the current thieving occupiers of what was for a span the stolen lands occupied by various thieving indigenous bands are gonna give 'em all back to their most recent previous thieving occupiers any more willingly than the thieving Comanche were about to give up their stolen Comancheria. It's all water-under-the-bridge. I honestly don't think the divisive narratives of today are going to work for humanity, and that's what we all are now, just humanity. One people, like it not. Fact is, this continent was overpopulated by hunter-gather standards before the colonials got here, or why else was so much indigenous land-theft going on? It's now grotesquely overpopulated by ANY standards. We have oil to thank for that, so once again good-riddance to the Keystone. In the meantime how long do you suppose it will be before all these divisive narratives drive us to mass bloodshed again amongst our shared humanity? Seems to me when apprised of the record (and most are not apprised of it) we were ALL a bunch of rotten bastards through large swaths of the historic record. Even in this we share a common humantiy. Perhaps we should finally start behaving like it. We an all do better than this. That's my take, anyways. What say you on the subject? - Jon www.roughbeast.blog
I'm not an anthropologist, but there seems to be a lot of assigning "land ownership" in that kind of narrative to people who had an utterly different concept of territory. As for megafauna, last I read up on it no one really knows what happened. Yes, there is the blitzkrieg idea of human ancestors getting good weapons and wiping out entire species, yet there aren't the accompanying kill sites to support such widespread slaughter. And even bison were already on the wane from climate ebbs and flows at the period when post Civil War market hunters really got to work (which tends to inflate the numbers that were killed in that period rather markedly). It's all complicated and no one knows.
Understanding that race is a construct, yes, we are all one people. But we aren't all one culture. And that is what we risk losing with this homogenization via conquest and capitalism. The bottom line though, when it comes to North American genocide, Manifest Destiny and its current supporters took their best shot at us and they fucking failed. They didn't finish the job. We are still here. We will be reckoned with. Just because we — all BIPOC and working class folk — want what's coming to us, it doesn't mean we are going to treat the people who have had everything for generations the same way we have been treated. There is room to get along.
"The bottom line though, when it comes to North American genocide, Manifest Destiny and its current supporters took their best shot at us and they fucking failed. They didn't finish the job. We are still here. We will be reckoned with." Isn't this the truth.
I have this fantasy roaming around the plains that back when the powers that be left it to the remaining indigenous. And joined them unlike in the Black Hills etc etc etc in making it stick. And those remaining indigenous chose to do everything they could to stick to their ancestral ways. A simplistic fantasy of course, but imagine the TRUE diversity on this continent were this to have happened. We make a lot of noise here in Canada about cultural diversity. It's nonsense. What we have is bunch of skin-hues all expected to champion the same goals: nice house, cushy job, shiny car, generous retirement package, mix and repeat with the injection of 2 spawn, and most importantly, 'consumerism,' 'growth,' 'progress.' THAT's the officially accepted culture in Canada. A rainbow hue of humanity preferred so we can lie about how diverse we are.
I don't worry about getting along with the indigenous folks, i've always managed that were our paths have crossed in my former work, which was often and significantly. I just don't want to see new lies supplanting old ones. I want it to be remembered that at our core, all of us, is an indigenous person living an ancestral lifeway in concert with the land and the seasons. A fair subculture of white people still aspire to this. We do not consider ourselves the enemy, but we absolutely consider the culture we are embedded in to be the enemy.
I have no clue if one of the dreams of the indigenous today is to reassert old lifeways. I certainly hope it is. The last thing this world needs is a bunch more beige or brown people or whatever people serving the general modern rot as they willingly line up to do in Canada. I don't think there is room anymore for differing cultures. I think that is the fundamental problem. I think it was the problem in 1850. Long before that. We were out of space. This is crushingly more the case now than then. How this is dealt with - maybe we are seeing the beginnings of that now. Economic decay, pandemics.
