fight for turtle island
The Fight for Turtle Island – edited by and including Aragorn! in conversation with Alex, Anpao Duto Collective, Corinna, Dan, Danielle, Dominique, Gord, Jason/Jaden, Kevy, Klee, Loretta, Lyn, and Ron – by Aragorn! (2018 – interviews 2016) via 80 pg kindle version from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aragorn-the-fight-for-turtle-island]
notes/quotes:
4
intro
A central tension and motivation for this book is to articulate something that is broadly known but not particularly well understood. Everyone agrees that this is a world apparently at war with itself. Country against country, rich against poor, majorities against minorities of all stripes; these conflicts are at the center of many, if not most, of our connections to each other. What we are here calling the fight for Turtle Island is another way of talking about this war while gesturing against the use of war language. .t Turtle Island is a way to describe North America prior to the discovery and colonization of this land by Europeans. It is a place that physically exists but is largely experienced as a way of thinking about this place in a different time. It is both a place and an idea about a place. I want to go to this place and I want you to come along. I am also already here, so are you.
A fight isn’t a war. A war is a brutal, ugly, inhuman thing. It grinds human tissue into paste on behalf of some abstraction like God, State, or just because I told you so. It is not negotiable. It is of the same volcanic family as genocide, hate, and bigotry. The first assertion I’ll make in this book is that war, and the thinking associated with war, is a unique kind of perversion that is correlated with the rise of industrialism and centralized state power. At this point we’ll make no causal claim, but insist that war is a homonym that refers to qualitatively different kinds of conflict based on the context in which it is articulated. This should require no explanation but gaining social prestige by touching an enemy with a stick doesn’t particularly relate to firebombing a city and annihilating hundreds, if not thousands, of living people.
to me.. at this point.. same song.. as long as in sea world.. structural violence is spiritual violence.. is not us .. the death of us.. ness
War thinking is a problem. It is the fruit of a set of problems that we will alternate between calling words like, Civilization, Colonization, The Western Enlightenment, Manifest Destiny, etc. *In addition to trying to imagine a post-war way of thinking (about the world) is the fact that, as most of our friends agree, we require something truly epic to happen to this world to live without war..t Whether this epic thing is called war, or revolution, or the total transformation of values, matters little. To clear the slate, to begin again, to **reset the clocks, to return to a tabula rasa where we begin to write our own story ***rather than rely on the stories we have been told (by Civilization and his crew) seems like an obvious step:..t not a first principle but a first crisis.
*there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it (would/could be truly epic/diff)
**legit freedom (legit re\set) will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
***any/all history ness to date.. non legit data.. cancerous distraction
This book was put together with the help of about twenty people. We’ll talk a little bit about each of them later but the thing we all share is some involvement in the fight for Turtle Island. The initial idea for this book was to talk about the overlap between native people and the politics of anarchism. Everyone I interviewed for this book I met through the broad anarchist scene (with the exception of my family members Loretta and Ron Yob). Almost everyone, except for myself, came out during our talks rejecting the label “anarchist” or being as involved in anarchist conflicts (conflicts for the heart and soul of what it means to be an anarchist) as they were in anarchist activities themselves.
5
This, of course, makes sense. Anarchism is a number of things, some of which are actively in conflict, some of which are contradictory, some of which don’t deserve the name. But some things you can say for sure. Anarchism was a 19th century ideology expressing a particular analysis of how the fight by the working class should go against the owning class. In that era anarchism was peak liberalism, attempting to express the best and highest hopes of humanity, the power of people to change for the better, and of good to triumph over evil. It was a European answer to a European problem. Anarchism also, at that time, did not necessarily care for the values of the natives whose land they were working, blacks whose slavery they were beneficiaries of, or women who were forced to stay largely silent in the political sphere. This was a different time and anarchists were creatures of that time, as they are today.
anarch ism ness
Later, once the working class had been largely crushed and/or exported, the politics that called itself anarchism could be largely described as peak counter-culture. Hippies, punks, ravers, transhumanists, bicyclists, vegans, and environmentalists all fill the ranks of anarchists today. This is to say that today anarchism is less a political ideology with clear lines and positions on the role of the individual in opposition to the State and Capitalism, and more a political affect reflecting the social and cultural attitudes of individuals. An old school anarchist would refer to this type of anarchist as lifestylist and as politically neutered and be correct to do it!
The disconnect between this history and the lifeways of most indigenous people should be apparent. While the vast majority of indigenous people are working class, it is but a small minority that describes themselves this way. Moreover the idea that a proletarian identity would unite people in such quality and vigor as to tear the economic classes asunder sounds ridiculous to a native person, especially one who watched the pan-native arguments over the past fifty years (to little or no end). The lesson of sacrificing one’s individual identity to the altar of a shared synthetic identity is hard, but it has been learned. Furthermore, and from my own experience, natives have loved and lived inside the context of subculture, but always as an outsider. There is now an outlier, and newer-to-me, phe nomenon of reservation communities that have taken on metal music (black, hair, punk), but mostly the collision between indigenous people and subculture has left both sides unscathed. I have met “Indian Joe” in at least ten different towns but never one who didn’t maintain their outside/mascot form for white/subcultural consumption.
6
Turtle Island is a place
I don’t want to use the term “ambivalence” here but it is worth mentioning as part of an introduction that this book is not intended as a call to action. Of course I would be flattered if it inspired you to act, but a call to action implies a kind of call and response in which the author says “jump” and the reader says “how high?” This is the section that is the hardest to keep away from that kind of logic, because it is about the real place called Turtle Island (loosely the land area named North America or The United States, Canada, and Mexico) and the specific ways that it is being drilled, coerced, and harangued by Manifest Destiny.
I wish I could just say something as pointed as “Find the closest drilling operation and throw your body at it! Stop it at all costs!” But I can’t and I won’t. Not only do I doubt that you or even you and your friends are enough to stop your local drilling operation but I am sick and tired of watching older, experienced activists throw other people’s bodies into the maw of policing operations with nothing but a DIY legal team to repair the damage. Yes, I would like to stop all resource extraction and put a stop to the petro-economy and all those who profit off of it, dead in their tracks. No, I don’t presume that I know how to thread the needle between on the one hand, the ginourmous pickup trucks I see on the reservations, trailer parks, and country roads of Indian Country and on the other hand, the desire to see Mother Earth unmolested.
Turtle Island is a place where I am right now and the best I can do—without raising up an Army of One Mind—is remember, tell stories, and hope to pass the spirit of resistance-to-it on to a new generation. I believe that Turtle Island is so much more powerful than the violence being done to it. that I believe it will con tinue on after Manifest Destiny finishes manifesting and fades from human history. There will be horrific damage and destruction, the quality of life will be less for several generations, and then she will heal. Our task is how to be engaged in the next cycle as its motor and not its roadway.
perhaps prior to now.. but now have means for legit global detox leap
Turtle Island is no place
When I refer to Turtle Island as a no place it is because the land, the earth that I am naming Turtle Island, is in fact somewhere else, in another time. I am not so delusional as to think that because I’d prefer Turtle Island to The US, Canada, and Mexico, that that is enough to make it so. Between here and there are standing armies (employed by those States) and the apparatus that supports them. There are priests, social workers, teachers, professors, and serious people who devote every waking hour to maintaining the mythology of Manifest Destiny because it is a cheaper way to maintain order than bullets.
As a place that doesn’t exist (but did) Turtle Island is the type of no place usually referred to as myth. Perhaps this is true, perhaps Turtle Island is merely the fantastic story of a people who have since disappeared, or it is the story I’d prefer to tell about the place I live.
