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Indigenous sovereigntists speak

Fri, 02/08/2013 - 15:51 -- worker

From Rabble - By Harsha Walia

As myopic pundits declare the end of Idle No More and questions abound about Idle No More's focus and vision, I sat down with three Indigenous land defenders -- Sam McKay, Freda Huson and Toghestiy -- to talk about Indigenous sovereignty, exercising inherent rights and responsibilities, and protection of the lands and waters.

As Mohawk author Taiaiake Alfred writes, "[T]he only way to keep this movement going is for us to see our actions in Idle No More as part of a larger and long-standing commitment to the restoration of Indigenous nationhood... In practical terms, we need to go beyond demonstrations and rallies in malls and legislatures and on public streets and start to reoccupy Indigenous sacred, ceremonial and cultural use sites to re-establish our presence on our land and in doing so to educate Canadians about our continuing connections to those places and how important they are to our continuing existence as Indigenous peoples." 

 Sam, Freda and Toghestiy are well-known and widely-respected land defenders. They, along with many other front line communities, have consistently articulated Indigenous sovereignty in accordance with their own laws and traditions, affirmed and maintained their connection and relationship to the land, and have courageously defended their sacred responsibility as stewards of their territories in the face of unbridled corporate development in their territories and state criminalization of their communities.

Sam McKay is a former councillor for the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation. In the past decade alone, his community has faced down mining drill teams, multi-billion dollar law suits, arrests and prison sentences, politicians and police and judges.

In 2008, he was arrested, along with five other KI leaders, and sentenced for six months for their interruption of Platinex, a junior exploration company with over 200 claims in KI territory. The Ontario government eventually bought out the company's claims in 2009. From 2010-2012, KI again successfully fended off mining exploration by DeBeers and Gods Lake Resources. Most recently, as a result of a the strong leadership taken by KI and a province-wide support campaign, the Ontario government again announced that it would buy out God's Lake Resources for $3.5 million dollars.

Over 23,000 square kilometers of KI territory is off-limits to mining, and KI continues to ensure that their moratorium on mining exploration, park creation and all other Ontario land dispositions is respected. KI has also spearheaded land-use plans; in 2011, KI issued a landmark Watershed Declaration to protect all their waters and watersheds.

Freda Huson, spokesperson of the Unist'ot'en clan of the Wet'suwet'en, and Likhts'amisyu hereditary chief Toghestiy have been at the forefront of land defense struggles in BC. They have built and are currently living in a log cabin that is in the direct pathway of approximately ten proposed pipeline projects, including Enbridge Northern Gateway and the Pacific Trails Pipeline.

In 2010, Enbridge representatives were given an eagle father, which under Wet'suwet'en law is a first and only notice of trespass. In November 2011, setting up a road blockade with "Road Closed to Pacific Trails Pipeline Drillers" signs, the Unist'ot'en and the Likhts'amisyu of the Wet'suwet'en escorted out drillers and their equipment.

Again in 2012, Toghestiy intercepted and issued an eagle feather to surveyors. The surveyors and all other people associated with Pacific Trails Pipeline were ordered to leave the territory and told that they are not ever allowed to return to Unist’ot’en land. The road has now been closed to all industry activities until further notice. Hosting annual action camps in their territory, the Unist’ot’en have built a growing base of support for their uncompromising stand.

On what compels these three to take action, Sam is unwavering: "The law of higher authority. This is a spiritual struggle. Dealing with the repercussions -- like funding cuts to our community and jail time -- is all secondary once you commit to maintaining your connection to the land.” Freda agrees, “I left my job in order to get out there onto the land. My father told me the strongest ammunition you have is to occupy your territories. The reserve is just a small piece of our territories. Our ancestors fought to protect the land. Land is life, water is life."

Toghestiy adds, "We really wanted to wake up our people and to remind them of their responsibilities. Our clan system is what protects and looks out for our territories. We need to build our nations from the grassroots, not from band offices. Free, prior and informed consent has to be exercised and lived out on our territories. We have to breathe life into our laws."

With the resurgence of Indigenous mobilization through Idle No More, there are renewed conversations and widespread dialogues about this exercise of Indigenous sovereignty.

Anishinaabe/Nehayo writer Tara Williamson has recently written: "For me, Idle No More is about nationhood. Not nation-state-hood, but nationhood -- the ability to take care of the land, our children, and our families in the way we best know how. While the Canadian government currently plays heavily into our ability to function as self-determining nations, we know that true self-governance has to come from ourselves. This could be one of the most tremendous gifts of Idle No More: we have in front of us the perfect opportunity to re-invigorate and re-invent our governance practices from the ground up. The best way to demand self-determination is to be self-determining."

Sam offers his thoughts to front line communities who are re-establishing their presence on the land and being self-determining: "It is important to create unity in the community. First we had to educate people -- from children to elders -- what we are fighting for. Our whole community said no to mining. Then, we came up with a plan. We had a three-pronged approach: negotiations with government and industry, legal battles and direct action. Sometimes we had differences and debates about strategies, but we kept it within the community. When we decided to go with direct action we had the support of the community. This meant that we were ostracized from provincial Indian organizations and we stood alone but it was okay because we knew we were standing up for what we believed in as a community."