Chris, I sure like your anger, and I need to hear it. When the land acknowledgement thing started up, I wasn't sure how to respond. It has always felt hollow to me, most of what's on social media does, which is one reason I finally made my escape from every platform. Social media is a place where people can persuade themselves they have acted, when really, they have done nothing but scream, shame, and act concerned. That doesn't give me insight into what is right and good action, but I know that piling on hollow statement after hollow statement is utterly pointless. I want connection with real people. I want to talk--for real--about hard stuff and good stuff and worthwhile stuff. And, btw, reading your book made my life a little better for a while--hard, real and worthwhile. I loved it. I'm going to read it again.
Thank you, Naomi, for all of this. I look forward to having these conversations face to face. I prefer that too.
Social media stresses me out. I can't deny that it has been good to me in getting my work out to people. And I feel an obligation when someone pays me to do a workshop or something—like this upcoming Freeflow thing—to do everything I can to promote it. But as a tool for activism, whatever it does is negligible. I've learned a lot via Twitter from some brilliant people I follow. But real time, on the ground stuff, nope. I hear of actions days later. Or I spend a month like Indian Appreciation month or whatever getting lectured by people half my age whose only investment is that it's the flavor of the month for meme action. I still need to find some balance with it.
You know I'm ambivalent about social media and/but I often find good poems in my feed, which I value. This is not the same as meaningful political action, of course. I am isolated even in non-Covid times and aware that my existence is fairly segregated: the folks I see in daily life look a lot like me, even if we're not otherwise aligned, and so I've decided that I can follow folks I don't know--how would I ever meet them?--and this exposes me to other cultures, points of view, experiences, ways of life, and so on. This is worth something to me. I hardly ever comment or engage, though. And of course I only do this on IG. I have no use for the other platforms.
Yes, that's the best part of social media and what I enjoy when I don't let my own head get in the way. Because the reality for me is that I don't live around Indian people like me. You can count on basically one finger the only other Little Shell I feel deeply connected to, and my other Indian friends live far away. So it's really, really hard, and often incredibly lonely because I'm never face to face with someone seeing the world as I do.
That said, I do take great solace in some of my online friends. Like you, Holly, and your wonderful, soulful newsletters and the work you do. It's a gift. But I don't really consider you just an "online" friend because we've known each other face to face. I hope we can see each other again too, sooner than later. Truly.
I don't consider you only an "online" friend either and I sure look forward to when we back in a field surrounded by mountains and other in-the-flesh-folks of the kind that we'd want to talk and argue with (not the ones who inspire rage and exasperation).
I really appreciate your thoughts, Naomi. I've been considering the value of social media "actions". Petitions? Posts? Forwards? Then, of course, there's the bickering pwning that is considered debate anymore. None of it seems valuable. I don't think anyone's mind's been changed by a social media post at all. Like you said, it's where we can feel like we've done something good, and then go back to sleep.
I love "pwning." So true.
Your honesty helps me be to want to be something more than a self-congratulatory progressive. I'll keep reading, you keep being honest.
Thank you, Laura.
I fucking love every word of this.
IMO acknowledgement is necessary but not sufficient. As are small steps like recognizing nations and returning land (eg the Bison Range). It's obviously not my place to decide what *is* sufficient, but a blind man can see what is insufficient. They certainly should have done more at the inauguration.
In contemporary white America, we're struggling to get as far as virtue signaling, rather than the vice signaling we've been wallowing in.
The bison range being returned to the CSKT was huge, thanks for bringing that up. So was the water compact. Obviously the Little Shell's recognition was huge. We need more, though, obviously, as you say. I don't know if my opinion re: acknowledgements is a minority one in the Indigenous community or not. I suspect it depends on if the question is posed privately or publicly. They just fill me with rage, especially when they start wandering into the cybersphere.
The Bison Range should be a prototype of things to come. The recognition shouldn't have taken generations. Obviously a big deal for the people involved, but it terms of what we as a country should be doing, not even the least of it.
On the attitudes of acknowledgments, I had to write one for a non-profit. I had the idea that we shouldn't be using colonial names (we'd been given a text that the authorities of one Indigenous nation had signed off on -- it used the correct name for that nation, but colonial names for several others.) So I had to call around, looking for cultural directors and the like. Bemused politeness is what I'd call most reactions. All but one gave me a name, spelling, and had me repeat the pronunciation. The one was busy with other stuff, and didn't want to use her time with me. Which, yes.