If I live in Turtle Island and not The United States of America, I can differentiate between my life and the life violently imposed upon me. I might be powerless to do much of anything about it but it somehow feels important to assert that I would if I could, not an end-of-themovie inspirational assertion about how We Are Powerful Together, but a personal declaration that I am on the side of a myth vs Manifest Destiny, that I believe in something-like-struggle if not the particulars of a specific fight, that I walk on the back of turtles and not on a spinning globe that’ll be discarded as soon as the powerful are ready to leave.
resonating with hari rat park law and getting out of sea world ness..
7
Facts and Story
This is a book of fifteen different answers to the question of how one fights for TI. The way each person frames their answer is about how each is striving to live honestly and fiercely.
The resounding takeaway I had at the end of this project was how rarely people spoke in Manichean language. There was plenty of, this is how it works for me, and very little this is how it should work for everyone. These stories are a resounding chorus against “us vs them” thinking and for something I’d call “both/and” thinking.
us & them ness and none of us are free ness.. and thurman interconnectedness law et al
Yes, there are unavoidable facts: facts about genocide and colonization, facts about displacement and control, facts about the white world that is often times at total odds to the world everyone else lives in… but. There is also something else. Something fantastic that requires one to keep on living, especially when that life is about keeping alive a native life and memories of lifeways.
Caveats
I hate to apologize. I am generally against it as a weak substitute for caring enough to not injure in the first place. But we are strangers and I do injure as a matter of course. I’ll explain my motivations and biases here so you understand them. You can choose to forgive them or not, but you should have that power before getting too much further into this text.
same with thank you ness et al
One, I have a North American bias. I have traveled in other places and seen through at least a pinprick of other people’s experiences, enough to say that I understand how little I understand. I live on Turtle Island, not on the back of an elephant or a hippopotamus. But I recognize that the other way to express what I am saying here is that I am an American, with all the baggage that entails. While I might contain multitudes, they all pay taxes to a nation-state machine that, by its existence and daily actions, is singular. It is the Manifest Destiny I’ve already cited. It is disinterested in Turtle Island. It is largely what we are fighting.
Second, I am the child of natives, I was raised by natives, I saw myself as a native until I became an adult and was told I was something else. This tension between my face that is usually seen as the face of Manifest Destiny, and every other part of me, is a central theme of any book that would discuss indigeneity and the fight for Turtle Island. The radical position tends to be that I am a white person who happens to have a mixed race story. I want to abolish that position but that’s complicated and—like most complicated positions—in active tension with most of the commonly understood world.
myth of normal.. socrates supposed to law.. et al
Third, and this is another complicated thing, most of my interview subjects have kind of fallen off the map since our conversations together (two years ago now). They have, either by choice or because of life, not communicated with me much about the text of our discussions. This puts me in a hard situation. I started out thinking this book would be largely complete once the interviews were transcribed. I quickly realized however, that most of the transcripts followed an arc that could be described as “getting-toknow-you conversations with some solid questions in the second half.” While I was tempted to print the conversations as they were, it would have been a very long book, and audiences are not necessarily prepared to take the time. This seemed like it needed more of an editorial hand to make a strong book. So instead I have thematically grouped the (solid) questions and largely left the interviewee answers unedited. This isn’t exactly how I presented the book to the interviewees, but in lieu of conversation (or answers to emails) this seems the most respectful and contentful option.
8
I think the topics of race, colonization, and indigeneity are deep and dealt with here with complexity. But conceptually this book should and does beg for more. It is fair to criticize the work that is yet to be done, which is partly why I have been open and transparent about the process.
The first section introduces the interviewees in their own words. Later sections repeat parts of the introductions in the contexts of the varying topics. (Maybe ten paragraphs are repeated in total.) This is because the points themselves are worth emphasizing, because the speakers didn’t get enough time with me to make some points separately, and because the given points just fit well in both contexts. Repetition is necessary and normal in most storytelling, and this book borrows that strength.
There is also a terminology question I’ll mention here and dive deeper into throughout the book. The terms native, Native American, Indian, and indigenous are all sloppy equivalences. Here I attempt to use them precisely, and the interviewees don’t, which is perfect. I use and prefer the term Indian as an ironic self-label that keeps in mind the misnomer of naming the residents of this country by the namer’s misunderstanding. I find the gallows humor of genocide and colonization a kind of honesty that cuts to the bone. I recognize that not everyone agrees with me on this point. Native is a useful and common alternate term. It speaks to place and priority. Native American is more precise and mostly refers to how natives framed their pannative identity in the 1970s, but it also includes the name of an Italian. Finally, indigenous is more modern, describing something similar to native but sharing it with international indigenous struggles. But that is not how I use the term indigenous in this book. When I refer to indigenous in most of my conversations I am talking about ideas of how to live as a native in this world. How can we be, or return to, an Earth-based way of life? How can we find each other? How do we recreate band society? Do we? What does it mean to be after our people have been destroyed (but not)?
holmgren indigenous law et al
While not discussed in this book, my interest is in the tensions between survival and success, local and international priorities, identity and the critique of essentialism. The conversations in this book inspired me to believe that there is more intelligence around these questions in the people who live them every day, but for these conversations to be useful in the fight for Turtle Island they have to be shared with our fellow travelers and those who want to join the fight but don’t have the language for it. This is a book of that language.
9
Glossary
APOC
Anarchist People of Color was an informal attempt to address racial issues in the anarchist space. Part email list and part website, it evolved into a general attitude that few disagreed with but it didn’t do much of note.Pan-nativity
This was a current in 20th century native activism. It grouped all Natives into one culture rather than recognizing individual tribal culture and practices. It has fallen out of favor but still exists as a set of utopian ideas mostly recognized as such.The Rez
the reservation; usually the one you are most familiar to but possibly the one your family has ties to.The Left
left wing politics; refers to an antiquated form of politics. In the 18th century the left were those who sat on left side of the French Parliament (and opposed the monarchy) and were generally for egalitarianism. In the US context radicals joke that the left means the left wing of capital since on matters concerning foreign and domestic policy the Democrats (ostensibly the left party) are in lockstep with the right concerning capitalism. The Dems call it neo-liberalism and it means privatization, free trade, and a reduced central government in favor of the private sector. Regardless most conversations about social change center the left as the medium by which it would occur. We would disagree with such an assertion and see it as a waste of time but recognize that there may not be a social change medium at all. The time of mass politics being radical or liberatory is probably over.Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny is the idea that an enlightened, progressive people deserve the world and damn the consequences. It is the logic that brought Christians to Turtle Island and allows them to think borders should exist. It is the way of seeing that allows for Nation States, immigration, and fallacies like America, Canada, etc.10
The People
This is a book that results from a Conversation. Of course it has had a hundred little parts but the Conversation is about how we have reconciled the two significant parts of our lives. How we live in both the white world that we grew into (and resist), and the native world we come from. How we have found—in anarchist politics, in native work, in our daily lives—a constant outside to be within. Of course, in this way and others, this story isn’t about us at all. Almost everyone talked to in these pages lives in the dusk of the world they’d prefer, and perhaps the dawn of the day that could be. The terms change—for instance most of the interviewees rankle at the term anarchism—and the emphases are different in many cases, but the sense from almost everyone, about their lives and their goals, is best summed up by a term from the Anishinaabe author and academic Gerald Vizenor: liminal.
liminality ness
*I knew that to truly begin this conversation I’d have to do more than meet people in the middle. I also knew that phone interviews, or Skype talks, or other technologically-mediated mechanisms weren’t going to accomplish what I was trying for, so I traveled to each of these interviews, mostly to the towns and cities where these people lived, and often to their homes. I recorded them and when I got home, they were transcribed. Originally I intended only to write supporting text for each interview. I retreated from that position as it became clear to me that, since I had not previously met most of the people I was talking to, most of each conversation was composed of getting-to-know-you exercises as much as of discussions concerning walking between two worlds, anarchism (or the practice of getting to some place worth living), and liminality, which were questions I hadn’t even formally composed to myself, at that point.