Toghestiy adds, "In our case we actually went against the advice of some of our older people. In our community there is still a lot of silence and obedience as a result of the residential schools. As a younger generation we felt a lot more urgency and it was the women who stepped up and starting talking about how they were going to protect the land. In Wet'suwet'en, that has always been the way -- youth and women take the lead and the men take their direction."

"The true traditional decision-making is carried through the clans and through the women who carry the clans," Freda chimes in. "For us, it has been a dual struggle -- against government and industry and also against Indian Act chiefs. These male Indian Act chiefs are imposing top-down decisions. That is why we pulled out of the political negotiations and the treaty process. Now neither the Unist'ot'en nor other grassroots Wet'suwet'en are associated with the Office of the Wet'suwet'en. These Chiefs are so worried about funding. The resources being extracted from our territories are worth billions of dollars, and while the government is getting wealthy we are fighting over crumbs. So we are taking action through our hereditary clan system and building awareness and unity through our actions."

Sam agrees: "Decisions about our traditional territory have to be made collectively and not by single individuals. That to me is the true spirit of unity."

Freda and Sam are also encouraging people to break through the fear of criminalization and the psychology of disempowerment that colonialism and capitalism intentionally create.

According to Sam, "Some people think going to jail means we lost. We didn't. In our law, we were doing what is our sacred responsibility: going to any lengths to protect the land. When we saw that we wouldn't win in the courts, we decided to take care of it ourselves on the ground. We don't need their recognition; we know these lands are ours and were never surrendered. Breaking their laws is less important to me than not upholding our natural law, which is a greater law. When we were sentenced, I raised my fist in victory. I knew people would realize what a mistake the court had made and how unjust the laws and government actions are."

Freda similarly states, "We can't be passive anymore. Our community had been idle for about ten to fifteen years. Even if you have a few people, start something small. At first it was me and my sister and my cousin talking to each other. Then we started talking to our elders and clan members. That is when my clan designated me as the spokesperson."

Freda pauses for a moment, then adds, "The other thing is that peaceful is not our way. The residential schools have imposed a way of life on our people where they are more afraid, even afraid of speaking out of turn because there would be harsh punishment. We have to really know our history, really know what our ways are and have been. Our people are awakening into clarity. That’s the first step. Now we have to take the power back, because we do have the power to stop industry and government."

In the face of unrelenting corporate development, encroachment onto Indigenous territories, and threats of state criminalization, the fierce remote communities of KI and Unist'ot'en (and many others) have taken on the giant machinery of settler-colonialism and capitalism. Their courage and tenacity have served as an inspiration for many social movements struggling against austerity, market fundamentalism and ecological destruction.

These monumental victories demonstrate the power and necessity of fighting the system on our own terms. KI and Unist'ot'en are asserting, affirming and acting on their own laws and traditions. And this, ultimately, has the potential of freeing us all from an exploitative and hierarchical system that is placing profit before people and the planet and robbing us from our own collective humanity.

 

Harsha Walia (@HarshaWalia) is a South Asian writer and activist based on Vancouver, unceded Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil Waututh territories. She has been active in anti-racist, migrant justice, feminist, anti-capitalist, Indigenous solidarity, and anti-colonial movements for over a decade and has known and organized alongside Sam, Freda, and Toghestiy for the past five years.

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Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Interesting but has little to do with idle no more, which has fizzled and is now turning into a bureaucracy of nonviolent reformists

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Turning into... or was it already just that form the start, while the more radical or non-political people in the movement were just in because they took the typical strategic "risk", as with the anarchists in Occupy, and through the Quebec student strike?

And this is no more a bureaucracy, but a corpo-technocracy. Based upon information technology (hence the reliance on FB(I) and Twitter) as "development" tools and step towards socio-political integration of oppressed masses, before they even get to revolt. The bureaucrats stood behind a desk, while corporate technocrats stay behind LCD screens and logos. It's just an evolution.

But really, it's a good context now, since the stupid reformist wave has passed, it's a great time to fuck up the system, from coast to coast!

Submitted by emile on

The Idle No More initiative, whether it is one initiative within a continuing more general initiative or whether it continues on under the same name, has given the fires of transformation a nice flare-up and thus contributes to the bed of smoldering coals. given that it was/is a valuable initiative, a ‘strategic reflection’ might be that it didn’t do what it might have to bring in non-aboriginal support. taiaiake’s current statement;

"[T]he only way to keep this movement going is for us to see our actions in Idle No More as part of a larger and long-standing commitment to the restoration of Indigenous nationhood... In practical terms, we need to go beyond demonstrations and rallies in malls and legislatures and on public streets and start to reoccupy Indigenous sacred, ceremonial and cultural use sites to re-establish our presence on our land and in doing so to educate Canadians about our continuing connections to those places and how important they are to our continuing existence as Indigenous peoples."