Good points, Charley. Important steps, but we (as a country) need to resist the urge to congratulate ourselves for how wonderful we are now.
Absolutely. The hole is pretty deep. We can try to stop digging it deeper, and maybe work towards filling it in. There's no way we get to level ground any time soon; but we can't let our inability to quickly/easily cure the inumable sins in our past demoralize us to the point where we don't even try. My six decades as a white person in America leads me to think that giving up, or worse, is a bigger danger than prematurely congratulating ourselves. (Not that we have cause for self-congratulation!)
I think cynicism lies in thinking we can only expect the little nudges here and there. Going big, going for the good stuff, that is what I'm for. Let it be the elected officials who quit on trying, we'll just go around or over them.
I'm planning on incorporating that analogy: now we've stopping digging the hole that's been dug for 400 years. Now we need to start crawling out.
I totally get where you’re coming from re: land acknowledgements as hollow empty, virtue-signaling gestures. Still, on formal, public occasions (like city council meetings where they could do that instead of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance), I don’t think you can remind people enough that the foundation of this country was theft. Most land acknowledgements I hear, though, are too passively worded. They should also acknowledge the acts of violence that enabled the theft. Like Missoula area LA’s should mention the Hellgate Treaty and the bullshit coercion that underpinned it.
Aren't they renaming the Higgins Bridge to something related to the Salish once it's finished? I've always been frustrated that there is no public mention anywhere in Missoula that I know of to that part of our sordid history. Let alone that the exact same thing happened six years later to Métis and others who were rounded up for shipment to Canada.
I'd sure hate to have to endure a land acknowledgement while standing in the same room with that smug turd Jesse Ramos, though. Ugh.
Ha! That reminds me of a council meeting I went to where they had a motion to make a statement of solidarity with the Standing Rock protesters. It was supposed to be one of those unanimous consent motions but he asked for a roll call vote instead so he could vote "no." The only one. Also, I think I'm going to refer to Ramos as "Smug Turd" from here on out.
Wandered away to read Nick Estes's TRN pamphlet and loved this line: "We make and steward the world together."
Great stuff.
Thanks for the surprise shoutout Chris. One of the many frustrations of the "give Biden time" comments is how they derail discussion, which is what happened in that Twitter exchange - suddenly it's about Biden and not about the education offered by an incredibly well respected writer and teacher. It's a total whitewashing (and it took me two comments before I realized "hey wait a minute!") I only discovered Estes a few months ago and I really admire his work. I'll probably be adding Our History is the Future to my tall stack of reading soon!
Your commenter lost me at "Bruh" which was his first word, heh.
Yeah that pissed me off.
Thanks for your anger Chris, so important to hear. During that entire ceremony I was wondering “where are the Indigenous Americans?”
The path forward is so overwhelming—there is so much wrong in this country! When I first heard an acknowledgement of “the land we stand on...” (a few years ago at a conference
in Colorado) I thought, wow, we’re finally getting somewhere. But now I hear it and I cringe. It’s like: well, the Blackfeet used to live here a long time ago but, too bad, they don’t anymore; we do. Pisses me off!
I so appreciate your writing. Thank you for all your words.
Thank you, Kim.
My main thoughts right now regarding Biden are simple: forward progress right now is simply turning away from the cliff we've been trying to fling ourselves off. True progress is a ways off. It's not helpful that there are many who feel that a Blue Congress and White House means there's no more work to be done.
I’ve been thinking a lot about being a good ancestor recently. The dominant culture is so focused on success for yourself, or self-actualization, that trying to think of being a good ancestor takes extra effort. But when I think of the grandparents whose characters and choices push me to be better, I realize that the examples of humanity they left me with was worth far more than any personal achievements.
This has been my biggest disappointment with the LST recognition: members "wanting theirs" rather than seeing it as an opportunity to create a better world for those who come after us. It has been very frustrating.
