Heyo, new Member on Lemmy, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the past threads and information contained on this site, and feel confident in the knowledge of my fellow comrades here, so I wanted to create a thread to talk about the Land Back movement in the US.
I am not from the US, and have never had a long conversation with Native-Americans. I am mostly ignorant of their conditions and demands, and as such on what Land Back entails as a whole. I was hoping someone more informed could share some resources on what Land Back is, what it looks like in concrete terms, why it is not only necessary but useful, and whatever else may be relevant.
What I already know is the following: The US was founded as a settler colony, and and that history manifests itself in multiple ways in the country today, from its national mythology, its flavour of individualism, Racism, etc. The Native population has been subjected to genocide and cultural assimilation, largely destroying it.
My questions then would be: Is there a significant self identifying native population left to redistribute land to? What does redistribution look like? What use is Land Back from a short term revolutionary perspective?
I’m not the best person to explain landback so I’ll just share my perspective and how I might approach it:
I think the main priority should always be first and foremost the improvement of material conditions and the establishment of a DOTP. But after the DOTP is this is how I think it should be done:
Ideal solution: I think the US should be completely dismantled and replaced with a EU style mutual protection mechanism, something of a confederation, and it would be made up of fully sovereign bioregional federations.
The borders of these countries would be purely geographical, and the subdivisions would be based on the territories of the countries that were here prior. The boundaries would be drawn in whole or with great collaboration with indigenous people.
The main priority of landback from what I’ve picked up talking to indigenous people is for the land to be respected, the land should not be seen as a resource to be exploited.
As for what to do with the settlers I personally hold a more radical perspective; ALL settlers must assimilate into the culture and customs of the land they occupy to a reasonable extent, it should be similar to if you as an American moved to Asia or Africa, I believe the only way for true reconciliation to be archived is for indigenous countries to be seen as what they are, countries. Nation states formed around common ethnicity, culture, and language. And I don’t think assimilation would be that difficult as it has happened many times in the past, including Cascadia, some initial eastern settlements, Cajun culture, Mexico, and to a lesser extent African Americans as even though they aren’t assimilated to any native cultures they were brought here against their will so I think they also deserve special consideration.
But at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what I think, this should be up to the people who actually have thousands of years of history with this land to decide how it functions, maybe that won’t even be necessary and a superintelligent AI could create some perfect solution, idk. But as settlers I think the first step is just recognizing that we are indeed settlers, that this is not our home, and if we want to still call this place home we should be invited as equals. And the material conditions and liberation of the proletariat will always remain the absolute most important initial goal of a revolution, I’d prefer natives be comfortable and equal members of society even if they are stateless then to have a state but be neglected by their leaders and exploited by foreign capital, our goal is not to create another situation like “post colonization” Africa (it’s not really post colonial).
Here’s some of my favorite resources:
https://native-land.ca/
https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/
https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701e.ct008649/
https://www.oneearth.org/navigator/
https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/bioregions-of-north-america/
Here’s a map of my bioregion Cascadia