is very aboriginal-insider oriented, if not leaving some flavour of self-pity [rather than rage over injustice]. in his book ‘Peace, Power and Righteousness’, he speaks of other actions that could bridge to common complaints of both aboriginals and 'colonials'; i.e. he presents the decolonizing initiative as a general need that history has given aboriginals a natural leadership role to play in. e.g;

“Our youth must begin to acquire the knowledge and skills that are the true weapons of the information age. Bringing a final end to colonialism will demand complete destruction of its intellectual and moral premises. In their place we must establish a set of justifications for indigenous government that will resonate with the best alternative traditions within the dominant society as well. This can happen only if we collectively develop the ability to argue the justice of our position in a universal logic and language. We must add our voices to the narrative that is history, translate our understandings of history and justice, and bring the power of our wisdom to bear on the relationships we have with others. We cannot do this from a position of intellectual weakness.” --- Taiaiake Alfred

.

Russell Means has done a great job in doing this e.g. his ‘Welcome to the Reservation’ video, where he contends that government is making reservation indians out of us all. the aboriginal movement could do with more spokespersons to step into the gap left by the departure of Russell Means. as Means said, it was wonderful to be able to live on the Pine Ridge reserve lands and to be able to follow natural law and have local control over some decisions [but not the key ones such as those governing economic and justice issues], but reserve living failed to address the primary issue of ‘being reservation indians’, a spirit-sapping condition which has been compounded by the colonizers having voluntarily and 'stupidly' imposed reservation-'indian'-like status on themselves [hence 'welcome to the reservation'].

thus, taiaiake’s goal to; “reoccupy Indigenous sacred, ceremonial and cultural use sites to re-establish our presence on our land and in doing so to educate Canadians about our continuing connections to those places and how important they are to our continuing existence as Indigenous peoples” is not only very self-serving, but seeks not much more than to push the perimeter-fence of the reserve out a bit, here and there, without addressing the point raised by russell means, that the gap between reserve indians and the colonizers who were historically lording it over the indians has been reduced by the colonizers converting their own states in entirety into 'reservations'.

that’s why taiaiake’s earlier point must be given precedence over cleaning up the fence-lines on the reserves; i.e. “Bringing a final end to colonialism will demand complete destruction of its intellectual and moral premises

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

didnt read

Submitted by iaction (not verified) on

Idle no more is a banner, a rally cry for mobilization of Indigenous Peoples and our accomplices. The moment it becomes an organization or political entity is the moment it is finished.
Academic attempts to navigate direction for INM will ultimately take it down the same path of "Occupy."

p.s. Russell Means beat his families and attempted to subvert Dine' sovereignty. We don't need any more Russell Means.

Submitted by emile on

if you believe that logic supports interdependence between (a) the quality of ideas’ and (b) the quality of people coming up with the ideas, ... then you probably believe that the richest people in capitalist society are the best people; i.e. you say;

“p.s. Russell Means beat his families and attempted to subvert Dine' sovereignty. We don't need any more Russell Means.”

russell means, like many of us, at some time in our lives, is ‘conflicted’. by his own testimony, he was conflicted even moreso because he was aboriginal, and he is open about having been addicted to drugs and alcohol and being on the dissenting side of arguments even within his own family.

that’s not the point, unless you start throwing out the baby with the bathwater as a general practice. the point is that russell means ideas have connected with and still connect with a lot of people and not just aboriginals.

secondly, there is no need for aboriginals to ‘revive’ their native courage in the face of overwhelming odds and show that they can march bravely to their demise. the aboriginal people have more than their share of courageous leaders who martyred themselves to the cause of their people. but still the children and grandchildren of these martyred heroes live in ‘captivity’, as russell means says, in ‘prisoner of war camps’.

he is perhaps the most influential aboriginal in modern day North America, and his skill falls right into the category that Taiaiake claims is needed; i.e. to contribute to “complete destruction of colonialism’s intellectual and moral premises.”

sure, “The Washington Post has called Means the " …biggest, baddest, meanest, angriest, most famous American Indian activist of the late 20th century."

but if you are going to disassociate with russell means because of the ‘baddest, meanest’ part, then you are trying to do what ‘Chris Hedges’ tried to do with the Black Bloc, to become ‘purificationist’ in your approach and nothing is more colonialist that purificationism.

you argue that the Idle-No-More is a “banner, a rally cry” that must not become a ‘movement’, and that it must not become a “movement, or political entity, ... or to have ‘academic’ direction”. i couldn’t agree more.

but you also say that that will; “... take it down the same path of "Occupy."”, implying that ‘Occupy’ is a failed ‘movement’ just like people are saying ‘Idle-No-More’ is a ‘failed movement’. Who says ‘Occupy’ is other than a ‘banner, a rally cry’? That is, are you one of those ‘myopic pundits’ that Harsha Walia is talking about?

i certainly cast my lot in support of ‘rally cries’ such as ‘Idle-No-More’ and ‘Occupy’, but i wouldn’t hesitate to offer supportive comments that some believers in the papal infallibility of their leaders might see as 'criticisms'.