Maybe it just takes time for that worldview to come back to the fore. It's been repressed and oppressed and punished for so long. And for everyone on this continent, it's been at least a 100-year drumbeat, if not longer, of "get yours before anyone else takes it," which makes the concept of creating a better world for future generations as opposed to just piling up material wealth to pass on to them feel risky.
I think that is exactly it. It's hard to think in 50-100 year time frames, but we must. Provided we act now to ensure we even have that much time.
Exactly. Sometimes I hate doing it, but I try to focus on 30 years: "What do I want X to look like in 30 years?" and then think backwards to what I can do today, this week, next month, to help forward that vision.
Honestly, I think that's how people like the Koch brothers managed to mind-wipe this society about what really matters. They, and other groups, took the long view. But we can do that same to forward a better vision of the world, one that gives primacy to kinship and relationship, including with land and life. I want it *now* but if I can make it more possible for 3 or 4 generations down the line, I'll take that option over the status quo.
Speaking of land, I finished that book we were talking about and the response that comes most to mind is "unconscionable." Picked up N. Scott Momaday's "Earth Keepers" afterward and it was a good antidote.
I have Earth Keepers but haven't read it yet. Will do so soon!
It's more like poetry. I had to slow myself down and space it out because it's easy to read in like a minute but I feel like it might be the kind of thing to absorb a tiny bit at a time and then walk with.
This post and Estes’s book (which I am so glad you prompted me to read!) reminded me of Sherrie Mitchell speaking at Breton Woods: how can we say this society is post-colonial? There is no greater form of colonizaton than poisoning water and air.
Keep preaching. I’m here for it. Thanks for this post and for speaking truth into the public space.
Thank you, Holly.
Hi Chris - as a "Colonial" (or so i am constantly pushed to accept these days) i am overjoyed that the indigenous were instrumental in shutting down the Keystone XL. I am also an Albertan, by the way, a member of the community poised to be most economically compromised by this decision, one that not a few indigenous peoples up here are NOT happy about. They'd rather have the pipeline, factions of them. But hey, the entire machine age has been a disaster to the living planet. Good riddance to the Alberta oil industry, come what may. (Good riddance to the machine age, whenever that happens. It will.) These not my people for the most part anyway, these Albertans. Pretty sure i have no people. Scattered sympathetic individuals is as good as it gets.
Pertaining to "stolen land" on the this continent. I would really enjoy hearing an indigenous take - cleansed of rancor, of clouding emotion, a "just the facts" take - on this subject placed not in the accepted political context of our time, which is at least 50% emotion/outrage-driven, but rather in the full quiet context of history. For instance, I am native to what was once Attawondironk land, land of the "Neutrals." They were once the largest Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nation of the eastern woodlands, with permanent settlements of thousands in what is today southern Ontario. They were ended up slaughtered to extinction by other, genocidal Haudenosaunee nations. Their land not just taken, but made extinct as a people. A total genocide. Then how about Lakota? As recently as the earlier 19th century, while colonials were wrapping-up their stealing of land in the east, the Lakota were in a profound expansion phase on the plains. Where were they expanding to? Other indigenous lands, lands they stole, driving out the former occupants. Why were the Lakota on the plains in the first place? Their original lands were stolen from them, by the Ojibwe. How about the Comanche, rulers for hundreds of years of a vast southern plains empire known then as Comancheria? How did this empire come to be theirs? They stole these lands - from the Apache whom they drove remorselessly onto the most marginal desert wastes to sink or swim.
I am honestly not trying to inflame here, i am significantly on the indigenous side of things. I would like to know how they are so upset over this "stolen land" thing when the people who stole it were simply behaving as they had behaved not just for a few hundred, but for some 14,000 years, more or less. A standing policy of land theft, and if genocide was the cost, was there any sleep lost over this, by the Haudenosaunee say? We came here, we did just like you did only on a much larger scale, (and this also goes for exterminating the bison, a whole rich assemblage of other plains megafauna having already disappeared at indigenous hands long before the place got even a whif of a European colonial.) And you hate us for it. What about this double-standard? Where is the discussion here? Can we address this without losing it? I grant it's all profoundly inconvenient to the pure, black/white victim/oppressor narratives that are all the fashion right now.
