Settler-Colonialism and the Apocalypse
Something I don't think occurs to settlers is that Indigenous people already are living in a post-apocalyptic world.
TL,DR:
With unvarnished reflections that come from research I've done amidst high levels of emotions, plus minimal editing, these reflections tend to run long. I did tone down the expletives. So, to summarize: Settler-colonialism was/is essentially the campaign to remove and exterminate Indigenous peoples of this land in the name of settlement and Western expansion of the United States. It is the campaign that brought on the Apocalypse for the Indigenous people of the United States. Therefore, Indigenous people are living in a post-apocalyptic world.
Anyone whose ancestors did not reside on this land before settlers stole it can be considered settler-colonizers. These are mostly white people, but honestly anyone without Indigenous heritage is complicit in some way. While we might be feeling the Apocalypse with the multitude of awful things happening at once, we must remember that Indigenous people are living in a post-apocalyptic world.
Because of this, they might be the ones with the answers that come in the form of better land and forest management and a greater connection to the natural world. But, beyond looking to Native knowledge, this offers an even greater call for change: returning the land to Indigenous people through the Land Back Movement!
Read for more and to scroll to the bottom to find out how to learn more and support the #LandBack movement.
For the last week, we've existed in a kind of constant dusk. No matter the time of day, the orange-hued light casts a strange glow throughout the house. We haven't left the house (except Cory to go to work) and the moments we have to grab something from outside, we dash out for mere seconds. And even then, the toxic nearly-500 AQI air wafts into the house leaving a stinky cloud of smoke lingering. (Only today has the air toxicity started to ease up).
And we're the lucky ones. We have a safe, somewhat non-drafty house. (although we're probably breathing in more smoke than we think without an air purifier available anywhere nearby). But we have a house. We have some distance from where the fires. And we were never under evacuation orders.
As I write, there are families not that far from us that still don't know if they have a home to go back to.
Oh, and we're still living in a deadly uncontrolled pandemic that our dictator-worshiping President does not take seriously.
It's hard not to think that with all of this—gestures wildly—that we're on the cusp of The Apocalypse.
But...and this is a big but, we F-ing did this to ourselves. And, more importantly, we did this to Indigenous communities not that long ago by systematically perpetrating genocide just so that we could live on land that we wanted. And by "we" I mean settler-colonizers.
What is Settler Colonialism and Why Am I a Part of It?
I include myself in this "we," by the way, because I am here, living on the ancestral land of the Cowlitz and Clackamas people, because my European ancestors were a part of the great project of Western expansion of the United States. Which is to say, they benefited from the centuries-long genocide of Indigenous people here.
I have inherited their complicity. And, I've inherited the settler-colonizer mentality without even knowing it. And honestly, so have you (regardless of when you or your ancestors arrived here) if you don't have a direct line from Indigenous people in North America. The same can be said for all of the Americas, New Zealand, Australia, and wherever settler-colonizers set up shop and just took the land from the people who lived there for thousands of years.
So then what is settler-colonization?
"The goal of settler-colonization is the removal and erasure of Indigenous peoples in order to take the land for use by settlers in perpetuity," Amanda Morris wrote in this Teaching Tolerance story. "According to Laura Hurwitz and Shawn Borque’s 'Settler Colonialism Primer,' 'This means that settler colonialism is not just a vicious thing of the past, such as the gold rush, but exists as long as settlers are living on appropriated land and thus exists today.'"
Settler-colonialism today takes the form of erasure of the culture and institutions of Native nations and their people. It's carried out through the exploitation of the lands that are sacred to so many nations.
It's also taken the form in the name of conservation and preservation of public lands. Before John Muir decided he wanted to protect the "wilderness" indigenous people lived on and stewarded the land for centuries. (Also, in case you're curious, John Muir had some pretty overtly racist views).
I think back to what I was taught in school. Native American cultures and people were not only cast in a hostile and negative light (i.e. they were painted as the aggressors against "innocent" settlers claiming rightful ownership of land that was already occupied) they were also shown as part of the past. What was glossed over completely is that settlers, supported and encouraged by the American government, killed a whole lot of indigenous people and then continued to erase their culture from existence (which is the definition of genocide). This erasure continues today.
But of course, our whitewashed textbooks would've never cast our founders as genocidal maniacs.
Yet, despite the centuries-long campaign of extermination, Native cultures and peoples still live. They live and they carry on the knowledge and the spirit and the traditions and the values of their ancestors today. Native nations are living, breathing governments holding fast to sovereignty for their nations and people. Indigenous peoples' history is about resistance to tyranny and the desire to eradicate their existence.
These people's ancestors lived through an Apocalypse, stripped of their way of being, robbed of their land, and erased of their culture. All in the name of greed carried out through settler-colonialism.
And thus, the many survivors of this genocide are currently living in a post-apocalyptic world.