if this rallying of the indigenous people is for the mere purpose of trying to right historical injustice RATHER THAN TRYING TO BRING DOWN COLONIALISM, it will be nothing other than a
re-make' of Wounded Knee, 1890 version because the 7th Cavalry is still around, and it is far stronger than it was in 1890. aboriginal pride will be restored, however, as many prove once again that they are committed to their ideals and their beliefs and they have the courage to die for them.

the problem is not with aboriginal beliefs. the problem is with colonizer beliefs. that’s why taiaiake alfred is on target with giving number one priority to ‘undermining the intellectual premises of colonialism’ [very different from battling to right historical injustice]. russell means was one of the best in this endeavor. ‘welcome to the reservation’ is a ‘mean and bad’ statement, but only as an antidote to what continues to be a far greater ‘mean and bad’, as is the case with Black Bloc and ELF ‘statements’ relative to the 'mean and bad' they are protesting.

statements like taiaiake’s statement published in this article;

"[T]he only way to keep this movement going is for us to see our actions in Idle No More as part of a larger and long-standing commitment to the restoration of Indigenous nationhood... In practical terms, we need to go beyond demonstrations and rallies in malls and legislatures and on public streets and start to reoccupy Indigenous sacred, ceremonial and cultural use sites to re-establish our presence on our land and in doing so to educate Canadians about our continuing connections to those places and how important they are to our continuing existence as Indigenous peoples."

think about it! are the adherents of colonizer society, the majority in Canada and in the U.S. going to join forces with the aboriginals in their threat to ‘bring the Canadian economy to its knees’, under the leadership of grand chief derek nepinak? on a mission “to educate Canadians about our continuing connections to those places and how important they are to our continuing existence as Indigenous peoples”?

that is a joke. russell means would doubtless laugh out loud, not at the pain of the aboriginal people, but the naievety of the strategy against a colonizer state that has heretofore been doing everything possible to dissolve the peer-nation identity of aboriginals?

the public support from non-aboriginals enjoyed by Idle-No-More is coming largely from people who are environmentally concerned, and they are happy that the aboriginal community is standing up to the Canadian government on that account. there is also support from anarchists who want to bring about the collapse of colonialism, but the notion that the colonizer majority is going to support ‘bringing the national economy to its knees’ in support of the aboriginal people and their “...long-standing commitment to the restoration of Indigenous nationhood is ridiculous. it is an exercise in reviving the interrupted battle between the indians and the 7th cavalry, and a re-affirmation of the pride and courage of the aboriginal peoples. in addition to the sitting bull and red cloud and chief joseph, the names of grand chief nepinak etc. etc. will join the list and be talked of five generations out, by the old-timers on the rez.

russell means may be bad and mean, but he is not stupid. welcome to the rez, folks because we are all in it, and we have put ourselves in it, and the mission is as taiaiake used to say, to ‘undermine its intellectual and moral premises’ and in that, the aboriginals people have been put into a leadership role by history.

do i doubt “the wisdom of the Unist’ot’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation” in their defensive action plans? not at all. as russell means pointed out, aboriginal violence against the colonizers has always been DEFENSIVE. the aboriginal peoples have widespread support in these defensive actions, as in the Wounded Knee standoff (1973), the standoffs in Oka (1990) and in Gustafsen lake (1995). support for these resistance actions has continued to rise in the non-aboriginal populace, and it is very high today on issues such as oil pipelines and fraccing; e.g. we are talking defensive actions like;

“Toghestiy, Hereditary Chief of the Likhts'amisyu clan says, “The Pacific Trails Pipeline is a danger to Wet'suwet'en territory and it is our responsibility to protect these territories and our responsibility as indigenous people to help other indigenous peoples who are being hurt by industrial development where the natural gas that would be transported in this pipeline originates.”

but support for a broad ‘offensive’ that ‘threatens to bring the economy to its knees’ is quite another matter. russell means is on the right track when he says to non-aboriginals; ‘welcome to the reserve’. a joint rallying cry that calls for the fall of the colonizer state from a quorum of those in the ‘extended reservation’ spelled ‘c.o.l.o.n.i.z.e.r..s.t.a.t.e’, is what is going to be needed to, realistically, ‘go on the broad offensive’.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I personally know dozens of anarchists and other like minds who will be mobilizing when the unist'ot'en say go. The logistics of travel to their lands is a royal pain in the ass and we're all going anyway, can't wait! Give me thousands more with their wisdom and media savvy and the future looks bright. You don't need much of a grassroots media presence, just enough to do your callouts to the right people.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

That is ... those legit folks behind the action camp that have been doing outreach work for years already. Important distinction between them and the band office, as mentioned in the article.

