Rev Left Radio - Settler Colonialism and Decolonization: A Communist Perspective

Episode Date: November 22, 2018

Andrea is Lakota, wíŋkte, a Marxist, and studies Hispanic Studies. Andrea joins Brett to discuss Settler Colonialism and Decolonization.  Find Andrea on Twitter @Andrea_Lakota Find Andrea's writings here: https://hinskehanska.wordpress.com Music for this episode, in order of appearance: R.E.D. by A Tribe Called Red Ft. Yasiin Bey and Black Bear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MD8IK19aec Warsongs by Savage FAMbam: https://soundcloud.com/savagefambam Resilient by Moch Man: https://soundcloud.com/moch-man Drums B4 The Battle by Cihuatl Ce: https://soundcloud.com/cihuatl-ce Which Side Are You On by Rebel Diaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSZWslqjfPE Go check out and support all of these wonderful artists!   ------------- NEW LOGO from BARB, a communist graphic design collective! You can find them on twitter or insta @Barbaradical. Please reach out to them if you are in need of any graphic design work for your leftist projects!  Intro music by Captain Planet. You can find and support his wonderful music here:  https://djcaptainplanet.bandcamp.com Please Rate and Review our show on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use. This dramatically helps increase our reach. Support the Show and get access to bonus content on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio Follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition, the Nebraska IWW, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center. Join the SRA here: https://www.socialistra.org/  

Confronted by the ally nation, alien nation, the subjects and the citizens, see the material religions through trauma and numb. Nothing is related. All the things of the earth and in the sky have energy to be exploited. even themselves, mining their spirits into souls sold, into nothing is sacred, not even their self, the ally nation, alien nation. The trial called Illuminares emergency on planet Earth. The currency is murder, you a man of worse. They say the day is coming, drumming that you can't reverse. Watch the ban of berm before the cannon burst.

Don't taste an illusion, the nation Hulusa, hallelujah, taste of the future, the people, the shower, the piss of the cow with the tracing the future. Lonely martyrs, magic carpets, dirty blankets, coca-cola, so control the holy waters. mode, sanglorious, cheat code in Babylonian, the Orient. My superhero got the people power. Yassine and Yassine, you should heed the hour. With you and living kings, I mean it, I mean, I mean, I mean. Yashina and Yassin in the R-E-B, I mean, I mean.

Original nation whip and solid that I'm in I'm in and I'm in Straight Jackie come playing y'all seen and you're seen In the R-E-3 Originalation rip and solid with it True and live it Hello, Hello, everyone back to

I'm your host and dedicated comrade Bred O'Shea and we have something very special for you today on quote-unquote Thanksgiving Day. We are dropping two episodes on the same day. They're both covering the topics of settler colonialism and decolonization, We have one episode from a communist-slash-Marxist perspective and one episode from an anarchist perspective. The reason we wanted to do this is to get a broad array of indigenous voices and perspectives coming at the topic from two different left-wing positions. So we really hope people enjoy this pretty unique episode release that we're doing today.

If you're listening to one of the episodes, you can definitely go check out the other one and vice versa. We've littered both episodes with indigenous music created by indigenous artists to have a more full-fledged aesthetic feel to both episodes. So we really hope you enjoy it. This is something very new, and we worked really hard on it. So any and all feedback, as always is welcome. And before we get into the episodes, I just wanted to make it known that I want to dedicate both of these episodes to Zachary Bear Hills. Zachary was a man from South Dakota, an indigenous man. He had mental illness and he traveled in a crisis moment to Omaha. His mother had called the Omaha Police Department telling them that she thought her son was coming to Omaha and that he was going

through a mental health breakdown and he just needed help. And instead, when the Omaha Police Department came across Zachary outside of a gas station, they brutally beat him, punching him over 13 times in the head and tasering him over 12 times, resulting in his death. So in memory of him and in solidarity with his family, we're humbly dedicating this episode to them. So rest in power, Zachary, we will not forget you. With that said, this is one of the two episodes we're releasing today with Andrea Peck on settler colonialism and decolonization from a communist perspective. My talk about Andrew Amachiya Pekh,

I'm a lot of the people, and weakhter, the wayokai. I'll ask you, I'll ask you, and I'm going to tell you. So, hi, Lakota, I'm going to Jee, or Muslal, and Ike et thong. I, I think you, that's what I'm atchita

South Dakota and Oklahoma are too. So, hi everybody. My name is Andrea. I'm Lakota, which is a people from the

Occhiti Shackoee Nation, which is a nation that now find the self-occupied by the states of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, and also the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan in Manitoba.

I'm also Winkte, and Winkbe is one of the four genders of Alchiti Shackoan people that is attempted to be, or has been attempted to be eliminated by the United States. And in university, I study Hispanic studies, and I look at colonialism, specifically colonialism in the Americas and how the history of the genocide of indigenous peoples and of slavery and the entirety of the continent has kind of affected the way that we view history and especially affected the culture of all these different peoples in the Americas. Yeah, well, I'm incredibly honored to have you on. There's lots of stuff in this interview that I think are very important for people to learn

about, including myself, so I'm kind of learning along with many of the listeners. I guess a good place to start is to talk about sort of how you identify politically. So how do you identify politically and how does your political tendency influence or mix with your Lakota nationality? And how does your nationality in turn influence and inform your politics? So I identify as a Marxist, but a Marxist with caveats. And the reason that I say that is because I think that Marxists generally have engaged with settler colonialism very well and have been engaged with its particularities very well. And so I have like a little bit of hesitation and completely saying that I'm a Marxist, you know, 100%.

But I am, I will completely say that I'm a communist. I will completely say that like I'm for the destruction of the U.S. and everything like that. And I think that that's an incredibly important thing for communists to work towards. is the destruction of the U.S. and the decolonization of the territory in which the U.S. finds itself right now. In regards to influences of politics and nationality and stuff like that, I think that Lakota philosophy has influenced a lot of the ways that I look at Marxism. I think notions of what motion is have really influenced kind of ways that I understand movement of capital and stuff. like that. And I think that my background helps me kind of see the United States and its true

form, which I think is one of the reasons why I, you know, took in such a staunch anti-capitalist and communist sort of view. Because as an indigenous person in the Americas, you can see the worst parts of capitalism, genocide, everything like that every day. And that really helps kind of push you in becoming a Marxist or an anarchist or whatever sort of far-left politics that somebody might be into. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll get more into some of the tensions between Marxism, anarchism, and this stuff in a little bit here.