*rather.. need a means for legit a global detox leap.. otherwise just iterating whalespeak
Here I give a brief introduction to each of my interview subjects. My intention is to get past their CV or activist resume and get at what I was trying to accomplish in conversation with each person. I feel like I generally had more success with the people who were less polished or who had been interviewed less, conversations that had more potential to escape talking points and the studied answers to the same old questions. On the other hand, the polished interviews establish a baseline of native thought on a number of questions and, more pointedly, are the **bleeding edge of radical thought on issues at the time, which have ended up as the baseline for how many of these topics are thought about and expressed now (two years later).
*oi.. not edge/radical enough.. ie: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
I briefly introduce each to meet their worlds, leadership, and wisdom and, as always, you’ll see I’m trying to find the humor, pain, and intelligence too.
22
kevy: it’s like my elders always said, the sun, the tash, is vibrant, and it gives you energy. The moon, mother moon, gives you loving and unconditional nurturing and care to sleep good..t It’s like someone singing lullabies. My grandparents always told me that. They always gave us these reminders.
sun=energy..what the world needs most is the energy of 8b alive people
moon=unconditionality.. intro to moon et al; pearson unconditional law et al
art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
27
lyn:
Lyn: What’s the last year I did anything… Oh, people kept trying to drag me back in. I don’t know because I don’t really good concept of time passing… let me think of events…
I was full on in the Olympics…
A!: That was 2010.
Lyn: ….2010, and then there was something after the Olympics, then there was the Stanley Cup (that wasn’t a political event)…
A!: No, but there were a lot of communiques (laughter)
Lyn: However… I realized in my studies of criminology recently that actually sports are a very effective maneuvering to eradicate social anomie in the population. I was like, oooh…
super bowl ness et al
A!: As we suspected! Aha!
Lyn: Everyone always said it was about the patriarchy! They were wrong; I always knew it wasn’t about the patriarchy… (Laughing) I knew it was something. Always gotta be something.
So then there was tons of stuff.
A!: Occupy…
Lyn: Occupy, Occupy ruined everything; it was Occupy! I went to the Occupy and it was horrifying and nothing has ever recovered, and any time I’ve ever attempted to do anything I’ve been terrified that horrible occupy people will show up. Oh, there was also some native stuff after the Olympics.
occupy movement ness.. cancerous distraction to what we have the means to do today..
A!: Idle No More, or something else?
Lyn: Idle No More was after Occupy. It was Occupy; Occupy ruined it. It was completely horrible.
A!: How?
Lyn: It was just a bunch of fringe-dwelling freaks who don’t know anything, who just are on these bizarre emotional identity politics ego trips. It was terrible. It was like ugh, “this is what I fought all night to get home to?!”
Have you seen The Warriors movie? You know at the end when they fight all the way back to Coney Island and they’re like disgusted [something blows through their hair?] and the movie ends? [laughter] That’s what Occupy was for me.
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1 – Anarchism
anarchism ness
The origin of this project was a quest to find and explore the overlap between indigeneity and anarchism. As you are going to see in this section, I found very little hope for anarchism, or any other revolutionary system of transforming the world, in the conversations I had for this project. Russel Means articulated it best in his classic speech “For America to Live, Europe must Die.”
why not yet?.. because we haven’t yet let go enough to see/hear/be (legit free people)
again..
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p.. we can’t seem to let go that much
When I speak of Europeans or mental Europeans, I’m not allowing for false distinctions. I’m not saying that on the one hand there are the by-products of a few thousand years of genocidal, reactionary, European intellectual development which is bad; and on the other hand there is some new revolutionary intellectual development which is good. I’m referring here to the so-called theories of Marxism and anarchism and ‘leftism’ in general. I don’t believe these theories can be separated from the rest of the European intellectual tradition. It’s really just the same old song.
any form of m\a\p is same song
need a means to get out of sea world.. let’s do this first.. for (blank)’s sake
hari rat park law et al
The best that is said by some of the participants, usually the ones with the least amount of direct exposure to recent anarchism is that they understand anarchism to mean the same thing as what Indians are talking about.
Ultimately this is what I believe too but it’s going to take some serious creative thinking and excising for us to get to a meaningful consensus.
rather.. need to let go of consensus ness.. and just trust us.. try something legit diff..
public consensus always oppresses someone(s) et al
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
While there may be some sympathy among these folks for something-like anarchism, there is very little sympathy for the anarchists who proselytize for The Beautiful Idea in this world. Mostly they are described herein as being out of touch and having paternalistic tendencies if they aren’t straight up racist.
In anarchist circles there is often a distinction drawn between anarchy and anarchists. By that distinction one can distance oneself from the idiots, activists, and fools who use the term (anarchist/anarchism) to describe themselves while still describing one’s personal preference for a world without coercion (from the State, Economy, and Ownership). One can be for anarchy without being an anarchist.
any form of m\a\p is coercive.. aka: we (none of us) won’t be legit free
This distinction points to one of the greatest challenges of anarchism that is also shared with indigenous people, terminology. The words we choose to describe ourselves are not the same terms that the outside world chooses to describe us, by and large. I continue to use the term anarchism because I want to be clear about the political nature of the kind of change that I see necessary in the world but others will naturally use terms like survivance or a return to a better world or being “traditional”. While Natives often emphasize the past (usually a time prior to their birth) or just surviving, and see (correctly) that anarchist thinking is either utopian or at least idealistic, then neither the twain shall meet.
Clearly that meeting was the goal of this project. I do believe that anarchists (at least of the type I’m interested in) share a lot with natives in terms of how they think about the world, what kind of footprint they want to leave, who they want to be, and who they want to work with. In return I believe that a lot of natives would benefit from taking anarchists more seriously than they do. Outside the evidence to the contrary (which mostly falls under the category of activism—a topic for a separate project) a living relationship between anarchists and natives would strengthen both and could inspire something amazing.
need to let go of all the label(s).. or we’ll keep playing wack a mole with same song ness.. need to try only label (via nonjudgmental expo labeling) as daily curiosity.. as itch-in-the-soul..
we have to get away from the finite set of choices of decision making, consensus, any form of democratic admin.. any form of m\a\p.. need to try curiosity over decision making
infinitesimal structures approaching the limit of structureless\ness and/or vice versa .. aka: ginorm/small ness
1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen
2\ if we create a way to ground the chaos of 8b legit free people
How can, and should, anarchism be reconciled with native and indigenous values (to the extent to which they are distinct)? It is the task of anarchism to change, transform, and reflect on this question, which means a humility that contradicts the core anarchist principles of autonomy and anti-authoritarianism. Indigenous and anarchist agreed-upon principles are probably different but the dual problem of such a heavy burden of desiring the total transformation of the world while being powerless and young, confuses most anarchists about how serious we should, and shouldn’t, be taking ourselves.
37
loretta: But it wasn’t, because human nature gets in the way, and some people want to have more power than others.
rather.. that’s whalespeak.. that’s nature of whales.. not legit free people.. we have no idea what legit free people are like.. black science of people/whales law et al
oi
ron:
A!: You knew which side you were on?
Ron: I knew what side I was on, but I knew how unscrupulous the other side was, and how the monster that you’re fighting… You can hoot and holler but it’s not going to get you anywhere. It’s kind of like if you’re playing chess with someone. You make some moves on the right side while they’re distracted with the other side, and all of a sudden the back door opens up for you or something.
can’t be sides.. us & them of any sort
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
oi
38
Ron: Yea. but then the Europeans come in and one of the first things they do is bring in diseases. Then they bring these problems like the Queen of Spain, who offered up bounties for scalping. Indians didn’t invent taking scalps.