Anyways, my guess is few of the current thieving occupiers of what was for a span the stolen lands occupied by various thieving indigenous bands are gonna give 'em all back to their most recent previous thieving occupiers any more willingly than the thieving Comanche were about to give up their stolen Comancheria. It's all water-under-the-bridge. I honestly don't think the divisive narratives of today are going to work for humanity, and that's what we all are now, just humanity. One people, like it not. Fact is, this continent was overpopulated by hunter-gather standards before the colonials got here, or why else was so much indigenous land-theft going on? It's now grotesquely overpopulated by ANY standards. We have oil to thank for that, so once again good-riddance to the Keystone. In the meantime how long do you suppose it will be before all these divisive narratives drive us to mass bloodshed again amongst our shared humanity? Seems to me when apprised of the record (and most are not apprised of it) we were ALL a bunch of rotten bastards through large swaths of the historic record. Even in this we share a common humantiy. Perhaps we should finally start behaving like it. We an all do better than this. That's my take, anyways. What say you on the subject? - Jon www.roughbeast.blog
I am also relying on "Scattered sympathetic individuals" as my human companions. Thanks for offer the question, above. Lots to think about.
I'm not an anthropologist, but there seems to be a lot of assigning "land ownership" in that kind of narrative to people who had an utterly different concept of territory. As for megafauna, last I read up on it no one really knows what happened. Yes, there is the blitzkrieg idea of human ancestors getting good weapons and wiping out entire species, yet there aren't the accompanying kill sites to support such widespread slaughter. And even bison were already on the wane from climate ebbs and flows at the period when post Civil War market hunters really got to work (which tends to inflate the numbers that were killed in that period rather markedly). It's all complicated and no one knows.
Understanding that race is a construct, yes, we are all one people. But we aren't all one culture. And that is what we risk losing with this homogenization via conquest and capitalism. The bottom line though, when it comes to North American genocide, Manifest Destiny and its current supporters took their best shot at us and they fucking failed. They didn't finish the job. We are still here. We will be reckoned with. Just because we — all BIPOC and working class folk — want what's coming to us, it doesn't mean we are going to treat the people who have had everything for generations the same way we have been treated. There is room to get along.
"The bottom line though, when it comes to North American genocide, Manifest Destiny and its current supporters took their best shot at us and they fucking failed. They didn't finish the job. We are still here. We will be reckoned with." Isn't this the truth.
I have this fantasy roaming around the plains that back when the powers that be left it to the remaining indigenous. And joined them unlike in the Black Hills etc etc etc in making it stick. And those remaining indigenous chose to do everything they could to stick to their ancestral ways. A simplistic fantasy of course, but imagine the TRUE diversity on this continent were this to have happened. We make a lot of noise here in Canada about cultural diversity. It's nonsense. What we have is bunch of skin-hues all expected to champion the same goals: nice house, cushy job, shiny car, generous retirement package, mix and repeat with the injection of 2 spawn, and most importantly, 'consumerism,' 'growth,' 'progress.' THAT's the officially accepted culture in Canada. A rainbow hue of humanity preferred so we can lie about how diverse we are.
I don't worry about getting along with the indigenous folks, i've always managed that were our paths have crossed in my former work, which was often and significantly. I just don't want to see new lies supplanting old ones. I want it to be remembered that at our core, all of us, is an indigenous person living an ancestral lifeway in concert with the land and the seasons. A fair subculture of white people still aspire to this. We do not consider ourselves the enemy, but we absolutely consider the culture we are embedded in to be the enemy.
I have no clue if one of the dreams of the indigenous today is to reassert old lifeways. I certainly hope it is. The last thing this world needs is a bunch more beige or brown people or whatever people serving the general modern rot as they willingly line up to do in Canada. I don't think there is room anymore for differing cultures. I think that is the fundamental problem. I think it was the problem in 1850. Long before that. We were out of space. This is crushingly more the case now than then. How this is dealt with - maybe we are seeing the beginnings of that now. Economic decay, pandemics.