Today's Apocalypse and What Indigenous People Can Teach Us
With the entire West Coast covered in toxic smoke—amidst a pandemic—it's hard not to think that the Apocalypse is on us. This all happening within a year of devastating wildfires in Australia and the Amazon RainForest. And so many potentially devastating hurricanes swirling towards the Southern U.S. that, not even halfway through the season, they've almost run through the alphabet for hurricane names.
Maybe it is the onset of the Apocalypse.
But what we know of Indigenous history is that the Apocalypse has happened before. And similar to this one, it's been perpetrated by white settler-colonizers. The rich, white men who crafted the plan to expand their wealth and influence over a vast expanse of a country, probably didn't foresee that they were actually crafting their own demise.
Perhaps the key to not just avoiding the Apocalypse, but to greater resilience is to look to the people who have the knowledge and the experience of the land that settler-colonizers never have had.
For centuries before white settlers stole the land that they perceived as "untouched wilderness," Native people lived in symbiosis with their natural environments. For the fire prone area of the American West, indigenous communities employed intentional land and forest management practices including controlled burns. These traditional burning practices not only helped limit the devastating superburns that we've been experiencing all over the world recently, but they helped promote a healthier landscape for food production and wildlife.
These traditional indigenous land management practices are finally starting to be acknowledged as one of the solutions to the massive annual devastation we're experiencing now. See the resources section below for more info about examples of traditional fire management practices being employed all over the world.
I should note that fire management practices are certainly a huge part of what is happening. But we can't ignore that the Climate Crisis is still an essential problem. A combination of longer and more severe droughts and much warmer weather in the West have made the region more prone to devastating wildfires. Both truths can exist at the same time despite what climate deniers like to say. And settler-colonialism has created both problems with the religious/cult-like reliance on capitalism and constant consumption.
The moral of this part of the story is that traditional Native land management practices and knowledge could actually be the key to helping to reverse both climate change and avoid devastating wildfires.
BUT, we should not just look to Native people to get us through this awful period. Indigenous people should actually be in charge by way of getting their land back.
Taking Action and the #LandBack Movement
The solution as Indigenous people see it is returning the land back to the rightful owners and stewards. As an aspiring white accomplice, I'll listen to the people with the knowledge and lived experience.
While we can certainly listen to and learn from Indigenous knowledge about land management, merely using their practices as examples is just a whole part of the settler-colonizer mindset. No, we can't just take more so that we might survive this apocalypse. What we must do is give the land back to the people from whom we stole it in the first place. It's what Indigenous communities have been asking for.
So what's involved in the #LandBack Movement? It's simple, give the land back to the people who we stole it from!
Rematriation of land, as the Sogorea Te' Land Trust call it, involves both the logistical and physical elements of returning the land back to its original people, but also the more spiritual returning of the culture, the resources, and knowledge to Mother Earth.
I realize that the whole modern settler-colonial land ownership mindset, this can be tricky to untangle. So, here are some major asks a part of the movement that are do-able (and are not mutually exclusive). These are areas that we can focus on for advocacy (see the resources section for organizations and people to follow and learn from to get involved).
Honor treaties
The U.S. acquired much of its land through negotiated treaties between the U.S. government and Native nations (a total of 368 between 1777 and 1868). These treaties were meant to ensure sovereignty for Native nations while allowing settlers to use the land for farming and living. But, like many American promises, many treaties (which are still technically legally binding) were never honored or broken. (Read more about treaties in this American Indian Magazine story and learn about the Trail of Broken Treaties protest in the 1970s).
What many Indigenous groups are asking for as a starting point is to honor these treaties. The Decolonial Atlas is a great resource as well—they are using maps to tell stories and advocate for decolonization.
Return public lands back to Indigenous communities
This is an area for which my conservation peeps should be listening. Did y'all know how much racism is involved in the conservation movement? A lot. Whether you know it or not. The establishment of federally-owned land in the name of conservation (e.g. national parks) was, essentially, stealing land from Native people who lived with and stewarded the land for centuries prior to white people saying they knew better. Read Tristan Ahtone's High Country News article, When conservation provides cover for anti-Indigenous sentiments to dig more into this.
For any of us outdoors lovers, this one is super personal and we need to sit with this reality. And in particular, if you're part of conservation movements, you need to sit with the racist roots that manifest into today's racist belief that only white institutions (i.e. the U.S. government) can manage the land properly (spoiler alert: white people actually did—and are doing—a shit job at land management if you haven't noticed).
Encourage private landowners to return ancestral land back to Indigenous groups
The Sogorea Te' Land Trust is an example of an organization that is working with private landowners to help them return the land back to their people (Civil Eats has a great story about this process). Beyond the land buy-back programs for some tribal nations in the U.S., it's honestly a bit hard to find much information about this happening on a larger scale. One area in which there's been recent illumination thanks to the investigative journalism of High Country News is the role of land-grant institutions in taking land from Indigenous people. It's an area of advocacy, especially for alums of such institutions, to explore.
So, while I live in this anxiety-ridden state amid the orange glow of smoke, I must remember the terror of Indigenous people on the land I live for the sake of my ancestors' greed.