But just sort of establishing the history still, can you talk about the history of the Oceti people? How long have they lived on this continent? And how did the arrival of colonialists from Europe affect them specifically? Yeah. So I have quite an extensive little history thing here that we'll go through that I'm going to try and get through pretty quick, but it might take a little bit of time. That's okay. So our histories have us being always from the Americas and being specifically from Hesapa, which is the Black Hills in English.

But otherwise, through like Western concepts of this, we've been here for 10,000 years. The Burroughs-Suan language started to develop around 1,500 BC, and then the Suen language family started to develop around 1,200 AD, give or take 300 years. A very important part of our history is 1684, the year 1684, because certain La Cota calendars have this as our first encounter with white people, mainly with French trappers and stuff like that. And there would be skirmishes with French trappers and other things for about the next hundred years. But the next really big event that happens is the War of 1812, where certain Lakota and Dakota people ally with the British against the United States and go in the fight in what is today, Ohio. But we start facing the same processes that other indigenous people more to the east

faced around the 1850s. And so in this time period, settlers finally start to arrive where our nation is. And we have in 1854 to 1856, the first Sioux War, where we have stuff like Minitrohwakbalaw Wichakhti, which is the Blue Water Creek massacre, in which 600 U.S. soldiers killed 86 Sishahu people. Sik Chahu people are one of the seven bands of Lakota people. Half of those 86 people that were killed were women and children. And they captured 70 more people, the majority of those people also being women and children, and they expelled them from the region. And this is kind of, this is what the history is going to be like for the next 50 years and also for the next 150 years.

So after this in 1862, we have more settler encroachment, which will result in the Dakota War. and what happens here is settlers start killing all of the animals around where we lived and they also take all of the land and so we started to starve because there was no food to be able to get. When we would go to settler cities to be able to get food, all of the settlers would turn us away because they just wanted us to starve so they would be able to take all of the land that we had. And so we started a war against the settlers just simply to be able to survive, to be able to get food to survive. And this war went on and eventually we lost. And 38 Dakota people were, 38 Dakota men warriors were executed.

And this is the largest legal mass execution in the history of the U.S. And it was signed by Abraham Lincoln. It was signed the same week of the Emancipation Proclamation. Eventually, a couple days after this execution, it happened. Settler doctors started digging through the graves of those people that were executed, and they took one person called Machpaia Khanaji, and they took him apart, and they looked through him in front of a whole bunch, like a whole room of doctors and everything like that.

his body wasn't returned to Dakota people until the 1990s, which I like to emphasize that because this man was opened up by a bunch of doctors and his body wasn't given back to us until the 90s, which is very, very important. But going back to what happened here, after the war ended, 1600 Dakota women and children and elders were forced into an internment camp, which was called Wita Tranka, which is Pike Island. 300 people died there, and eventually the government abrogated all treaties with Oceti Shackoing people, who lived in what would become the state of Minnesota and expelled all of us from Minnesota.

And if there were any, after the state, if there were any Lakota or Dakota people found in Minnesota, a $25 bounty was placed on the scalp of that person, and so a settler could kill that person, show their scalp to, you know, some sort of authority, and they would get $25 for it. So after this, you have about a 10-year period of a whole bunch of battles that happen and a whole bunch of wars that happen between the Ochipi-Shakuin Nation and the United States and the U.S. just keeps encroaching and encroaching and encroaching on settler land. It kills all of our food sources and everything like that.

example, when you see those pictures of, like, people standing on top of mountains and mountains of buffalo skulls, this wasn't just because they wanted to kill stuff, because they had fun hunting. This was an explicitly genocidal campaign to kill all food sources that belonged to Ochitishakoui people and also just planes people in general. Eventually, when we get to 1876 to 77, We have Regis, La Wakpaekta, which is the Battle of Little Bighorn, which is one of our most important victories in which we killed General Custer. But if the U.S. kept, you know, putting pressures and pressures on us throughout that time period. So they had, for example, a program that was called Cellar Starve, and this was during the Great Sioux War, in which they said, if we as a nation didn't give up, Chesapa, or the Black Hills, which is our most important spiritual place, it's basically the center

of our entire worldview. If we did not sell that to the United States, then we would not be given rations. And rations were very important for us because they were just killing all food sources. And so there was no ability to be able to eat. So after this happens, a year after this war. My great-grandmother was born, or rather my mother's great-grandmother, and she was born in 1878, and she lived until she was 104 years old. So she gave stories to my mother and my uncle about the blue coats invading our land, and that was, you know, the wording that she used. She talked about them invading, them killing, them doing whatever they wanted, and I'm only one person separated from this story, and my mother and uncle directly have these stories with them.

And so, like, again, this is not something that's very far away. This is recent history, and this is history that all the chikishakowing people still remember. We all have family stories of this. So we go forward a little bit more in time to 1890, 1891, and we have the Ghost Dance War, and we have Chankpe Owi Chakte, which is the Wounded Knee Massacre. And the Wounded Knee Massacre was a massacre of 90 Lakota men and 200 Lakota women and children in which the Army would just, the U.S. Army mowed down these people with Hachkiss guns. And it was an absolute slaughter. And everybody recognized it as a slaughter.

Even settlers saw this as like a horrible. thing that had happened. By this event, and the ending of the Ghost Dance War in 1891, would mean the closing of the frontier, which is kind of a really important event in U.S. history and in our history and the histories of all indigenous people. So seven years after this happens, the U.S. would invade Cuba and the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and it's important to realize how closely related these events are, there were people who were killing Occhetti Shackoan people and warring against the Occhiti Shackoan nation, who would then be invading Cuba in Puerto Rico and the Philippines. So after this, we have sort of allotments of land that are given out to

indigenous people. And what this was meant to do, and this happened beforehand too, but what this was meant to do is completely destroy the communistic kinship-based societies that Occhetti Shackoan people lived in. They wanted to give individual families plots of land so that they could farm them, and so those families would become white, and they would become productive members of a white capitalist society. It was very, very important for the government to be able to eliminate any sort of communistic society that Ocetti Shackoing people would have.