So the next generation people have to dodge scalpers. Then after that they bring in alcohol. Then after that they start the wars. Then they come and put the kids in boarding schools, cut off their hair, take their language away. Each generation had a new terrible thing to deal with, as well as the old ones. So by this time, these kids… of course their parents aren’t going to trust the government. It’s been proven they can’t.
khan filling the gaps law et a;
When my mother was three she was taken away and put in a boarding school. She didn’t do anything wrong, they just told her “you can’t live with the Indians now, because we are going to teach you to be a non-Indian.” So these kids, they haven’t recovered from the generations of debilitating hardship. Generational trauma. You wonder why these kids are basket cases: they just kept getting kicked down the hill.
all of us.. via any supposed to ness
For those who I talked to who had the most direct experience with anarchists, who had directly organized with them, and had been as on the inside of the modern anarchist mind as it was possible to be, they were even bleaker.
40
ADCA: Yea, we’re running a summer camp for teenagers that’s trying to do suicide and substance abuse prevention.
ADCS: It is not an anarchist project.
it’s a hari rat park law project.. need a nother way for 8b to live/be
41
ADCS: Yea. So part of the question is how do we create our own economies that aren’t necessarily dependent on western economy, right?..t It’s a very different type of work than I ever thought we’d end up in, but…
perhaps let’s try/code money (any form of measuring/accounting) as the planned obsolescence w/ubi as temp placebo.. where legit needs are met w/o money.. till people forget about measuring..ie: sabbatical ish transition
oikos (the economy our souls crave).. ‘i should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.’ – gaston bachelard, the poetics of space
ADCA: Right.
ADCS: How do we create an economy that’s not dependent on capital?
ADCA: Where the currency is traditional knowledge, where it’s traditional, healthy food, where it’s traditional goods and communal living.
ADCS: For me those are very anarchist questions. Questions that anarchists struggle with as well. How do we live and operate in ways that don’t commodify our relationships and lives..t
10-day-care-center\ness et al
has to be sans any form of m\a\p for the dance to dance
43
2 – What Exactly Are We Fighting: Race
The fight for Turtle Island is a fight about the physical impacts of Colonization, Borders, Reservations, Poverty, and ultimately how these constraints perpetuate themselves through racism. *Racism is a set of rules and values inflicted on a population by a force capable of maintaining its mythologies—usually by violence and the threat of violence. Some refer to this force in the modern ideological regime as Whiteness or White People but that presupposes a unity that is dubious at best. Perhaps the social order of capitalism is a better description of this force but the toxic way that Marxism exists as the only intelligent way to express an opposition to capitalism makes this a challenge also. Why would we join a fight where we want to see both sides lose? Why use their terms to describe the regime of racism, when **the terminology itself is part and parcel of that regime?.t
*aka.. any form of m\a\p
**aka: whalespeak.. language as control/enclosure
literacy and numeracy both elements of colonialism/control/enclosure.. we need to calculate differently and stop measuring things
For natives on Turtle Island these White, Manifest Destiny, and even Marx ist myths cross the boundary with reality through the classification of “Indianness” by measurement of blood purity, aka blood quantum. This measurement limits benefits, recognition, and civil rights by the Federal Government by gauging the percentage of ancestors who are documented as full-blood Native Americans. This is a strange way to define us when our love is not constrained by tribe, gender, or ritual, and neither are our relations.
For our interview subjects the *boundaries and liminality of these racial categories define daily life. To an extent we are fighting the racial domination of the **existing social order, but we are also fighting the ways that mythology is tricky and inculcated in us.
*siddiqi border law et al..
**carhart-harris entropy law et al
***wilde not-us law.. we are like whales in sea world.. need hari rat park law et al
For some of these excerpts I’ll provide context for clarity.
45
ADCA: It comes up all the time, but it’s also something I think you’re very careful about, because lack of… lack of enrollment, like minimal blood quantum, those types of things, but also being very conscientious about the way that identity can be interpreted, identifying as a descendant, politically, socially, “I am a descendant of these people.” But it’s something I think… it’s a big deal I think with a lot of the kids we work with. We have several kids who look like him, blondhaired, blue-eyed.
ADCS: Who are enrolled…
ADCA: …who are enrolled. But this real concept of identity, like, they’re made fun of at different native events for being white, and asked what they’re doing there. So having this real conversation about what that is and what it looks like, and also traditional concepts of relatives and identity, like, if somebody was adopted in, it didn’t matter what somebody looked like. If they were down, they’re Dakota. So really trying to structure in that perspective with our kids and the kind of communities we cultivate. We don’t care what your blood quantum is, we care, “Are you down? Are you willing to throw down for your nation. Are you willing to work and cultivate this aspect of what it means to be Dakota, are you willing to help kill Iya?” If that’s the case, I don’t care.
vermont issues
and/but rather.. not willing to .. for nation et al.. but letting go enough to be legit free
ADCS: It’s interesting, often times the conflict comes up more with white folks, than it does with…
ADCA: [big sigh] A!: Of course.
ADCS: I feel like that’s more often where it is. Which is fine. I don’t really take any of it personally. I don’t take a lot of things personally [chuckles], I guess. So it’s one of those things where if people don’t recognize me, that’s fine. That’s why I was talking about that backing. That backing is all I really care about. Am I part of a community. That’s what I think is an essential part of an indigenous identity, is that connection to community, and relatives, and land.
missing piece #2 ness
A!: And you feel that.
ADCS: At least I feel so more than ever before.
A!: Because it’s in doing the work that you have the feeling.
46
Ron: Yea, it was, it was. The way she referred to certain people… but part of what you’re talking about… Blood quantum is a whole big tangled web. You can’t get Indian health care unless you have a card. And the tuition waiver, you have to have a certain blood quantum for that. That’s a state program. The health care is a federal program. And there are city programs… They tried to let you self-identify, but they got caught at it in the last few years.
utopia of rules backwards ness
They did that because their grants would be based on enrollments. So they’d pad their counts as much as they possibly could. Gosh, you don’t even want me to go there with the Grand Rapids schools ‘cause they did some really terrible things. Not just to Indians, but to bilingual …
57
lA!: So on the one hand you’re talking about the way things were, some of those stories we know because of oral tradition, some we only know because of anthropology, and then we’re talking about what does the future hold. And what’s our order of operation because of course in general when we’re talking about colonization or decolonization, we’re talking about how do we throw the master off our back much more than we’re talking about… t
has to be sans any form of m\a\p
58
3 – Indigeneity & Decolonization
This chapter is distinct from the chapter on what we are fighting because indigeneity has a different and perhaps broader definition today than when indigenous people (vs civilized ones) were the only people to roam the earth (or this continent). This chapter also has a different take on a central issue because here we assume that race does not exist, that race is a frame of mind and a way to separate us and make us mistrust each other. It only exists insofar as those in power have determined that our difference from one another is important but not in any important biological, sociological, or ethical way.
Race is an expression of power-over and is the lingua franca of how a State controls a population. On the other hand we are all indigenous, but perhaps ignorant of what that means or how it could have meaning in our lives. We are all from some place and this chapter makes some furtive attempts to contextualize indigeneity as a type of Rosetta Stone, a bridge to reconciling life in this world and remembering another world—the world of spirits, our relations—that still exists.
on each heart and why we need bachelard oikos law via means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
This is a forced definition of course because (as already noted) there is a certain sloppiness in terminology in native circles. I ask most interviewees about what terms they use to self identify, and they run the gamut for all the reasons one can imagine, including habit, family, or specifically political reasons.
Language and terminology are the kinds of concerns that are an additional, usually silent, burden on native people but also on those who’d like to imagine a different world without all this (imagine a hand waving over the entirely of our genocidal, massifying, and dying-ofoverheating world).