Submitted by anonymous on

The intellectual basis of colonialism, going Back at least to the English occupation of Ireland in the 1650's, is one of race and nation... Not nation-state, which emerge later... But nation... They are not subverting anything but caught in the Intelectual system they oppose! And then they go and mix that with blood and soil rhetoric that would fit nicely with any fascist or right wing ethnic nationalism... Their concern for the ecosystem mirrors nazi environmentalism! The way out of colonial systems, as those opposed to them have known since the closure of the commons in England and the expropriations that created the wealth and labor power needed by the elite to build their empires, is the leveling of society... It is anarchism... It is not the building of closed ethnic identities but the Connstruction of a open humanity... It is not a smplistic binnary of indigenous and settler that ignores the complex and bloody history faced by and conducted by all kinds of ethnic groups but the elimination of ethnicity as a primary form of identity construction! Anarchists who go blindly along with this shit are either so full of liberal guilt or romantic visions of the "native" as to forgetter the revolutionary heart of anarchism or simply too scared of being challenged by native activists who will call them racist and dehumanizing names rather than engage with actually history and Intelectual debate.

Submitted by emile on

you are confusing “a simplistic binary of indigenous and settler” as an ethnic difference. the ethic difference is incidental, the essential difference between aboriginals and colonizers lies in the radically different set of values they choose to live by. it is the difference between the ‘non-dualist’ values of aboriginals and the dualist values of the colonizer culture. ethnic difference may be mixed in with this, as a non-primary issue.

the way out of colonialism is NOT ‘by leveling’. that is far too simple a perspective.

the aboriginal [non-dualist] values are based on the understanding that we live in a relational space, which, as has been pointed out by modern physicists corresponds to physical reality [e.g. see ‘Blackfoot Physics’]. the colonizer culture has institutionalized a set of newtonian ‘dualist’ values that correspond to ‘linguistic idealization’; i.e. to the ‘unreality’ that portrays people as ‘independent beings’ that inhabit an ‘absolute space’.

the aboriginal ‘non-dualist’ values, for example, support ‘restorative justice’. if one is a ‘strand in a web of relations’ then the whole community must assume responsibility for conflicts that arise within it. if there is theft, then the rich who monopolize and guard disproportionate wealth must share responsibility with those who are poor. robin hood dynamics are natural dynamics. nature is all about the continual quest to cultivate and sustain balance and harmony. natural values do not include ‘the right to monopolize possession/ownership of property’.

understanding everyone as a ‘strand-in-a-web-of-life’ is a different way of ‘leveling’ than the leveling that comes by claiming that God created everyone equal and then He fired the starting gun that initiated social darwinist competition within the “level” playing field of absolute fixed empty and infinite Euclidian space.

the type of leveling you appear to be talking about is the fairy-tale ‘leveling’ that associates with an idealized ‘level playing field’ aka ‘absolute space’.

‘levelling’ is not ‘levelling’ if it is done assuming that humans are ‘local, independently-existing things-in-themselves with their own locally originating, internal process driven and directed development and behaviour’ that move about and interact in an absolute space and absolute time ‘operating theatre’ ... as in the newtonian physics view of material systems. ... i.e. ‘levelling’ is not ‘levelling’ if it fails to collapse the standard dualist belief of the colonizer culture.

the aboriginal belief is that humans are continually emerging within a relational space; i.e. that they are born into a relational web of social context that outside-inwardly shapes their inside-outward development and behaviour. when one acknowledges that space is relational, one can understand how you could find yourself growing up in a relational-spatial situation that would ‘trump’ the notion that ‘all men are born equal’, a notion that assumes ‘absolute space’ and that makes no sense at all in relational space.

the combination of colonizer beliefs that; ‘all men are equal in the eyes of the law’ and ‘humans are local, independently-existing things-in-themselves with their own locally originating behaviours’ leads to Western retributive justice with its moral law enforcement. if a poor man breaks the law by stealing, then he is judged guilty and punished. the rich man who monopolizes wealth is judged to have had nothing to do with it. how could he? space is an absolute fixed empty and infinite ‘container’ populated by human-things-in-themselves, of which the rich man and the poor man are entirely separate and mutually exclusive instances. therefore, the rich man’s behaviour has NOTHING to do with the theft. mainstream science insists it is so.

of course, if we were to acknowledge Mach and Bohm and Schroedinger’s contention, that space is relational, then the rich would be seen as exerting tensions on the poor through the medium of relational space; i.e. “the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants” [Mach’s principle]. in which case, we could no longer assume the independence of individual behaviour, and we would have to assume that the poor man’s behaviour was influenced by the rich man’s behaviour, through the mediating of relational space. our behavioural values would reflect this.

as it turns out, aboriginal values agree with modern physics and mach’s principle; i.e. aboriginal values agree with ‘physical reality’. western values are based on non-physically real ‘idealizations’ such as the existence of ‘local independent beings’. in fact, Western ‘reasoning’ is based on ‘linguistic idealizations’, so that while the colonizer culture values put ‘linguistic idealization-based reasoning’ in precedence over physical experience, aboriginal values put physical experience in precedence over linguistic idealization based ‘reasoning’.