And you can look at different sort of documents from reservations in the 20s and 30s, saying how, like, we got to watch out because these Sioux people are communists. They're basically communists, and we need to teach them how to be white, or we're going to have a whole bunch of communists just sitting here in the middle of the country. And so what would then happen is, and again, this happened in the 1800s and up in the 1900s, is the boarding school system, which is a system that would steal, and this happened all throughout the country, steal indigenous kids, from their parents, put them into boarding schools, beat them for speaking their language,

beat them for practicing any traditional religious concepts, forcibly teach them Christianity, kill them in many instances. There was massive rates of sexual abuse, and there was also the elimination of Lakota systems of gender. So, for example, like I said, I'm winked, which is one of our traditional gender roles, and many winked people were beat or killed for being winked that. Many people hung themselves because of the abuse that they would face. And many people were rejected from communities that we used to be able to live in because of, you know, the influence of Western thought on Lakota people. So if we go now forward to the, like middle of the 1900s, 1948 to 62, the Oaxid Dam was constructed, which

flooded 200,000 acres of land on Rokwawash there, Yonke, and Ionoswaiyonga, which are the Cheyenne River Reservation and the Standing Rock Reservation. And people who were displaced by this event still haven't recovered from this today. And this event also took away some of the most fertile land on both reservations. And when the government made reservations, they particularly put them in land that wasn't fertile.

And so it took away a lot of the little fertile land that was already there. And then we go forward a little bit more. We have 1969, which is kind of the start of the American Indian movement. And so we have the occupation of Alcatraz for a year and a half, in which Occhetti Shakomian people, along with a whole bunch of other indigenous people, participated in the occupation of the closed Alcatraz prison, which is, it's a hilarious event if you read anything about it.

it. They justified it with the right of discovery, saying that indigenous people were already here, and so they just claimed land. And they wrote a whole bunch of ridiculous stuff all over the jail. It's a great event to be able to learn about. And then four years later, in 1973, we have the occupation of Wounded Knee, in which 200 Oglala people, which is a band of the cult of people, led by the American Indian movement, occupied Wounded Me. You know, this site which had this huge massacre happened there about 80 years beforehand. And so during this event, a U.S. marshal was shot and paralyzed because the O'Golala people brought arms with them, and eventually the U.S. brought in the marshal, the CIA, that's everything

like that, to stop this from happening. And so a marshal was shot and paralyzed, a Chalagi man, which is Cherokee, was shot in the head and killed during an exchange with the marshals. And then an Oglala man was shot and killed by a sniper. And at that point, the occupation ended. And again, this is in 1973. So my mother, you know, was alive during this event. And then 1978, we have the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. And this is basically just a rhetorical thing because indigenous people, we don't have. religious freedom in this country when the United States either occupies or destroys all of our holiest sites. But it took until 1978 for the U.S. to even rhetorically say that indigenous

people have religious freedom in the country, which is absolutely incredible given, you know, the rhetoric of the country saying that everybody's free to practice whatever religion and all that sort of garbage that the country says. And then finally, I've kind of covered my great-great-grandmother's life, down to my mother's life. During our lifetimes, we've had the No Dakota Access Pipeline Movement, which all happened on the Yomoslalha-on-Yonke on Standing Rock Reservation. And this is one of the most, I mean, I think that this is the most important Ocheti Shakomi active resistance since the occupation of wounded me. And I think that this event is really important because one, when I said that my great-great-grandmother told my uncle and

my uncle told me about blue coats invading our land and killing people and, you know, doing whatever they wanted to do, just committing genocide, however they felt like it. And when you look at pictures of police officers with rifles wearing camouflage and wearing helmets who are basically soldiers storming teepees of No Dakota Access Pipeline camps, this shows that functionally there is no separation between my great-great-grandmother's lifetime and my lifetime. Right. The same exact thing is happening.

We have continuous history, which shows that the U.S. doesn't give a shit about Lachit de Chakouin people or indigenous people, and it's really important to realize. that this stuff is still happening and how you have the U.S. now is labeling certain water protectors as domestic terrorists and is now

putting anti-terrorist sort of operations in Bismarck, North Dakota, which is obviously to fight against indigenous people who it finds to be a threat in its capitalist expansion of these oil pipelines so that it can

make all of this money off the oil and and use it to go overseas and bomb a whole bunch of countries overseas. And so that's the gist of our history showing that, you know, from all the way back in the mid-1800s, all the way to today, it's basically just been us trying to fight for our national sovereignty against the United States and against settlers who consistently try and kill us. Well, thank you for that history. Fascinating. You covered huge swaths of time and you did so in a really informative and fluid way. So thank you for that. I mean, it's fascinating and it's also horrifying. And, you know, talking about like Standing Rock, for example, you can't help but notice the utter brutality, even today, that the U.S. state cracks down on indigenous movements or black movements compared to movements that are predominantly, you know, led by white people, white progressives, white liberals. even white radicals. In the freezing weather conditions of Standing Rock, blasting people indiscriminately with water hoses laced with pepper spray, for example, just the brutality of it sticking attack dogs

on people. I mean, it really is this long history and nothing has changed. And that genocidal logic, right, that the very roots of U.S. imperialism and capitalism go back to the genocide of the Native Americans. And it's extended to the world today. We just did an episode on Vietnam for example. And that same rabid, imperial, genocidal project, it gets carried out on a global stage in the form of imperialism now. And, you know, it gets carried out against the environment in the form of climate change. There's a rotten root here. And every time I see, and we'll get into the illegitimacy of the U.S. state here in a little bit, but every time I see the U.S. flag flying or, you know, somebody call themselves a patriot or we're proud to be an American, this is what comes to my mind.