Against decolonization generally The term decolonize has taken on a certain kind of popularity in leftist circles. Like many words it has always had a positive sense, denoting something we can do against the mega-machine, against colonization. It has also had a sub-cultural character, a meaning of very small things we could do against something very large: eating a local grain; speaking a few terms from a people who, for generations, have been all but disappeared; even acknowledging original owners of the land we are standing on. All these seem like meager gruel when the owners of this world drive by in Teslas, drink $4 cups of coffee, and eat a selection of foods delivered to them from around the world.
Of course I think that a transformation of our daily lives is necessary. To be successful, the fight for Turtle Island would entail a total transformation..t But decolonization, as articulated in most contexts, seemed like an extremely partial and backwards way to attempt that change. Moreover people started using decolonization terminology in goofy contexts, making it an embarrassing way to talk about something serious. At its peak (about four to five years ago) I saw decolonize yoga, decolonize prisons, and decolonize your mind, all offered as if they were as easy to accomplish as changing one’s accessories. This trivialized the idea.
part\ial ness is killing us.. keeping us from us.. for (blank)’s sake
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In its most perverted form, decolonization was owned by a particularly egregious form of solitary boyscout-ism called rewilding. Rewilding is an attempt to answer the question “What is to be done?” but asked in a way that is entirely about technics and hardly at all about how existentially broken we are, at the heart of all our other problems. Just as decolonization (that is, declaring ourselves enlightened and the problem over) isn’t a great way to cure the problems of daily life, rewilding (as curing deer hides and walking barefoot) doesn’t solve many problems. Not a great answer, unless the question is “what’s your eco-hobby?”
60
I have resolved this question in the past by utilizing an even clumsier term to speak to the problem/solution I was looking for. Indigeneity—defined as an imagined, culturally specific set of practices related to the people and land of a biome—seemed worth defending. But the first question asked when one says indigenous is “who decides?,” which is a hard question (especially in the urban West). Obviously decolonization has the same problem, but at least it provides answers (and partially the ridiculousness of Decolonize Yoga is informative here). Indigenous politics suffers from the brutal reality that genocide has made the problems of natives’ existence a small one, because they are mostly dead and gone. Indigeneity is an attempt to make the problem of natives existential, which decolonize has done a better job of. At the same time, decolonize demonstrates it is the wrong problem in the first place. The problem is still that the State has power over native people and Capitalism is largely how it is experienced.
again.. rather.. any form of m\a\p
The issue of indigeneity is one of power. As long as indigenous people, ideas, and ways of life are being repressed, they remain a forlorn expression of powerlessness and not the seed that could flower into an entire new, and old, way of living. As it stands, the kudzu of Civilization won’t allow any more growth as it’s taken the nutrients, space, light, and mind-share from everything that came before. How do we clear the kudzu, while maintaining the conceptual space that would be required for something truly different to grow?..t
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
Gord
Gord: In Canada the anarchists are more influenced by indigenous struggles and they’re gonna do more political organizing and political analysis about anti-colonial resistance than in the US.
Decolonization, I think… anarchists are decolonizing from the empire. It’s just that it’s not as a nation, as a people, it’s as individuals who are also coming from highly dysfunctional communities. So they’re banding together… This punk hippie aesthetic is maybe part of the decolonization, like “I’m not gonna wear the same clothing as you, I’m gonna wear my punk rock-style attire, whatever”… The black bloc, eating out of dumpsters, squatting houses, living communally, that’s decolonizing, but for the most part they’re not family units, right? They’re constructed communities, mostly in urban areas, sometimes you have these communal living situations in the countryside…
With indigenous people it’s gonna be different, right? There’s decolonizing like, “I’m not gonna eat that crap processed food, I’m going to eat my traditional foods.” That’s decolonizing. “I’m gonna go out on the land and learn how to construct shelters and make fires and relearn these skills,” that’s indigenous decolonizing. I’m gonna learn my songs, dances, carvings, and stuff from my ancestors. That’s indigenous decolonizing. As a nation we’re going to assert our sovereignty over our territory. That’s indigenous decolonizing. The anarchists are not anywhere around those kinds of concepts. They’re breaking away from empire and trying to construct communities within it, so it’s a very different dynamic that’s going on. And that’s where the cultural stuff starts to come in. The anarchists are creating a culture from the wreckage of the empire, or whatever. Indigenous people have a culture, we just have to revive it, relearn it, so those are big differences.
need hari rat park law.. a legit global detox leap et al
In Canada and in the northwest, some anarchists are learning primitive skills as well, and I think that’s a big part of decolonizing. ‘Cause anarchists, who are predominantly white, euro-American, euro-Canadian, whatever… their ancestors were indigenous, tribal people. So bushcrafting is in a sense a way of decolonizing, going back to the land. All people come from the land. All people were tribal peoples at one time.
holmgren indigenous law et al
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A!: Does this definition start to lose the power of the terminology, though?
Gord: What terminology?
A!: Decolonization; in other words if everyone can do it, then…
Gord: I don’t think it loses power, I think it’s good to expand the concept of decolonization. Is decolonization only for indigenous people? I don’t think so. Everybody needs to decolonize, because everybody’s been colonized. You know, western Europe was colonized by the Romans. You know, aside from small pockets of resistance, maybe.
all been in sea world to date
A!: So you’re more or less saying that you think that for both individuals and groups, decolonization is the path out of the current system. You think that there are some breaking points…
Gord: Decolonizing’s gotta be a fundamental part of a revolutionary resistance movement. The revolutionaries, like in the 50s and 60s, the Che Guevaras and that, they didn’t talk about decolonization, they talked about the new revolutionary human being, which we can interpret as saying “you gotta decolonize from empire.” That’s what they talked about. We can’t be the imperialist, we can’t be the capitalist. We must be something new. They were… in their utopian vision, their thing was “we’ll create the new human being!” *But the real human being was here already, for tens of thousands of years before empire and colonialism existed, there were real human beings. That’s the indigenous peoples all around the world, living their lives. So the concept of decolonization **needs to be expanded: everybody needs to decolonize.
*yeah.. i don’t think so.. not legit free.. none to date..
**so bigger/deeper expansion.. no ie’s to date
But the thing is that culture comes from the land. The root word of culture is actually “from the land.” That’s why indigenous cultures are all similar even though they’re all different. Because it depends on the land that they’re in. On the west coast we have a very distinct culture…
But I’m not that concerned about the details, like language or whatever, because as your decolonization process continues, and you’re on the land, you’re gonna get culture. Traditional culture will be revived, one way or another. If there’s a systemic collapse of society, of western civilization, and everybody’s going back to the land because that’s how they have to survive, then their culture’s gonna come back. I’m not so worried about that. I’m more thinking in terms of survival. What do we need to survive, as people. Because the system can’t last forever.
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So what do we need to know? What are the priorities of survival? Shelter, fire, water, food..t I don’t put language at the top of that. My decolonization journey… I’m just saying language isn’t the most important thing for me. I want to learn other traditional skills to survive because western civilization cannot sustain itself.
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature so we can org around legit needs
Decolonization is a process. You can’t stand up and say “I’m a decolonized person.” Until the colonial system is dismantled, eradicated, done away with, there will always be this colonial structure that we have to live in. So no one can ever get out and say, “well, I’m decolonized now. It’s all good.” Even if they know their language fluently. I mean, you can find fluent language speakers here on the coast. They know their language, they know a lot about their culture, but they’re complete sellouts because they’re capitalists, right? They have no analysis of capitalism. They have a good analysis of colonialism, but not of capitalism. They know their language but they’re sellouts. That just shows that knowing your language doesn’t make you a decolonized person. Knowing how to carve masks doesn’t make you decolonized. It’s a part of the process, but there’s no end to it until the colonial system is gone and you have the ability of generations living on the land, relearning their traditional cultures or learning a culture from that land
no end (legit free/diff) till it’s all of us
A!: How do you raise a decolonized child?
