Filthy Hans posted:

AnimeIsTrash posted:

https://twitter.com/ryanlcooper/status/1573320371381719041

I know this is just a random dude from twitter but posts like this are so baffling to see from self anointed leftists.

CoolCab posted:

when i was a kid living (as a white dude) in an indigenous community and making some very early observations about both my local context, the broader settler colonialist state i live in and the biggest current efforts worldwide like Israel and even then i categorized "giving significant valuable chunks of land back to the people who originally lived here" as the kind of utter impossibility that could never ever be remotely politically viable. people will not vote away their property and most indigenous populations are the minority.

CoolCab posted:

when i was a kid living (as a white dude) in an indigenous community and making some very early observations about both my local context, the broader settler colonialist state i live in and the biggest current efforts worldwide like Israel and even then i categorized "giving significant valuable chunks of land back to the people who originally lived here" as the kind of utter impossibility that could never ever be remotely politically viable. people will not vote away their property and most indigenous populations are the minority.

nunavut is kind of an example of colonialist states giving sovereignty back to indigenous people but it also kind of taught me the pragmatic limitations of what the state would tolerate there. it has to be more or less worthless, you have to have some ulterior motive to encourage people live and govern there like enforcing canadian sovereignty over disputed arctic territories, and whatever treaty arranged must ensure that whatever power given is inherently too limited to allow any kind of radical action and that any valuable resource extraction is still available to capital if it ever becomes viable to exploit to their profit. see the mineral rights clauses of the land claim agreement.

that was 20 years ago and tbh as much as a lot of things i thought back then were total poo poo i think that one has some merit.

The Atomic Man-Boy posted:

Also a lot of the political energy of indigenous land return is coming from extractive corporations, who feel that stealing their resources and labor would be easier without the meager protections the US government provides.

The Atomic Man-Boy posted:

Also a lot of the political energy of indigenous land return is coming from extractive corporations, who feel that stealing their resources and labor would be easier without the meager protections the US government provides.

AnimeIsTrash posted:

For the time being though I think that demanding every piece of federal land back, and forcing the US government to adhere to treaties are both pretty reasonable demands.

AnimeIsTrash posted:

The big issue with the progressive sloganeering that has gotten popular is that they don't really mean anything in particular and are very easy to coopt. To me the land back movement is nothing more than a new spin on decolonization.

Hand Knit posted:

Every bit of language and articulation of demands is something that can be repeated in the service of people with no serious anti-colonial politics. After all, that's how words work: you can always just say them. And so we get the Clinton campaign blathering about intersectionality or university HR offices being decolonial. I don't think there's any piece of language that's inherently immune to that. But, on the other hand, the clearer the articulation and the more directly language links to demands, the harder it is to fully co-opt. It's a lot harder for a bank to invoke "land back" because it's easy to look at that and ask "well, where's the land going?"

So yeah nothing is immune but some articulations are better than others.

unlimited shrimp posted:

Aw heck Gikagawe, y'know I'd love to sign over my mortgage but this is more of a uh, a structural problem? And I feel like maybe I'm being responsibilized for the settler-colonial state, which I did not vote for. But I definitely support what you're going for here.

AnimeIsTrash posted:

Oh absolutely, i'm sure that there are demands. I know that during the BLM protests local organizations had some pretty concrete demands as well. I was just an idiot and completely forgot about that while making that post.

I recently learned about the Osage murders, where a bunch of white settlers married into the tribe and then killed their partners and children for the mineral rights they owned. The predecessor to the FBI "handled" the case and put the blame on a handful of serial killers. There were over 50+ murders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osage_Indian_murders

Hand Knit posted:

If there is collected evidence of this I would be curious to see it. I know that there's a long history of "turn Indigenous land into private property so they will become dedicated capitalists."

shwinnebego posted:

Alaska is a striking example of this. Indigenous-led Fortune 500 oil company https://www.asrc.com/

i say swears online posted:

that's why a one-world government with no jurisdictional differences is the only ethical option

unwantedplatypus posted:

I want the US to give land back to the indigenous nations. The only issue is people treat you like a liberal imperialist for asking for what that would actually look like.

Ex:

Give your house to an indigenous guy and impoverish yourself or you're a settler (you're still a settler if you give the house back).

Like what is actually being proposed? Honoring all of the treaties (to the extent physically possible) that the US signed with tribes? That doesn't seem like enough, to be honest.

Give indigenous people sovereignty and governance over that land? Sure, but we need to reckon with the fact that within the land they are legally owed indigenous people are a minority. So is everyone else enfranchised? What stops people from just voting to re-stablish colonial power relations?

In addition many of the lands themselves are sorely in need of investment in, for example, infrastructure; that would be greatly benefitted by the shared resource base of the continent.

Going maximum demands gently caress yt gently caress colonizers is the radlib position. Saying that doing anything is too maximalist is the lib position.

shwinnebego posted:

Alaska is a striking example of this. Indigenous-led Fortune 500 oil company https://www.asrc.com/

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

"land back", like "abolish the police" are revolutionary demands because the current system fundamentally cannot deliver on them, to the extent that you can't even really use them as a maximal bargaining position because it can't even be on the table -- if you had the leverage to execute on giving stolen land back or abolishing the police why not just kick off the revolution and seize total control?

land back and abolish the police can both be decomposed into concrete and maybe-possibly-kinda realizable goals that might even be possible to achieve, but at that point, what's the use? Sloganeering? I have a hard time you're going to get more people on your side, and importantly a harder time getting organizers serious about these realizable goals, with a demand you know to be impossible.

I don't know, to me all of these maximal positions just turn into liberal coopted lip service. Land acknowledgements and moments of silence for police murders before the HR meeting about why you'll get fired if you even think about the word "union"

CoolCab posted:

... i categorized "giving significant valuable chunks of land back to the people who originally lived here" as the kind of utter impossibility that could never ever be remotely politically viable. people will not vote away their property and most indigenous populations are the minority.
...

AnimeIsTrash posted:

For the time being though I think that demanding every piece of federal land back, and forcing the US government to adhere to treaties are both pretty reasonable demands.

Weka posted:

Do you genuinely believe it's reasonable to give 28% of the land in the USA to less than 2% of the population?

The Saucer Hovers posted:

lol

ted hitler hunter posted:

Of course you give it back. It's their land they're supposed to own it.

unwantedplatypus posted:

Who is "they"

F Stop Fitzgerald posted:

land back is completely and mutually exclusive with the existence of the USA.

The Atomic Man-Boy posted:

You do know that tribes are political organizations, right? And often political organization that had distinct boundaries that were promised actual pieces of land by treaty that the US just reneged on because its bourgeois wanted to make money? We could start with that.

Or you can just give it to me and gently caress off back to Europe, things are going swimmingly there at the moment.

unwantedplatypus posted:

Who is "they"

croup coughfield posted:

now we're talkin

Weka posted:

Tell it to my local tribe with over a billion in assets, including a bunch of land with more probably on the way.