This is what the United States was founded on. This is what it's rooted. in and this is what it's still carrying out on the world to this day. the message embedded in the winds awakening these instincts pushing us to defense it's still an alert you just might learn to let it in heard the voices of the forces asking where the fuck you been she said she'll start the fire if you holding the spark said if we followed the breeze yo we could break from the dark if you've been haunted by dreams of clay bodies burned and charred that's a warning from ancestors always stay on guard now people still dying cause invaders still lying live

The solace our spin lights guided by profits and prices They got no ties to this land and all that lives they jeopardized it Through grated teeth they smiled corrupted and defiled the sacred such hatred for this untamable wild Since contact our survivals depended on their demise it's the final war cry though we act as surprise The earth is asking us to ride that we gonna answer the call Rout together by the moonlight we're scheming for the fall We see the moon see the moon when we go outside we sing a war songs and load our heat up because they ain't going away unless we make them leave.

We see the sun, see the sun when we go outside. We sing our war songs and load our heat up. We sing your songs and load your heat. That's the awakening. We see the storm, see the storm when we go outside. So sing your war songs and load your heat up. I was born in an era where everyone is embarrassed of what our ancestors cherished.

There was never a comparison. Native, not American. My kids know the hidden truth. Digging roots that will feel. forgetting so we live in proof of those who were told to but didn't move chose to get rid of but they rose to the ridicule chosen by old ones i owe them a debtor to the war isn't over and no we can never lose we with the fools dancing in the river bags singing songs of a story that never rins resisting our culture can live again a culture so close to what's most you forget existed but listen to a truth that isn't often heard We'll call the Thunderbird I watch it watch the earth And what a murder is on the other side

As life is it was meant to be lived Since it was prophesized I do want to move to the lives And you kind of gave this This broad history leading up to today So in the discussions that we had when we were planning this episode together, you said that the vast majority of the left,

especially in settler states like the U.S., don't really understand how settler colonialism affects the everyday lives of colonized people. So why does the left have this huge blind spot, in your opinion? And can you talk about how settler colonialism affects the daily lives of colonized people? Yeah, so from about 1954 to the early 60s, the French Communist Party completely supported

the Union Francaise, the French Union, which was this colonial idea of France to have one single centralized French state in, of course, metropolitan France, overseas in the America and the Caribbean, in Pacifica, and then also in its, you know, vast, vast colonies in Africa. And the French Communist Party supported a lot of repressive tactics against Algerians, you know, indigenous people, in this part of the world. And the reason for this is because people benefit materially from this. And I think this is why a lot of leftists have a blind spot to settler colonialism, or in the France, or in the case of France, settler colonialism in Algeria and colonialism in general across Africa and other places in the French Empire. There's such a strong

material benefit that you kind of don't want to interact with it because you're going to lose a lot, just like how someone who's bourgeois is not going to want to say that communism is right. Even if they recognize how unstable capitalism is, they gain a lot from it. And it's very important to be, in this sense, sort of a race trader, you know? And in the sense that we talk about class traders, where you need to see what the history is and understand that even though you're benefiting from something, that doesn't mean that it's right. In regards to how, you know, settler colonialism affects people today, I think it's very important to say that genocide is not in the past. We live genocide right now. And so there's two different

colonized people in the Americas, there's Africans that live in the Americas, and then there's indigenous people. So for Africans, the biggest effect that settler colonialism has, I think, is the prison industrial complex, which is a complex of slavery that has produced so much trauma because of the policing and communities, because the open ability of police to just kill people with no repercussions and because of the damage that prison slavery causes in just taking away huge amounts of people from their communities, you know. And then there's a whole bunch of historical trauma from all past systems of oppression that African people have faced in the U.S. In regards to indigenous people, I have some statistics

primarily on Pine Ridge Reservation, which is a Lakota Reservation. And then I have some general ones. So Pine Ridge Reservation has the lowest life expectancy of anywhere in the Americas. It has a lower life expectancy. In the center of the United States, this is where people live least. So this is something very important to understand. In Pine Ridge, teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than normal. Diabetes is 800% higher than normal.

Tuberculosis is also 800% higher than normal. Cervical cancer rates are 500% higher than normal. Healthcare is atrocious. I mean, you know, there's Indian Health Services, but that really isn't anything. The dropout rate from high school is 70%. There's an 800% teacher turnover rate in high schools. People are forced to live in HUD housing, which is atrocious government housing. There's usually generally 17 people per home with a home having two to three rooms normally.

33% of homes lack basic water. People still die from hypothermia, which is incredible. 39% of homes exist without electricity. And there's massive amounts of contaminated wells and land due to different mining projects and stuff like that around. the reservation or in the reservation and you know that there's no like emergency federal funds there was just i forget how long this was ago i think it was a couple months ago some tornadoes came through pine rich and they tried to get FEMA funds to be able to rebuild and they got nothing the government wouldn't give them anything and this is just specific to one single reservation

right there's hundreds of reservations throughout the u.s and these kind of statistics can be applied more or less at differing rates to different reservations. We also have, in a more general sense, it's really important to talk about missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, which is a problem that very much affects indigenous communities, both in the U.S. and in Canada and in other places throughout the world. So murder rates for indigenous women are 10 times average, 84% of indigenous women experience violence at some point in their life. 56% are survivors of sexual violence, and 90% of this violence is committed by white men, which is really important. For just the city of Seattle, 94% of indigenous women living in

Seattle are rape survivors. Wow. 81% of them have been raped before they were 18, and 53% of them live without secure housing, you know, in what is thought to be, you know, this great liberal city with a whole bunch of money, you know, and it somehow thought that this part of the country is free from racism and stuff like that. every single part of the U.S. is a settler hellhole, and it affects us in a myriad of ways. And it's very, very, very painful for this stuff to happen because you ask any indigenous person and somebody knows somebody that this has happened to. We're faced with a very serious situation in this generation. There are people who wish to rule the world. They wish to continue to rule the world on violence and repression.

we are all the victims of that violence and repression. We as the indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere have been resisting this violence and this oppression for 500 years. Yeah. I put on for my nation, that's an obvious fact. They'd be like, listen to this cat is bringing hip hop back. But I be riding for the wars who be riding for me.

We out here fighting for clean water to drink, the freedom of speech, the freedom to teach, but freedom to reach when it comes with no peace of mind. I'm feeling the pain behind 500 years of genocide That's what happened to our people PTSD It's a real thing

Embed it in our blood Embed it in our brains We never had a chance Still fighting till this day So fuck the government And all the presidents They never showed us love They taught us how to hate

In the name of the Lord for goodness sake Kill the savage save the man Man was their motto. Here you go. Have a drink out these bottles. And here's a couple blankets. I know you're kinda cold. And while we're at it, we'll kill all the buffalo.