Gord: There are many different ways to approach it. One is, don’t put them in the education system, teach them yourself, ‘cause they’re just gonna get… that’s a big part of colonization, the indoctrination of the school system.
supposed to’s of school/work.. black science of people/whales law
A!: Sure. So for you the clock is ticking on when you need to be out of the city, right?
Gord: In a sense. To get her out of the city definitely would be a good thing, so yea there is that imperative to get her out. Those things, plus also feeding her well, not processed foods, that’s an important part of a good life style, that’s how you make a healthy person.
A!: She’s still nursing now, so you’ve got some time.
Gord: Yea. And she can be exposed to our traditional culture back in our communities, that’s an important part of decolonizing. You know native kids who grow up in the city have very little exposure to indigenous culture…
A lot of people, a lot of natives will end up in prison, and that’s the first time they get exposed to their culture in a serious way. They’ll go to sweat lodge ceremonies, they’ll have pipe ceremonies inside the prisons, here in Canada anyway, they’ll learn carving…
There are lots of things you can learn in prison, and one of them that some natives learn is cultural stuff. Politics as well.
Native children, our daughter, will always be colonized to some extent because we’re colonized, we’re gonna raise her… but we’re gonna try our best to make her as decolonized as possible, so that when she’s more conscious as an individual, she can proceed and be better equipped than we were. It took a long time to get to the idea of decolonization, or even that colonization occurred here, what the impacts of that were. *That’s why history’s so important, it explains to you how you came to be where you are now, as a person, as a family, as a community, as a people. Without that understanding it’s so confusing, why people are so messed up, for example. **Why are they drinking all the time, why are they alcoholics, why are they drug addicts. Well, a lot of it is through colonization. The impact of colonization, that’s what makes people dysfunctional. There probably would be a lot fewer people running around ***thinking they’re crazy if they just had a better understanding of their history. Because a lot of it’s hidden, of course. The government… the educational system doesn’t teach you this stuff.
*yeah.. i think history ness is the confusing/messed-up part.. unless it’s a grammatis broken law ness..
**yeah that.. if we take it back to since forever ness
***crazywise (doc) et al.. but today .. since we have means for legit global detox leap.. learning history.. rehashing gabor’s trauma ness.. is even a cancerous distraction.. we just need a means to start living sans any form of m\a\p.. aka: to let go.. let people be.. and trust that/us
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Gord: Yea, it’s weird. The idea of decolonizing, I’m sure it’s … It’s in the black liberation stuff but I don’t see it too much.
A!: The Black Panther writing was clearer about this, right.
Gord: That’s why I was saying I wouldn’t poo poo anyone talking about decolonizing because everyone needs to do it. They have a tribal ancestry. All people do, white people too. So they can pursue decolonization, just like there are peoples in Europe who fought against their owners. They have some things to be proud of.
But like I was saying, the politics in the US. are very black-centric, especially for anarchists and the left in general. I mean when the talk is about race, or anti-racism, etc. So I can see how it would get weird with the decolonize thing. But it’s an interesting critique of “occupy” because they’re challenging the idea of occupation as being a good thing, something to pursue, to do more of. But it’s context too: Occupy Wall Street is clearer, what the goal was, but then radical natives come along and are like “we don’t like this, let’s expand this to ‘decolonize’ and then all the people who invested in Occupy, they’re not gonna like that because you’re taking the name away from them. You’re undermining the whole thing that they feel like they’re building.
Danielle
Danielle: I think that what indigenous peoples need to do the most right now is drop their egos, and start to work as communities. And remember the roles we had as people working together in community towards a common cause. ‘Cause we’re kind of seeing ourselves through this Eurocentric lens still. We’re trying to decolonize ourselves, but… Ultimately our subconsciouses have been programmed to understand our identities and our thoughts and our ideas through this Eurocentric lens. So I always understand it as work that has to start with the individual, because if we’re not willing to undo these ideas in our own minds first, then there’s no way it’s going to happen on a collective level. So we might have these issues where we want to go on the land and be on the front lines to stop this industrialization, but there’s also a lot of work that needs to be undone on an individual level.
need global detox leap
For me it goes individual, family, clan, nation. That’s how it works. And unless we’re *willing to engage in that hard work individually, it’s not going to **happen collectively.
*but not really takes a lot of work ness
**the dance is both
infinitesimal structures approaching the limit of structureless\ness and/or vice versa .. aka: ginorm/small ness
And that individual work is really tough. You’re facing, like, “oh, I did learn that I was this kind of person, but actually I’m that other kind.” And that internal conflict a lot of times will just make people not want to engage. Instead of putting all that passion into themselves, they’ll put it into their communities, and it’s not that that’s bad work, but it would be more effective if it were done on an individual level first.
65
ADCA: Right. How do we dream big.
ADCS: We can’t necessarily go back, but how do we be informed by that, how do we create something that’s much more akin to how we were.
not deep enough.. been like whales in sea world since forever..
need something legit diff.. hari rat park law et al
Klee
A!: What I identify with that I really like (but I guess I want to talk through why it’s impossible), is that you are more or less saying that anyone who wants to take this project seriously basically has to make a multi-generational commitment. In other words, indigeneity, whatever that means, will require that kind of time. It’s not going to happen in your lifetime. So of course why that’s impossible is, the American consumer is not going to accept that they can’t buy something. Even an ideology.
another myth.. so cancerous distraction.. today we have means to leap.. for (blank)’s sake
66
Dominique
Dominique: When you’re talking about decolonization, the problem is… where do you draw the line. What tools are you going to use to decide what things were like before, or who we were before as Ojibwa people.
You have to use experts, like ethnologists, for information. Christian missionaries for indigenous Hymn and Bible translations. Looking backwards can be problematic for the colonized. Political optimists use the child to represent the future. Natives are often times expected to look back on a lost utopia. We’re supposed to already be dead. That’s sort of my reaction to some primitive yearnings, that seem to say “here’s the point that we need to rewind to.” I think the drawbacks may be close to those of other utopias.
there is no place.. just a place we need to listen to.. on each heart ness
ie: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
67
And how can we leave our ancestors with agency, if you want to call it that. They were humans who were reacting, and that’s sort of how I approach anarchism, because it’s mostly a non-native thing, but I like to think that I can use it and not become a European.
if reacting.. not agency..
I don’t know where to begin to make that separation. I don’t know what is colonized inside of myself. It all seems pretty damaged. Maybe that is what is radical. I can say to natives in the city, “you can’t go home and find the answer there.” Just like, me leaving rural areas and coming to the city didn’t change everything; there’s no place to go.
all of it damaged.. so.. no place to go.. but too.. don’t need to go any place.. just need to be quiet enough to see/hear/be
68
dom: It’s not about winning moral arguments.. it’s not always about calling other people out.
graeber model law et al
A!: I would say that calling this postmodern is basically name-calling, and is really a complaint about not knowing what to do, and wanting to be told what to do.
not legit wanting.. but programmed for the safety net of people telling other people what to do
Dominique: I think *the way that the question is asked already limits how we can answer it. I’m not convinced that we can have the right ideas, and then go forth and change the world. I think **I’m part of the world. and the world changes me.
**this is still *this..
I don’t think that we have special consciousness that we can bestow on other people. Or that there’s a way forward.
And maybe that there’s not a way backward either. My only answer is that it’s complicated. If the idea is decolonization (that is, understanding native people), be cautious when someone tells you that they have the answer, that they know the right approach for working with native people. Skip the anti-oppression workshops. There’s not one way because there’s not one native society. So there’s not an easy solution.