Perhaps we are living in an Apocalypse. But if we turn to the people whose post-apocalyptic world we live in and hand over control, perhaps we have a fighting chance to not only survive this period of time, but to thrive in ways we've never experienced in the modern day.
Resources
Here are some action items and suggestions for further education. There's a lot out there, so take all of this as a starting point and I welcome any additions. This is a living resource list, if you have recommendations, please let me know (elizabeth.doerr@gmail.com) and I'll continue to update this.
Examples of traditional land and forest management practices at work
Prescribed fire treatment practices on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation (Arizona)
Indigenous fire management programs and news in California:
Karuk partnership with NGOs, state, and federal agencies (Wired Magazine)
The Karuk's Innate Relationship with Fire (U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit)
Yurok Cultural Fire Management Council (Yurok Reservation and Ancestral Lands, Klamath River)
Indigenous fire management report from San Jose State University (Spring 2016)
Indigenous fire management programs in Australia:
Educate Yourself about Indigenous History and Current Movements
An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: This is a phenomenal book that tells the horrifying story of the United States' centuries-long campaign to essentially exterminate Native people from what is now the United States in the name of capitalism. But more so, it tells the story of resistance and the continued fight for survival and sovereignty by Native peoples.
Little War on the Prairie by Scene On Radio: If you want a quicker snapshot of the horrifying effects of settler-colonialism, listen to this episode from Scene On radio (that is part of their larger Seeing White series and is a rebroadcast of an earlier This American Life episode). I should stress, though, Scene On radio is told from the perspective of a white man, so I urge you to not stop at this podcast as we must learn from people of color and people who have lived experience with the issues. In this case, Native people.
Decolonization is Not a Metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (article in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society): This academic article offers an important explanation and argument to look at decolonization as an act of actually returning the land and cultures to Indigenous people as opposed to the oft-used metaphor (e.g., "decolonize your mind") in social justice circles.
Land Reparations and Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit (from Resource Generation): This toolkit is a great guide on how to support the Land Back movement, resources to educate yourself about, and best practices.
Native Land App: This website (and smartphone app!) is a great place to start to learn whose land you reside and play on. Check out their educational resources as well and note that the map itself doesn't represent "official" boundaries (read the disclaimer that pops up when you open it).
The Decolonial Atlas: They're using maps to tell the story of and advocate for decolonization.
Detours A Decolonial Guide to Hawai'i (book, Duke University Press): Full disclosure, I haven't read this yet as I just learned about it during an amazing workshop led by travel writer Bani Amor on "Disrupting Coloniality in Travel Writing." Amor wrote a great review about the book here and, according to my Hawai'i-based friend, Sachi (who wrote this great story on conscious travel in Hawai'i for Bébé Voyage), the scholars and people who contributed to the book are the preeminent activists around decolonizing Hawai'i, a few who she references in her story.
Native America Calling (daily radio program): This live call-in program (which you can access through you podcast app) is a great way to learn about current Native issues. It's a means to listen and learn. A recent, relevant story to check out is the Returning to traditional fire management episode from September 9, 2020.
High Country News (magazine): This non-profit magazine that covers issues concerning the Western United States has some really amazing coverage of Indigenous work and issues.
Organizations, People and Movements to Learn from, Follow, and Support
The NDN Collective: This incredible organization is an Indigenous-led team of grassroots organizers committed to defending Native people and communities, developing regenerative and sustainable solutions rooted in connection to Native cultures, people, and the land, and decolonizing by way of creating space for Native people to break free of colonial structures and embrace their cultures and way of being. They do this through activism, grant-making, and story-telling. Follow them, listen to what they say, how they say it, and contribute to their work.
#HonorNativeLand: The Honor Native Land movement is a campaign to bring land acknowledgement into policy and practice for everyone in the United States. Learn about what that means through the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture and follow the movement on social media. Then bring land acknowledgement into your daily lives.
Land Rights Now: This global activist organization is focused on securing land rights for Indigenous people all over the world.
Kiliii Yuyan (photographer): Yuyan is an incredible photographer who contributes National Geographic among others who dedicates his work to "illuminating stories of the Arctic, wilderness & indigenous communities" per his Instagram account. Not only is his photography stunning, the stories he tells through his photographer are important narratives unknown to most settler-colonizers like myself.
Lakota People's Law Project: LPLP works to assist the Lakota people to reclaim their land and any threats to Lakota culture. They have specifically been involved in helping to return the sacred site of the Black Hills to the Lakota people (you might know this area for the egregious destruction of land that is also known as Mt. Rushmore).
Native Movement: They describe their work on Instagram this way: "We are dedicated to building people power, rooted in an Indigenized worldview, toward healthy, sustainable, & just communities for ALL."
Sogorea Te' Land Trust: The trust is "an urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people." They provide educational resources, they're involved in a variety of projects including cultural revitalization, caring for the land, and land rematriation.