And starve your people cause we're evil like that. Put you on this reservation, take the land. But we apologize. I hope you understand. We're doing this in the name of progress for the men. And it's a damn shame. My people being geared to play like. Get it played like a dead game

And I don't know if you really comprehend the truth Of how this nation came to be And what they put us through But we continue to strive Our culture staying alive I stay humble aside You can see in my eyes Determination of will

Because it's realin the field of play And they play With our lives like it's a dead game Hmm Now that's the damn shame We're faced with a very serious situation in this generation. There are people who wish to rule the world. They wish to continue to rule the world on violence and repression.

And we are all the victims of that violence and repression. We as the indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere have been resisting this violence and this oppression for 500 years. And I don't know if they really comprehend the truth of how this nation can to be. She came to be in what they put us through But we continue to strive I hope staying alive I stay humble aside

You can see in my eyes Determination to real Because it's real in the field of play And you play with our lives Like it's a damn game Hmm Now that's the damn shame You know I just made the first time

I've ever been to Seattle was a couple months ago, I went up there, and I saw that exact thing that you're sort of gesturing towards, which is this facade of progressivism, but underneath it is this ugly, neoliberal hellhole of racism and poverty and inequality. And that facade, that liberal facade, really acts as a cover for that. And the whole world, and especially people in the United States, sort of see Seattle in places like it as these like, oh, well, maybe that's like something that we can aim towards, but it is a false promise and it is an extension of the white supremacist settler colonial state 100%. I live six hours from the Pine Ridge Reservation

and I've driven, you know, through it on my way to Montana. I used to live in Montana. I lived off the edge of the Crow Reservation. So while I'm a white man, I've never had direct experience with this stuff, I have, you know, seen it up close and personal. And my personal experience, what little of it I have absolutely reinforces what you just said. And it's, it's fucking incredibly heartbreaking, especially the sexual assault and rape statistics and the way that that unfolds on indigenous land is it's beyond words really you know that the concept of a race trader the first time i heard that i had an indigenous mentor who really helped radicalize me when i was when i was much younger and that was one of the things that he would always tell me as well to be on the left and to really care about

these issues is to realize that you benefit from it and and what that means in the same way as you said like being a class traitor what we need is is race traders people that push back on that or at least are willing to give up what they've gotten from those, you know, that horrific history. But I do want to talk about the legitimacy of the U.S. state and we definitely live in a world where the United States is seen as a legitimate state by virtually everyone on the planet, even hostile nations and many leftist radicals living inside the confines of the state. We just had the midterm elections, for example, and every position that asserts to any degree that electoralism is a viable path to liberation assumes the premise, whether consciously or not,

that the United States is legitimate and that its institutions and electoral apparatuses are not only valid in and of themselves, but can actually act as pathways towards a more just and equitable society. So why is the United States illegitimate? And what does that mean for leftists who actually care about overcoming settler colonialism and want to help our indigenous comrades in their struggle for true sovereignty and liberation? The United States, rather obviously, through all the things that I've said, is illegitimate because all of the land is stolen. And you can't build a legitimate state on stolen land.

Just like I said in relation to, you know, the French Communist Party, just because there were French people in Algeria, that doesn't mean that their state is legitimate. And just like how there are Israelis in Palestine that doesn't make Israel legitimate. A lot of people think, and this is one of the important differences between the U.S. and Israel, Israel, one of the similarities is that both of these are settler colonial states, and they function with a lot of the same logics that settler colonial states function. The biggest difference between the U.S. and Israel, though, is that the U.S. is a post-frontier state. You know, when the ghost dance war ended, the frontier ended. Israel is not in that post-frontier place. it wants to get there

and as long as Israel exists it will try to eliminate the state of Palestine but it's not there the reason I say this is because leftists and I think the vast majority of leftists although not all of them unfortunately see Israel is illegitimate

like it's really obvious to see because it happened you know not that long ago that Israel sort of popped up out of nowhere and it's expelled all of these people and it constantly, it has this constant genocidal campaign against Palestinian people.

But since people live in the U.S., and like I said, they benefit from things, they don't recognize that the United States has done the same things and does the same things. And that because of these processes, the U.S. is illegitimate. So we have this part of it. And then to work against and overcome settler colonialism, it means recognizing the illegitimacy of the U.S. and working and organizing against the United States or any further forms of the United States, which is to say the vast majority of indigenous people do not want a USSA, you know?

Right. None of us want some sort of society where, for some reason, the U.S. still holds all of the stolen territory that it's taken. Instead, we want to see the establishment of African and indigenous states. within what is now the U.S. And it's very important for, you know, leftists and especially settler leftists to organize for this. If they want to help indigenous and African people have actual sovereignty and liberation within, you know, the nation that we live in now. So part of the overthrowing of the capitalist imperial U.S. state is the breaking down of it to individual nation states inside of the current borders that are completely sovereign and run by indigenous people or African people. people depending on parts of the country. That's correct. That's the sort of goal that leftists should

be keeping in mind as opposed to this USSR style takeover of the U.S. state apparatus and the building up of a socialist project that still maintains settler colonial territory. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. And it also means, you know, the working together, for example, of leftists in the U.S. and Canada because of course these two settler entities which are functionally the same thing they're all part of like this northern block of settler colonialism have divided indigenous nations and you know there are certain people who live in sort of these border communities who have to travel back and forth between the u.s and Canada and the same thing happens between the u.s and Mexico to be able to visit you know sacred sites and other things like that and then