If you want to learn from Indians, consider caring about the people close to you right now. Try to get to the point that what you’re doing is revolutionary, without waiting for some kind of break.
so true.. but too.. now that we have a means for something legit diff.. need to leap.. humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..
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4 – The Fight for Turtle Island
The fight for Turtle Island is a local struggle that works with other localities aesthetically rather than in a networked, coherent way, or with any particular solidarity.
This fight for Turtle Island isn’t epic. It is local, NIMBY-ish, and crafted towards the kind of selfie culture we live in. And that is because the fight for Turtle Island isn’t a campaign, a war, or zero sum game. It is a manifestation of the kind of familial politics that native people have translated into “white person language” in such a way that it has a chance of success in this particular world. It is also the rejection of this kind of translation (as politics, as “white person thinking”, as becoming your own enemy, etc.).
The fight for Turtle Island is teaching your children to speak a language from your ancestors, from the past, one that you don’t even speak that well yourself because the State spent generations beating it out of your ancestors. It is eating food that hearkens back to processed food rations (given to natives who behaved themselves and so received provisions from the forts), government queues, food stamps, and trying to grind the native plants from your area that were used to create a diet prior to contact with Manifest Destiny. Finally it is remembering your culture together in all the different bizarre ways we do things under the banner of pow-wow. Dancing, singing, camping, in gymnasiums, halls, and under American flags and around the capitalist trinket trade. We yearn to remember and to forget the surreality that shapes how we are together.
oi.. people telling other people what to do.. let people be
The fight for Turtle Island is about preserving culture after it has been annihilated. I won’t push too hard on this concept here but… There has been a genocide in this land. A people were defeated and their culture was destroyed.
rather.. need to realize no culture to date has not been already annihilated.. no dialing back if want legit free people..
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The fight for Turtle Island requires accomplices. I hate to repeat the themes of Klee Benally’s great essay “Accomplices not Allies” (you can read this easily available text on your own), so I’ll emphasize some points different from Klee’s. Natives are a very small percentage of the population (2% is a generous estimate and includes people like me), which means, *thinking on the scale of goal-oriented politics, we need friends. The process of making friends is difficult and draining. An accomplice would be a friend who doesn’t require all that much work. An accomplice is a person who runs to your aid because you are in need and not because they need to be convinced of your project. This lines up well to the desires of activists who often, and frequently, are in need (of bodies, at the very least).
how we gather in a space is what needs an overhaul..
This is to say that accomplices are an ideal. Especially as defined in Klee’s essay, there is an assumed crisis that accomplices are part of the solution to. While that crisis is real, I think this model requires a larger framework than the call-and-response of activism (which is all about attacking the problem now).
rather.. about attacking the symptoms.. with bandaids.. need to (and now we can) go deeper
This means not that they are attending all the workshops and wearing the right attire but something bigger, deeper, and more-or-less impossible.
yeah that.. ie: a nother way
The fight for Turtle Island is one that has to thread the needle between this need for impossible accomplices and the possible but perhaps fatal maintenance of cultural and social values on a body of people being pulled in complex and difficult directions. I remember my most Indian of childhood experiences as eating cold fry bread for breakfast and shouting (to deaf and broke ears) for McDonald’s for lunch. I remember that, once it became clear that I wasn’t going to be allowed to register with my tribe, that those benefits would not be mine, the next batch of mail I received was from the US Navy, attempting to recruit me for duty on nuclear submarines. Finding where I belong in this confusion is also the fight for Turtle Island.
khan filling the gaps law et al
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A!: Natives are one of the few places where anarchists have intervened and it’s been a net positive. ‘Cause of course, so often… let’s say in the context of Black Lives Matter, mostly anarchists are not wanted in any way, shape, or form.
Dan: Right.
A!: Maybe this is partly because that culture is a lot bigger, it doesn’t perceive that it needs outside help, whereas having white people… I mean obviously there’s a tradition of white liberals coming in to support natives, but that hasn’t almost ever been a positive. [laughs]
dan: The other thing about native culture, everyone’s so worried about blood quantum, but anyone can join. Anyone can come under the great law of peace as long as you’re willing to abide by the great law of peace. It’s really a natural law. It’s common sense.
Treat people the way you want to be treated, and treat nature, mother earth, the way that you want to be treated. It’s common sense, right? And that’s pretty much our great law. It’s not all about politics and the details of how we make that work with our people, but that’s pretty much it; it’s all about common sense.
A!: But it does seem like, if you didn’t have the personal relationships that you have, this would have been a more difficult… you might have looked more askew at anarchists, if you hadn’t found people you got along with. I think a lot of communities, there might be one or two people who have personal relationships with the natives they’re trying to work with, or whatever, but in general, cliques happen.
Dan: Right.
A!: And in those cases it does feel more like charity work, and less like a meeting of real people, you know?
Dan: Right. I think one thing Tyendinaga has never done, is ask for outside help.
A!: Really?!
Dan: We’ve never asked for it. We can handle it. People come and offer to help, but we’ve never put the call out. Ever.
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Corinna
Corinna: I do have something… One of the things I really want to talk to people about is coming back to the land in a way that nourishes them, and feel whole again. I was talking to people over the weekend and they were saying, “Oh yea, there’s parks in the bay area and stuff” and I said, “Yea, but do you know there’s kids living in the flatlands of Oakland who never get to the hills of Oakland and never are able to see that, and wouldn’t it be nice to have a plot of land in the middle of east oakland bottoms that kids could go to and feel safe in and have ceremony there. People could come and share food.” Because people are so stuck in these boxes that are apartments, that have no land attached to them and don’t know where they come from, and don’t know where they’re going. We need to become interdependent again, and that’s part of the dream of the land trust, for people to become human again.
norton productivity law.. and why we need to let go of takes a lot of work ness
A!: So the last question I have for you is one I brought up earlier and you may not have any particular thoughts about it, but… it’s the idea of what makes a good ally; who have been people you’ve worked with who you’ve enjoyed working with, and what do you think of the accomplice vs ally that is sort of the flavor of the month terminology. It’s the new decolonize…
Corinna: Yes, the new decolonize…
[laughter] I think that… gosh it’s hard to say.
A!: To approach it from a different direction: most of this bureaucratic nonsense that you’re trying to do, are you mostly doing it with other natives or are you getting much help from people who are not native? And what have your collaborations looked like. ‘Cause it sounds like a lot of what you’re doing has native people as the driving force, but I’m sure that’s not entirely true, especially financially.
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A!: Are you gonna jeopardize what you have…
Corinna: Yea… yea. I guess that’s it. sometimes you get scared when you’re trying to do those kinds of things. Folks who are my allies are the ones who have walked with me from the beginning and haven’t left and want to stay and offer help and also know when to back off and let me do what I gotta do. Who bring me information, so I can use that for the work. And are willing to stay on the line with us. And I saw a lot of people who were ready to do that, at Segora Te. I really have a lot of respect for and honor those people.
Accomplices. I don’t know. I think of my friend Johnella, who has been there and created IPOC with me, as my accomplice. She is the one that… we dreamed this stuff together. She’s gone off to school, but is still working on this land trust. We live in different places, she lives out in the country mostly and I live out here in the city still but we’re still dreaming those ideas together, we both have that relationship with the land, because we’re both native, we’re both mothers and grandmothers, and we’ve gone through all these years of work, doing this stuff, and we trust each other. For me that’s what an accomplice is, somebody who I would lay my life down for, who I trust. So Johnella, I trusted her before, she was the one who came up with the idea of these walks. I had no idea what a walk was like. I had no idea. I trusted her. We sat down at that little cafe down the street with the maps and wrote it all out, and then drove the things, and it looked like, hey, we could drive this so easy, 18 miles, it’s nothing, right? We could do this no big deal [laughter], but walking every step of that with all these people behind us, really counting on us to have food at the end of the day, counting on a floor to sleep on, that’s an accomplice.
