Literally give the actual land back
I’m sure you already have an incredible and not at all flawed understanding of Land Back, but might I suggest reading into it some more before making harebrained accusations like calling Indigenous national liberation “ethnostates” and implying the dissolution of settler-colonial states will force settlers out in some reverse-racism/white genocide/great replacement style thinking
Here’s a handy resource: https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org/
“Read this 68 page essay or all your thoughts are wrong.”
Wanna at least sum it up? What does “land back” mean if not literally giving the land back by moving out?
“I’m not going to bother learning about what this thing is but still have a reactionary opinion on it”
As a Pro-Tip, the website has summaries of each of the parts, but be warned it’s a Canadian context. Anyways to do your thinking for you, it’s a really complex topic because Indigenous peoples are not a monolith but a general understanding is literally give them the land back from the government that wrongfully stole it and allow them sovereignty over their land/respect their treaty obligations/etc. This does not mean “whitey out” because that isn’t feasible and as far as I’ve seen precisely zero are calling for that.
a general understanding is literally give them the land back from the government that wrongfully stole it and allow them sovereignty over their land
That’s literally all the land in the country, 100% of it is stolen. It’s impossible to give it all back. And land that white people are still living on is hardly land that’s been “given back”.
This meme also implies personal responsibility, you have to give the land you live on back. I’m living in a house built on stolen land, the only way for me to give that land back is for me to leave. Anything less isn’t “giving the land back”.
“Give the land back” is as nuanced as “abolish the police” (ie, not at all). Don’t say it unless you mean what it literally means. When we say abolish the police we literally mean abolish the police, not “here’s a 70 page essay about how we can reform policing”.
I read the summaries so I’ll ask you a few questions to see if its worth reading the full version if it touches on any of the following.
- How much support do the writers of the paper/Yellowhead have within Canada’s indigenous communities? Is this a majority opinion? Are they also trying to win over other indigenous people with this paper or is that portion of their struggle over and now they’re a united front?
- The summaries seem to say that the writers of the paper want recognition of their own laws, knowledge systems, epistemics, etc. Do they want this within Canada or to secede from Canada?
- Whether it’s within Canada or after breaking away from Canada, do they want to build a modern capitalist economy rooted in traditional native principles (I.e. Greater/special emphasis on species conservation, greater/special emphasis on no/low resource extraction, etc) or do they want a return to pre-contact ways of living? I ask this because I want to understand how they plan to defend themselves in case of future wars or invasions by Canada. If they can’t build an industrial economy then they’re counting on settler Canadians to not do the thing they’ve been doing: just taking it by force.
- Would there be independent indigenous self governments/ organizations on each piece of unceded treaty land or would they link up into one larger “native state”.
- How would they prevent the rise of a right wing (and eventually far right) which has happened in pretty much every country that has organized around a racial (ex. Israel, and others), cultural/ religious identity (ex. Pakistan and others)?
“I’m not going to educate myself on colonialism because I can’t be bothered to read” what the fuck kind of communist are you?
ok so first im stupd & also litrly a bird covrrd in shit so som1 smrtr shuld chime in. bt think abt how indigenous ppl curently liv in this settler state & then flip it. its their land & we al jus living here.
Flipping unjust power structures just preserves the existence of unjust power structures. But still, that’s hardly “land back” if 200 million colonizers are still living on that land.