So, yes, it's really important to break up the U.S., but it's also important to have this more international context to be able to break up all of the states around that have so thoroughly oppressed indigenous people. Yeah, I wonder if the, you know, because we're against the clock in a way that people have never been with regards to climate change. So I wonder if that's sort of breaking down of the U.S. or the Canadian state will almost be like an inevitable outcome of, environmental catastrophe, you know, the outcomes, the logical outcome of climate change in 20, 40, 50 years or an economic collapse. I don't really see us having the time to be able to create a political project that starts to break these things down in a conscious way. I almost see like the reality is that things are just going to break down because the logic of capitalism has hit its limits and now it's starting to devour its own tail and economic and environmental catastrophes pile up one-on-one, that this may be the sort of clearing of the that we only have left, like we almost have no other option. What do you think about that outlook? Is that too pessimistic or dark? Or what do you think? No, I completely agree. I think a couple things. First is that I think the only reason that the U.S. and Canada have, especially the U.S., has stayed together as one single unit, is because there's one logic that is behind

the whole country, which is settler colonialism and white supremacy. If you take away white supremacy from the country. What do people have? Like, what does someone in Maine have in common with someone from California? There's nothing. I think the country would just naturally start to, you know, dissolve, or not dissolve in the communist state, but start to break up. And I completely agree with the climate change thing. And it's also something that I think leftists have to keep in mind, because it's something that's affected indigenous people for the last 40 years, 40-50-ish years, because you have people who live up in Alaska and in Canada who have seen the effects of this right there.

And when climate change starts to accelerate, it means that, you know, different land will become arable. Different land will be more ripe for settlement. And there will continue to be a settler colonial project in places that right now settlers don't want to go to, like certain places in Alaska and stuff like that, of places where indigenous people still live. And so I think, yeah, being able, I think climate change very much helps the acceleration

of this destruction of the U.S., but, you know, and I'm sure you agree with this, it doesn't, it doesn't mean that communism is going to come. Right, right. It's not an assurance of communism, which is something that, you know, constantly needs to be strived for. And the fight against settler colonialism so that we don't have settler colonialism, where, you know, a quote-unquote communist society starts to settle, you know, these new places that have been affected by climate change. Right. 100%.

The drums, the rhythms, the battle. Imagine the collapse of the system. Imagine the collapse of the system. Imagine the collapse of the system. Imagine your spirit free risk and a lot with no pain, no slaves, no slaves, no system. sickness, liberated from your minds up and post-prison. Imagine transcending the matrix and finding truism. Imagine the visions.

The drums, the rattles, the rhythms, the battle, the conviction. Whole nations united are tribes where they fist up, ready to unleash the warrior that seeps within them. Can you imagine it? The drums, the rattles, the rhythms are battle. Imagine the collapse of the system. Imagine the wind, the rain, the thunder, the ocean, the waves, whole cities drawn under the fire, the flames, the earth's mother's hunger. Imagine the chaos that leaves us trade humble.

Imagine the struggle. No running water, no valley winia dala, no modern comforts. Who will survive, who will suffer? Once hunted, we become the hunters. Training in the hills, from the projects to the res, to the jungles. Be still for a minute now and listen to the spirit of indigenous resistance. resistance how to kill quickly accurately efficiently it will become a reflex action you will learn how to enter a combat zone and evaporate into shadow

we'll learn how to survive or you will not the drums the rattles the rhythms of battle imagine the collapse of the system if you seditious put your fist up Put your fist up, put your mother-loving fist up. In the spirit of indigenous resistance, the drums, the rattles, the rhythms are battle. The drums, the rattles, the rhythms are battle. Imagine the collapse of the system. I think the prelude to all of this, like what we need to start doing now, is forging those connections between leftist organizations, indigenous organizations,

African-American organizations, starting to see how much solidarity we can build, between these movements and these communities so that when climate change starts to increasingly wreak its havoc, that we have some of these connections in place that we can begin to build on and be informed by, you know, leftist organizations that are disconnected entirely from the indigenous community are almost by just force of momentum going to replicate the settler colonial mindset that we've all sort of been raised in. And so the only way to prevent that, I think, is by forging those connections. But at the same time, you can't blame our indigenous comrades for being a little skeptical of white leftists trying to come into

their communities or forge connections with them because you're always sort of wondering, well, you know, how far are you willing to really push this? How far can we really trust you given the history of the, you know, betrayal and slaughter and genocide? So it's very difficult, but I really do think that those connections being formed now are essential to sort of being able to survive in this, unfortunately, climate dystopia that we're looking at right now. So settler colonialism is, as you've argued, the economic base from which white supremacy was created and in which it is maintained. This connection manifests in a myriad of different ways from genocide and slavery to brutal imperialism abroad to domestic fascist movements themselves. So with that in mind, can you talk about your thoughts on fascism in settler colonial states and how to fight the specific manifestation of white supremacy?

Yeah. So something that I think is really important to understand when we look at fascism and something that I think a lot of leftists get wrong is leftists, especially here in the U.S., when we speak about fascism, it's sort of a synonym for Nazism. And so we look over to Nazi Germany to understand what fascism is. And this is not the right thing to do because fascism is built out of settler colonialism. So for example, fascism does not exist without the racial science that was built in the United States and in the Americas at large. You know, Hitler's entire plan of Leibn's home that would not have existed without Manifest Destiny. You know, Hitler said that Manifest Destiny was one of the most amazing things to have ever happened and that it's a great goal for the Nazi German state to be able to follow, and then finally you have this sort of terror by fascists that you see against workers and stuff like that in Nazi Germany. And of course against all of the groups that were attacked by the Nazi German state, this again is something that we can see in the

United States of terror by the KKK, terror by the army when it was going through and invading different indigenous nations, terror by just normal settlers who had the ability to just go and kill whoever they wanted because they wanted the land. These are all of the things that created fascism, and they're all in U.S. history. I think to be able to understand how to fight fascism, of course it's important to a certain extent to look to Nazi Germany, because a lot of new things happened there, but we have to look to the U.S. and we have to understand how settler colonialism works in the U.S. and see how throughout history people have fought against fascism here, because there's been plenty of examples of indigenous people and of African

people, for example, fighting against the KKK. We have lots of history of that, of indigenous people fighting against settlers that are trying to steal land. To understand our own history is to be able to understand fascism. And when we theorize our own history, we can understand how to better work against settler colonialism and sort of its fascistic manifestations here. That's the way in which we know best how to be able to fight it where we live. Yeah, fascinating and incredibly important to sort of, you know, bring in that concept of setter colonialism as a foundation for fascism. And, you know, we're talking about looking to Nazi Germany to understand fascism. But as you alluded to, Nazi Germany looked to the U.S. when it was putting together its plans.