I appreciate the people who help me sit at the table and be an equal, that’s an ally. That’s somebody who says, your work is bomb, and people need to hear this, and I want you to share this with other people… but it’s not the same as having someone who does that work with you like that.
seat at the table ness.. oi
An accomplice is more rare. I have a cousin, who grew up with me and helped me raise my kids, she’s my accomplice in that part of my life. I have a friend who went to all of our events, every single thing, and was kind of like my shadow to make sure nobody messed with me, until her health got bad, she is an accomplice, and we raised our kids together too, so it’s like that. So I have those folks. Wounded Knee [a person], who has gone out of his comfort zone on all that kind of stuff and who drove all over the world, all over the country, talking to people about Segora Te and why it’s important, he’s an accomplice. Fred, who lit the fire, and teaches us, someone who prays with my kids in the sweat lodge.
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A!: I don’t want to name it to ruin it, but I give it a lot more credit than maybe you give it yourself.
Kevy: Yea [laughs] That’s awesome. It’s interesting. I was really blown away by the amount of responses that we got. It got a very strong, strong response. Whereas in the past, me and several other friends, we’d be approached by non profts, NGOs types, who are also native people as well, or indigenous people, I should say, who tried quite hard to coerce us into their agenda, talking about how they needed us. We’re like, “No. we’re not going to get paid for this.” Why would we want to be paid activists? We’re not the type of people to connect with police, or liberal types, or politcian types. We defy that, we reject that, you know.
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Klee
a!: Because first of all, I have to say, if you look at today vs. ten years ago there’s a hell of a lot more people to talk to. I mean it’s unbelievable. It’s really unbelievable how many more people there are who have come into the nearly-anarchist space.
How would you do it if you were me?
Klee: I know how I wouldn’t do it, unfortunately that is a lot of my initial response. I think part of it is just being on the ground with folks and connecting with folks who are on the front lines and being open to a sense that not everybody’s gonna have the articulate academic voice and just making sure that people feel comfortable engaging and that it’s not just gonna be some type of hostile place for them.
language as control/enclosure et al
intellectness as cancerous distraction we can’t seem to let go of.. there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
I guess that’s like my initial reaction when I heard. What does indigeneity mean for other folks who are not indigenous to this area. There might be some people who want to engage in that discussion. Like I said before, I don’t know how interested I am in focusing on that as much as just drawing some boundaries, and saying “hey, maybe this is a good place for you all to focus your fight” and making sure people aren’t just (for lack of better terms) Zapatista-fying all these external struggles. Like saying “Oh wait, right, here we are on Tongvan [Indigenous folks of LA area] land, maybe we should build a relationship with them and maybe it is going to take a lot longer than we want and maybe they don’t have the articulated position that’s convenient for us to just transpose their politics and our politics interchangeably.”
A!: But I guess, that’s talking about fighting with people on the ground. You’re answering that question already with what you’re doing here. It’s not exactly what I am asking. How many people do you know who are confident to say something challenging, how many of those people could say it in print vs face-toface, how many of those people would it take days to develop a relationship with, before they would say it? ‘Cause if that is the only option then if you point me to the right person, I am willing to do it.
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A!: What I identify with that (I guess I want to talk through why it’s impossible) is that basically you are saying that anyone who wants to take this project [decolonization or indigeneity] seriously basically has to commit to multi-generations.
In other words, indigeneity, whatever that means, will require that kind of time span. It’s not going to happen in your lifetime. So of course why that’s impossible is the American consumer is not going to accept that this is something they can’t buy. Even if the consumption we’re talking about is of an ideology.
perhaps.. prior to now.. but now.. have means for legit global detox leap.. and we’re missing it
So I don’t see a beginning and end to it, I see it as an ongoing process.. I don’t see it like, “Oh, here’s victory over here, here’s a goal, I can see a way to achieve something that we want to accomplish which is liberation of our lands, the thriving, the cultural vitality of our people and hopefully abolishing these systems of oppression that are built up and reinforced through colonization.”
only if sans any form of m\a\p.. otherwise.. same song
But at this point, and I don’t want it to be interpreted as being abstract, ‘cause it’s not, it’s anything but abstract, it’s very clear in relation to the system, it’s is an ongoing process. To some degree I think that is part of the western mentality; it’s like linear thought, how change is gonna come about.
When we look at the multi-generational projects, with the seven generation concepts (even from other indigenous nations, certainly it’s pan-indigenous right now that it can be interpreted very easily with other indigenous nations) in relation to the core of our practices is to ensure that cultural knowledge is transmited and maintains its relevance or vitality.
So for me that’s part of it, thinking in that way that we are part of a cyclical way of being. It’s not saying we are going to sit on our hands and wait for shit to change, it’s about doing the best we can now.
which is a legit global detox leap.. all the cancerous distractions make us feel like we’re ‘doing the best we can now’.. but they are keeping us from us.. they are killing us
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in conclusion
To state the obvious, anarchism has an identity problem. Anarchism is a very simple political ideology. It demands that (individual and social) freedom is in direct conflict with authoritarian systems like the State and Capitalism. Anarchists then tend to equivocate and try to replace those authoritarian systems in smaller, friendlier ways. It.. Anarchism has become a hot mess, especially in the era where personal choice has collided with social media.
Native America, as a group of disparate peoples, as a set of tentative values, and as an ethnicity, relates to anarchists problems but with the addition of five hundred years of repression, genocide, and self-awareness, rather than just the past 50 (or 150 if you are being generous). The difference is that while many, if not most, anarchists pass through their anarchist identity (and onto others more similar to their upbringing) for native people there is no exit. Or if there is, it is a self-aware participation in the selfrepression and genocide of a people (or the self) by working within the system of jobs and conformity, to sets of cultural values that are decidedly not Native.
has to be all of us.. so need hari rat park law et al
That is some sort of overview of what we wanted to test by trying to have new kinds of conversations with people who I knew or thought I knew or wanted to know.
It seems important to talk a little about the physical framing of the interviews. It was important to me, and to the process, to physically travel, to be with these folks in person while talking about this stuff. Traveling to them for these conversations was almost as important as the conversations themselves.
need deeper convos.. ie: 2 conversations.. as the day
There is a political project to be distilled from this book, it is that we are in the fight for Turtle Island. It is actually happening. As this fight is many-fold it can seem complicated but I’d like to believe it is not. The first part is a physical fight against the existing order, though it doesn’t look like a fight (largely because a fight can be lost, and usually is). The fight for Turtle Island requires non-participation. Grumpy, hostile, non-verbal, non-consent to every possible thing that Manifest Destiny wants us to do. Never consent. Absolutely do not participate in all the ways in which the land is converted into its opposite. ..The fight for it is both an inscrutable hostility against (capitalist) logic, logistics, and (state) power, and the clarity to understand that love for land is a multi-generational spiritual project.
yup.. cancerous distractions.. need to let go
I’d rather learn a language that hasn’t been spoken in 100 years than have another talk about blood quantum. I’d rather do than talk about doing.
language we need: idiosyncratic jargon.. sans any training et al
Do not confuse all of this with ambivalence. I am a kind of outsider, as is common for mixed people, but am convinced that my role is to help people clarify their project to such a frequency and amplitude that it is unmistakable. For this book that means that my own incorrect thesis is a minor point. This book is about Ron, Klee, Lyn, Danielle, Kevy, et al… and my hope/desire that they are remembered.
there’s a deeper way to do that
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
ie: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
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while finishing.. kevin carson highly recommends reading nation state and genocide
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be you. 