the aboriginal value is to let ‘natural law’ inform individual and collective behaviour through uniquely, relational-spatially situated experience. the colonizer value is to let the ‘reasoning’ of a central authority direct individual and collective behaviour. why should any natural, sane person value ‘reason’ ahead of ‘experience’? to do so is the insanity of the colonizer culture, whether it is flat or pyramidal [and if it ever approaches ‘flat’ it will soon be ‘pyramidal’ again since ‘reason’ builds pyramidal structures; ‘la raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure’.] as emerson says, ‘we have let the tool of ‘reason’ run away with the workman’, and as nietzsche points out, ‘reason’ is suppositions born of linguistic idealization;

“In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego. In the beginning there is that great calamity of an error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a faculty. Today we know that it is only a word.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’

the ‘difference’ that concerns aboriginal and colonizer is a difference in the values [non-dualist and dualist] institutionalized in the respective belief traditions. it is not simply about ‘ethnicity’. there are dozens of ethnic groups in New York city, and they are predominantly of dualist values traditions. there may be ethnic tensions between these groups, but these tensions do not derive from the same source as the tensions arising between aboriginal non-dualist values based community and colonizer dualist values based community. i.e. you say;

... It is not the building of closed ethnic identities but the Connstruction of a open humanity... It is not a smplistic binnary of indigenous and settler that ignores the complex and bloody history faced by and conducted by all kinds of ethnic groups but the elimination of ethnicity as a primary form of identity construction!

this is obscurantism. you may be looking at it as the ‘simple ethnic binary of indigenous and settler’ but that’s not how aboriginals are looking at it. they are looking at it from the point of view of radically different value systems that different groups choose to institutionalize in their community dynamic.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

You just made a simplistic binary in categorizing all indigonous world views and all supposedly non indigenous world views into two giant homogeneous groups. You also ignore all the cultural anthropology of anarchists like Reclue... and from my encounters with ethnic nationalist activists it is all about their blood tying them to a piece of land... While ignoring the fact that most of their supposed "first nations" were not first in any way but the result of ethnic genisis following the great plagues post contact... This is what happened... The empire building elite drove people off their land and forced them west... Where they drove other people off land... Who were then driven west... And on and on... The elimination of Irish clan society at the hands of the English forced Irish migration to the America's, 1/6 of adult males were sent as slaves to the colonies in the 1660s... These people then were used to drive people on the east coast of North America west... Land tribes like the Dakota claim as their land was in fact taken from other groups through violence... Seeing the common experience of exploited and expropriated people is far more revolutionary then dividing the groups... And none of your points about alternative visions of justice or a web of interconnected life systems are monopolized by native groups but in fact resonate with all kinds of anarchist thought... They are critical to deconstructing this system... But the labeling of one group as colonizer and other the rightful inhabitants is crazy simplistic and ahistorical... It valorizes one set of people who do not have a pristine history and condemns another who were actually far more similar than different. And my main point is that blood and soil discourses are both closed and fascist! How many different indigonous European groups told the Jews to get off their land because they were not "from" there? What is the answer? Pogoms and Zionism? Look I will fight nazis with Chicano nationalists and I will fight the state and corporations with indiginous nationalists but I will never believe that their end goal and the end goal of anarchism are the same. If you are not an anarchist fine, but if you are You should confront the bullshit! And it is just insane to suggest that almost anyone "chose to institutionalize" any of this fucked up system in their "community dynamic." This was forced on almost all of the world by the elite... And one of the main ways they did this was by developing ideas of race and nation. Prior to the 17th and 18th centuries no one thought of themselves as native, European, African, white, black etc... Ideas of religious identity predominated in Eurasia and Africa... ! It is just like Chicano activists claiming California or Tejas was Mexico... When the Californios and others constantly revolted against the centralizing power of Mexico City... or black nationalists blaming white people for slavery when europeans had almost no power on the african contenent until the second half of the 19th century. Of the approximate 10 million african people who died in the process of enslavment over 6 million died in africa at the hands of other africans. history is dirty and messy, dont simplify it. native north americans chose to mass murder the beavers of new england to trade with european long before there were british colonies... this terraformed the east coast and created the meddows which made good farm land for colonies... colonies that were a prison system for poor or rebellious europeans fighting the destruction of their traditional cultures and ways of life. What I am saying is we should honor the agency and complexity of people in the past rather than using them for political purposes and we should learn the key lesson of early modern history... That these very ideas of nation and race were designed by the exploiters to keep the exploited divided.

Submitted by emile on

i am not talking about people as local material systems and ‘what they did’, as you imply when you say;

“the labeling of one group as colonizer and other the rightful inhabitants is crazy simplistic and ahistorical... It valorizes one set of people who do not have a pristine history and condemns another who were actually far more similar than different”

i am talking about two very different ways of understanding self, other and world, the dominant colonizer view being the doer-deed worldview, ... the view that you are using in your interpretation of what i am saying.

the dominant aboriginal view is not ‘doer-deed’. it is ‘web-of-life’.

i am saying that putting the doer-deed worldview in first priority is screwing us up. it is based on idealization that fails to reconcile with our physical experience. i would call putting the web-of-life view first ‘anarchist’ and putting the doer-deed worldview first ‘authoritarian’ [the source of direction in the doer-deed view is understood as coming from a local point centre].