It was looking at U.S. is racism. It's Jim Crow South. It's history of genocide. And it was, you know, looking at the U.S. admirably and taking lessons from the U.S. Hitler and the Nazis did this. So there's literally historical evidence of the biggest fascist movement in the world, Nazi Germany, looking to the U.S. as one of its primary influences on how to carry out its fascist project. Now, I do want to loop back around as I promised earlier to talk about Marxism and anarchism.

And there are many indigenous people that I've met in my life, indigenous radicals, who when they got involved in far-left politics, they do sort of, at least in my experience, tended toward anarchism, I think in part because of the history of nation states and the havoc and brutality they brought down on indigenous people historically. So why do you still maintain a Marxist approach to the state? And what implications does that have with regards to indigenous movements for liberation, in your opinion? The reason I stay with the Marxist definition of the state is I think all of the sort of traditional things that Marxists think, like if you read state and revolution, I very much agree with everything said in that text. And I know you already had an episode with that.

And so you understand that and people can go and listen to that and sort of understand that foundational part of it. In relation to indigenous people, I think the state itself is very, very key to destroy white supremacy and to destroy whiteness. And to say to destroy whiteness, just in case there's anybody out there who thinks this does not mean white genocide. It means to fight against the benefits that white people have had, the material benefits that white people have had, through enforcing, you know, settler colonialism on territory. And I don't think that the decentralization of anarchism is really fit to be able to fight something that is, depending on where you live, 400 to 200 years old, and it's just firmly, firmly ingrained into everybody's minds.

And, you know, the necessity to be able to decolonization, something like gender, for example. I don't think that that's something that can be done without a state to be able to help that along. And, you know, I think it's just necessary to have a wider structure, a more centralized structure, to be able to kind of swat away these things that have been put into us for so long. I don't think they're things that can immediately just be abolished, just like the state itself has to wither away. And it takes time to do that. And so the state is very necessary to be able to throw all those things away. Yeah. And when we're talking about the breaking up of the U.S. and having sovereign

territories handed over to indigenous comrades, there will be, I mean, in your sort of approach to things, you think that that's sort of centralization and the control over their own territories and the form of the Marxist approach to the state is an important part of that. Would you agree? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the idea. of it is, I think a state is necessary because I'm thinking of indigenous and African states, right? For example, if we just take something like English, I think English is something that should be just completely eliminated from the continent, because I think it's kind of erased the ways that we think through being forced to speak English. To be able, for example, in the

Ocheti Shakoi Nation, to be able to teach people like Khotiyapi instead of English is something that only a state can do. Because in this part of the world, indigenous people are a minority. And so I don't think that if you don't have this sort of centralized structure, that settlers would just give up, even if they are, you know, quote unquote leftist and everything like that, I don't think they would give up all of these benefits that they've had and all these privileges that they've had through settler colonialism. So it's necessary for indigenous in African states to exist, to be able to convince people that this is the right thing to do and to lead those efforts, to destroy all these problematic things that come with settler colonialism.

Yeah, I agree, and that was very, very well said. So the last question that I have for you today is this question about decolonialization. There's a lot of talk on the left these days about that. The word is brought up a lot. Sometimes, though, especially when it's uttered by settler leftist, it can feel kind of like an empty slogan. Beyond that, there's a lot of confusion about what exactly decolonialism is and what it means for our movements. We've touched on some of that in this discussion so far, but can you talk about what people get wrong about decolonialism and what it actually is and why it's

essential for any movement that aims toward liberation? Yeah, so decolonization, to say what it isn't, first, decolonization isn't white genocide. Decolonization isn't making the reservation bigger, and this is kind of, you know, the idea of we're going to have a U.S.S.A, but guess what? We're going to expand your reservation by however many square miles. And so now you have a little bit more land, but you're still under the control of the U.S. state. So it's not that decolonization is not white-led revolution. Decolonization isn't giving the land back, which what I mean by this is you can read some party plans of certain parties in the U.S. and they'll say that indigenous people have the right to full independence if they want it.

The problem with this is we don't, that that says that the state actually has the right to the land. You know, the white supremacist communist state has the right to the land. And if we want, it will give us the land. No, how it works is we take the land and there's no giving up of the land by anybody. And, you know, this goes along with the same thing of, I don't trust this U.S.S.A, for example, to actually give up indigenous land if it were to discover a resource that the state thought was necessary for some reason. I think it would instantly start re-implementing settler colonialism if the indigenous people were to say, or the African people were to say, you're not allowed to have this resource. So these are all the things that decolonization isn't. And then the other thing is that, so there's this kind of misunderstanding around the words decolonialism, decolonization, and decoloniality.

So decolonialism isn't much of a thing in the actual literature talking about these sort of things. It's sort of a term that's come up recently, and I don't really know where it's come from. but it kind of just means to be against colonialism. It doesn't say much. And it runs the gambit from people saying, we need to make the reservation bigger to people saying the U.S. needs to be destroyed. So it doesn't really give us a good understanding

of what we're talking about. Decolonization and decoloniality are found in the literatures. Decolonization means basically the taking back of the land itself. And so decolonization is this sort of stuff we're talking about of establishment of indigenous states, indigenous and African states having their own rights over the land that they have, and, you know, the eventual withering away of the state and that sort of collective ownership of land that has been decolonized. We've kind of gotten rid of the category of the settler. There's no more material way that settlers exist anymore. And so decolonized. Colonization is this whole sort of program that looks to have indigenous people and African people take back their land and to eliminate categories such as settler and eliminate whiteness and all that sort of stuff. It's like a, it's like a process whereas decolonialism is like the ism is just like a static position that really doesn't mean anything where decolonization is this process by which this this thing can come about. Yeah. And then there's also decoloniality, which is something that's really important. It's kind of what. we've talked about with decolonization, but it's also the overthrow of Western epistemological

stances and Western ontological structures. I think all of the philosophy students in the U.S. that I've ever talked to, not one of them have been able to explain a single concept of indigenous philosophy to me. Not a single word, not anything, nothing at all, right? And this is part of settler colonialism to try to eliminate, for example, systems of philosophy, along with, you know, systems of gender and other systems of thought. I mean, it goes, settler colonialism is deep in our lives, right? I mean, this attaches to, like, systems of architecture and stuff like that. Aesthetics? Yeah, aesthetics. And, I mean, everything that we see, how you relate to nature is another one. just all of these really big sections of thought