like many people, my own blood lines or ‘racial extraction’ is european BUT i reject the doer-deed worldview, just as nietzsche did, and mach etc. in spite of living in a society where this view has been institutionalized. also, in the aboriginal community, many have by now been co-opted into the doer-deed worldview, and traditionalist aboriginal friends estimate that only about 5% of today’s aboriginals remain ‘traditionalist’ while 95% have been co-opted into the doer-deed worldview [nevertheless, current activism is moving towards a general re-awakening since the traditionalist view has not slipped that far below the surface].

so, let’s be clear that in speaking of two groups, i am not speaking about bloodlines or race or ethnicity, i am speaking about two ways of understanding self, other and the world. the many ethnicities in europe in the fifteenth century [when colonizing went ballistic] organized themselves according to the dualist, doer-deed worldview, with its moral judgemental values, not the web-of-life worldview; e.g. the colonizer governance system the justice system and moral values etc. are based on people seeing themselves and other people as local independent things-in-themselves with their own locally originating, internal process [intellection and purpose] driven and directed behaviour.

the web-of-life or ‘relational space’ worldview that dominated in aboriginal community [anarcha-indigenism], could rise to popularity on a global basis, and be embraced by a diverse multiplicity of ethnicities [and hopefully will be], so the groups ‘colonizer’ and ‘indigenous’ do not refer to race/ethnicity. it just so happens that the ‘doer-deeders’ [=colonizers] were mostly europeans and the ‘web-of-lifers’ [=non-colonizers] were mostly indigenous aboriginals.

when i speak of ‘colonizers’ then, you can think of it akin to ‘those who have been infected with mad cow disease’ [doer-deed thinking disease] and that it so happened that europe was hard hit by this mad cow disease and north america was spared by it, until the colonizers, those infected with it, brought it to north america.

secondly, while i am pointing to the source of societal dysfunction as an infectious disease of the mind, you are pointing to the source being ‘a group of people’ called ‘the elites’. in my view, the emergence of ‘elites’ is a symptom of the disease of the mind.

you claim that this group of people deliberately [intentionally] sourced the societal dysfunction;

“it is just insane to suggest that almost anyone "chose to institutionalize" any of this fucked up system in their "community dynamic." This was forced on almost all of the world by the elite... And one of the main ways they did this was by developing ideas of race and nation. ... ... these very ideas of nation and race were designed by the exploiters to keep the exploited divided.”

i am saying that in a society that is infected by this mad cow disease, the children of the working class will be raised and educated so as to perpetuate the elite, exploiter class; i.e. the exploiter class is a symptom rather than the source. the source is the ‘mad cow disease of the mind’, the ‘doer-deed’ based worldview that sees dynamics in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’.

the two groups that i speak about are not race/ethnicity based they are (a) our crazed brothers whose minds have been infected with dualist doer-deedist worldview [cures are available], and (b) those who have escaped infection or who have recovered from it and are thus putting the non-dualist relational worldview in its natural precedence over the doer-deed [linguistic idealization based] worldview.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Interesting that you sight Emerson and Nietzsche to criticize rationalism... Aren't they two colonialist thinkers trapped in their dualist thinking? Or are they examples of where the category of colonialist breaks down? What you are talking about is the dark side of enlightenment thought... The thing about the enlightenment in Europe is that it contained strains of both liberating and enslaving ideologies! So you are both correct and incorrect... Which is what typically happens with broad generalizations and overly simple categorizations.

Submitted by emile on

you are missing the point.

you say that;

“the enlightenment in Europe ... contained strains of both liberating and enslaving ideologies! .... So you are both correct and incorrect... Which is what typically happens with broad generalizations and overly simple categorizations ”

i am not talking about ‘the enlightenment in Europe’, i am talking about the european culture’s continuing tendency to put ‘rationality’ into unnatural precedence over intuition, which began in the pre-Socratic/Socratic era.

emerson and nietzsche were not into ‘broad generalizations and overly simple categorizations’ and my remarks reflect their views as well. they are both ‘transcendentalists’ or ‘relationists’ [non-dualists].

“Nietzsche had been reading and revering Emerson (in translation) since 1862, finding his words so intimate and penetrating that he couldn’t praise them: they are “too close to me,” he confessed. Born from this union—one of the most significant acts of transatlantic cross-fertilization in Western intellectual history—was “the enfant terrible of modernism,”

unlike the still-predominating Western culture with its habit of notionally jumpstarting dynamics in the actions of local things-in-themselves, both of these philosophers acknowledged the primacy of a relational-spatial dynamic that, as emerson said, ‘both inhabits and creates the organism’. this is echoed in nietzsche with his mocking rejection of the dominating view of dynamics, in our western culture, in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’, a linguistic idealization based mental model otherwise known as ‘rationality’ that purportedly leads us to ‘the truth’.

as nietzsche noted, socrates contributed greatly to the popularity in our Wester culture, of putting rationality before intuition;

“Socrates favoured truth as the highest value, proposing that it could be discovered through reason and logic in discussion: ergo, dialectic . Socrates valued rationality (appealing to logic, not intuition) as the proper means for persuasion, the discovery of truth, and the determinant for one's actions. To Socrates, truth , not aretē [experiential efficiency], was the greater good, and each person should, above all else, seek truth to guide one's life.”

this belief in ‘truth’ of rational thinking based on ‘what things-in-themselves do’ is what nietzsche, and emerson see as THE PROBLEM WITH OUR CULTURE, i.e. they see rationality as a support tool that ‘has run away with the workman’. and they further see that the search for ‘truth’ as in ‘certainty’ is delusionary. sure the western courts of Justice can prove with certainty that the block bloc anarchist smashed the bank window, and the witness will swear on a bible that in identifying the anarchist as the doer of the deed, he is “telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”, a ‘whole truth’ that fails to mention that what is going on in the web of relations in the community dynamic is a larger and more physically meaningful ‘truth’. so this sort of ‘truth-seeking’, where we stop at this point of doer-deed certainty and apply moral values based judgement to it, is what perpetuates our dysfunction. as nietzsche says;

“With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of logical argument. What really happened there? Above all, a noble taste is vanquished; with dialectics the plebs come to the top. Before Socrates, argumentative conversation was repudiated in good society: it was considered bad manners, compromising. The young were warned against it. Furthermore, any presentation of one's motives was distrusted. Honest things, like honest men, do not have to explain themselves so openly. What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the logician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously”

nietzsche and emerson are coming from the same non-dualist, relational space based worldview as aboriginal and taoist thinkers.

you are in effect calling this difference in worldviews; the non-dualist views of emerson and nietzsche versus the dualist views of western mainstream, ... “broad generalizations and overly simple categorizations”

you are missing the point.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I am not missing the point... we are making two different points.

I am speaking to the very real, embodied, and acted upon ethnic and nationalist aspects of the struggle in this real world of muddled and mixed human identities and experiences and angers and complex emotions.

I don't disagree with anything you say about the root problems with world views... and neither do most anarchists. In fact I think you find their sentiments, their echoes, shared visions and similar assertions all over the world (as people faced similar forces of expropriation and exploitation.

But your red-herring, your shift of subject, lies in your turning the conversation into a hodge-podge of historical/cultural assertions and philosophic/intellectual history/formulations.

The only point our two positions cross paths is in your assertion that the label "indigenous" presents the one true and correct path in-total (I assume we are not talking about empire building Aztecs, Incas, etc but you know the idealized perfect a-historical indigenous society) and all "non-indigenous" "Colonizer" thought as the bad logic field mind.

It seems here you are acting like such labels are not assigned based on where your biological ancestors came from... with out attention to their particular histories or the complexity of actual lived experience.

Yet we can clearly both see many strands of western and "colonizer" thinking that makes the exact argument you are making. So the position the indigenous supposedly hold, as you state, is in fact also very much at home in the "colonizer" consciousness of dissident groups like anarchists.

A common position I think only reaffirms my argument that the resistance to exploitation in both the fucked over people of Europe and the Americas is greater and shares more commonality than difference.

The point being these terms indigenous and colonist are problematic because they bring with them all kinds of different connotations (historical, intellectual, emotional, moral). All of which pre-suppose a kind of Capital "T" Truth, which is rather inconsistent with the content of the supposed "indigenous" world view you are describing.

I would also point out that I basically disagree with your associating two world views so totally over two heterodox populations. I think it reeks of modernism, and a faith in the meaning of words, and a idea of stagnant and consistent identities/cultures rather than the mad medley that is our mixed up ever shifting reality.

It is also fumy that you are valorizing experience over logic while engaging in a dis-embodied a-historical diagramming of worldviews/philosophies/cultures into absolute categories.

While at the same time rejecting a historically sensitive discussion concerned with both lived and historical experiences, facts, diversity, particulars, and respect for the complex interwoven nature of humanities unfolding "existence" on/with this planet.

The root problem mirrors one of the many flaws in national discourses.. it is just stupid to talk about what all Americans think, what all Christians think, what all Europeans think, what all native people think... such groups are artificial and such language is unproductive.

Inf act, such language has historical roots and represents a major tool of the elite.. as I keep trying to demonstrate by pointing at the historical record rather than at philosophic word games about supposed cultures and other abstractions.

Submitted by nananaan (not verified) on

can you commenters recommend me a few books to read? both your ideas are interesting and id like to learn more..

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Check out :

"Facing East from Indian Country," by Daniel K. Richter

"The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic," by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker

and

"Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora" by Stephanie E. Smallwood

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

"the dominant aboriginal view is not ‘doer-deed’. it is ‘web-of-life’. "

There is no "dominant aboriginal view" for the simple reason there is no "aborginal view". There are a multiplicity of views stemming from a multiplicty of different aboriginal groups. So when you say "aboriginal" you need to identify which aboriginal group. (and incidently the word aboriginal means not [ab] original).

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Can we stop support nationalist struggles please?

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