have all been westernized in this continent and that's what we're sort of forced to think. So decoloniality is throwing away these Western epistemological, ontological structures, the gender structures, philosophical structures, all of these sort of things so that the indigenous philosophy to here is allowed to actually thrive, actually exist, and isn't suppressed like we see it in

academia and just in daily life in general. Yeah, fascinating as somebody who went through, like, I have a degree in philosophy and I have some grad school experience in philosophy. Everything you say is 100% correct. I was never taught any of that. I could not give a coherent answer to that question either, and that really speaks to the way that it infects academia and the intellectual strata. you know, the intellectual class, if you will, of a, you know, settler colonial society is just

steeped in it. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for tackling all these questions. I've learned a lot just by listening to you. And it's really important that more people hear this and really these ideas take hold on the left because I have the same feeling that if they don't, if this dialogue doesn't occur, then exactly what you say is going to happen in the face of a successful socialist or communist revolution here. If these issues aren't wrestled with and aren't taken very, very, very seriously and internalized to the core of our program of liberation, then we will just replicate those structures of domination instead of colonialism. And that is not liberation.

That is not progress. That's just replicating domination and the very things that we're trying to overthrow. So thank you so much for coming on before I let you go. Where can listeners learn more about anything we've discussed today and where can they find you online? Yeah. So they can find me on Twitter at Andrea underscore. Dakota, which is basically a lot of shit posting. You're not going to find much interesting stuff there. But if you go to my page, I have a blog there, which you can go to, and that

talks about more serious stuff. I have a couple things on decolonization of gender and stuff like that. On the blog, I really, gender is something really important to me, and so I write about that a lot on that blog. And then there's some book recommendations that I think, that people should read. I think one of the most important books that people should read is called Traces of History by Patrick Wolfe. And this, you know, it explains what settler colonialism is and the creation of race within the United States and then also within Australia, Brazil, and Israel. And so it really kind of links these things in together for all of the the settler colonial states that exist. Of course, it misses stuff like Canada and New Zealand and

stuff like that, but it brings a real internationalist approach so you can see how, for example, the British Empire has influenced a lot of different countries and our histories and how we think about race and everything like that. I also think that people should check out the book Spaces Between Us, Queer Settler Colonialism, and that book talks a lot about gender and the importance of understanding gender in the U.S. And I think that's about it. Those are the most important ones, in my opinion. Thank you so much for coming on.

Keep up the great work. I'll link to all of that in the show notes, and hopefully we can collaborate again in the future. Okay, thanks for having me here. I'd be excited to collaborate and talk on gender and stuff like that. Absolutely. All right, have a good one. You too.

See, before I draw the line, let me welcome you close to all the folks who knew Obama so the people a hoax. Gave the money to suckers. Still poor withdrew the troops but started another war colonizing terrorizing We ain't in the oil crisis so they can make a killer no food and gas prices Prisons and spilling they try to lock up the future militarized borders and control of computers Want a stupid bumping music that ain't healthy for the shortest Carotizing schools and policemen in the hall is can't be dormant our work and rise up be ready brought the family with us and we hold the machetes

Riding the fence riding the fence too many people be riding the fence yeah you say you're You ready for war, but are you convinced? I'm not convinced. If you're a ride of freedom fighter, crowd excited, then let's do this. We can make one big united, middle finger to the U.S. Give me the bravest and the truest. Fuck the hippest and the coolest. We're going to spark this revolution and cross this off our to do list.

Put your foot down if you look down on this criminal system. Put your book down and get shook down like my niggas in prison. Don't be condemning and condoning their actions in one sentence. But keep your mind, choose your side. Is you a patriot or a menace to society? So riot or sit by quietly. But don't pull out the flag and try to say you're going to rise. with me you flip flopping like hip hop I don't get locked in that trick box

get got like big and pop shit's got the stop iron the people not the big I repeat after Fred so please blow my brains out if I ever forget I'm with the independent thinkers I'm down with the members in the shakers and the ex henny drinkers the non-smokers the health advocates the non-voters the young bloods in the hood training like soldiers I'm on the side of the tracks with the hood gardens the little child that don't color inside the margins I don't ride defense. I cultivate my strength, because if it ain't about power, it don't make sense. I've been down with boogie down since BDP's and brown pride, and black power make RBG.

A OG told me choose battles wisely. In the struggle, don't forget your children and your wifey. If you don't see me on the podium preaching it, every day I hope my every action is teaching it, because revolution is a process. It's not a speech or a panel. No bite off more than you can handle. I'm with workers uprising and the right to unionize. We ain't crossed the border so you better legalize. I'm with La Pena than Bronx. I'm still with Vitor Toro because gentrification is polluting my borough.

So bro never. South Bronx forever. Decolonize the block, make your neighborhood better. I ain't down with the rich. I'm more rich you Perez. Don't talk to grand juries or cooperate with feds. I'm with students, doctors, janitors, teachers, union-level wages, but they don't believe us.

Believers, Manita, Barreto, Spofford, Front's Point, my point, my hood, I love, we join forces Formin our deck, the X, taking over builders' wrecked with Diaz for the children. Politics to sickness, streets express symptoms, caught up with a quickness, big business pimpsdom, scholars play the simpleton, fools play with wisdom, who would stand and fight back, who will play the victim. Tribal Tribalations, ancient generations, stolen history and outsourced innovation. Babel Tower fell. Tribes are at war. The battle story's not represented in the score. The game's fixed. Most of the faces and name switch. Credit stolen for art, science, religion, language. Technology, philosophy, and were strangers. They paid in Haitian for the knowledge of the ancients.

Powered in words, actions, guns, swords. Aim, Panthers, brown, berets, young lords. Pick aside, one sickness, one cure, one love, one blood, one world, but one war. Wish I heard you all Wish I heard you all Wish I heard you all I wish I heard you all Oh I wish I had you

Oh Now I wish I have you workers I knew that you have held The rich bump The vendors trying to send Let's send to straight you out