On Settler Colonialism; an Interview with Bands of Turtle Island.
The podcast world has recently been introduced to a refreshing first: a leftist podcast hosted by Indigenous people. Bands of Turtle Island focuses on the history and issues facing the global band of Indigenous people with a heavy emphasis on decolonization.
Bands of Turtle Island is hosted by Wolf or Sungmanitou Tanka, an Oglala Lakota, and P’ajiji, a Sicangu Lakota. The hosts were kind enough to provide a brief overview of their podcast and their thoughts regarding how the broader left should view and engage with the history of Colonialism and the future of decolonization.
I started off the interview by asking the hosts what inspired them to create a leftist Indigenous podcast and about the goals they were hoping to accomplish with their pod.
“The inspiration came from my friends at Proles of the Minyan that took on the duty, so to say, of presenting an anti zionist position in Jewish as well as leftist circles. So I thought, “Why shouldn’t there be something like this for Indigenous people?” I noticed a lot of white leftists completely ignoring the so called “Indian question.” If they did acknowledge it, it seemed to be homogenizing us or accusing us of wanting an ethnostate.
I think the clear reason for that is white supremacism runs so deep in American leftist discourse. Americans can be so loud and obnoxious that they drown out the voices of those in left spaces who do acknowledge Settler Colonialism. That, or it sticks purely to the identity politics aspect of it and then you get a bunch of liberals saying “Sauvage is cultural appropriation” (in reference to the Dior Sauvage advert) rather than calling it what it is, violently racist.
So our goal at Bands is to be a voice for Indigenous people who are in diaspora trying to find their roots and be with unci maka once again.”
In my opinion, one of the major reasons Bands of Turtle Island has received much attention and personally caught my eye is due to the severe lack of Indigenous voices in leftist organizing in general. Bands certainly does not fail to disappoint in bringing a critical analysis to major questions surrounding the left and Indigenous people today.
One of the most pressing questions facing the left and Indigenous people, particularly in the United States, is decolonization. There is no doubt that the United States was founded upon the backs of slaves and the genocide of Indigenous people.
The genocide of Indigenous people in the United States took many forms over the decades, ranging from violent land acquisitions, destruction of traditional food sources such as the buffalo, repression of culture and language, forced assimilation, and shipping off Indigenous children to boarding schools.
The protracted process of genocide in the United States continues right up to this day. This process takes the form of the immense poverty on some reservations, the horrific statistics of sexual abuse and violence against Indigenous women, and the disempowerment of Indigenous people and tribes.
The question of justice for Indigenous comrades is certainly not an easy one, and there may be no single answer, but it is a question of the utmost importance. It is important to note that settler colonialism is not an event, but rather a process.
Marx touched on a similar process which he called primitive accumulation. Primitive accumulation is a process in which land, resources, and labor power are commodified and privatized into the service of capital accumulation. Marxist geographer David Harvey expanded upon Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation to include a present day movement which he called accumulation by dispossession. Harvey explains that accumulation by dispossession is a transfer of wealth, resources, capital and labor from common ownership to private ownership. What was once used for the common good has been transformed into the service of capital accumulation for accumulation’s sake alone. The process of accumulation by dispossession is driven by capitalism’s perpetual need for surplus production and capital absorption.
Settler colonialism and accumulation by dispossession are processes which still continue to operate. We can see these processes unfold in such events as Dakota access pipeline protests and the struggle over Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Both examples show capital’s insatiable need for further expansion and growth. There is no doubt that the United States was founded on and continues to operate under both settler colonialism and accumulation of dispossession.
Although settler colonialism may have taken different avenues and paths in different regions and time periods, the underlying process remains the same. Settler colonialism has been defined as a process in which “everything within a settler colonial society strains to destroy or assimilate the Native in order to disappear them from the land.” This is how society receives false notions that all indigenous people are dead, live in far off lands, or that all Americans are a “little bit Indian.”
It is important to underscore that settlers are not immigrants because “immigrants are beholden to the Indigenous laws and epistemologies of the lands they migrate to.” Settlers, on the other hand, seek to completely dominate, subjugate, and exploit the laws, cultures, resources, and people of indigenous nations.
The question of what exactly decolonization will look like and how this transformation will unfold is surely daunting and could be unsettling for many non-indigenous folks. However, the answer to this important question will be answered by Indigenous people themselves.
I inquired The Bands for more understanding on the question of decolonization. What might the process of decolonization look like for Indigenous people?
“It’s a very broad subject and obviously I don’t want to homogenize the groups into one group you can give justice to easily. It’s a long, hard, and complex conversation, but it’s about analyzing each nations conditions and how they got there. We will always find vast amounts of exploitation and oppression, and so then it is about what they want for justice.
One example would be the return of land. And I believe full national liberation for every tribe to control its own land sovereign from the rest of the nations. Another possibility is for them to unite as a sort of USSR, which I feel is just an easier way to conceptualize it to settlers. In reality, decolonization would be a return to great nations spanning from the big horn mountains to the great lakes like the Oceti Sakowin and their Seven Signal Fires.
However, borders are a very colonial idea, so this federation of nations is a very unique concept that is difficult to imagine. Will it be one continent-sized state with individual nations like the USSR, or multiple states? Will there be autonomous zones or completely sovereign micro-nations? We won’t know until we are in that revolutionary crucible, testing a new socialist experiment that I jokingly call ‘socialism with Indigenous characteristics,’ but I think it’s a pretty clear idea.”
Decolonization is indeed an immensely broad and complex topic. A topic which is beyond the scope of this one particular article. However, we can be certain that much like the transition from socialism to communism, decolonization is a revolutionary process which will surely undergo several phases of development.
The material conditions of each colonized area will determine what this process looks like and how it unfolds. The process of decolonization in the Black Hills of Dakota might look different than Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
Ultimately, the process of decolonization is a revolutionary transformation of land, resources, and political power. In my opinion, such a process is integral in the struggle for socialism. There can be no transformation towards socialism without the struggle for decolonization. The two are inseparable, just as there can be no path towards socialism in the US without the mass participation and leadership of Indigenous people.
In wrapping up our conversation, I asked if Bands had any final closing thoughts or statements.
“I just want people to remember groups that they don’t see often in their area. To remember the missing and murdered women that are victims of the ongoing genocide, and for colonizers to take a step back and let people of color speak.”
Bands of Turtle Island Reading Recommendation
Down with Colonialism by Ho Chi Minh, Imperialism by Lenin, Settlers by J. Sakai, Our History is the Future by Nick Estes, As We Have Always Done by Leanne Simpson, Wretched of the Earth by Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks by Fanon, Red Skin, White Masks by Glenn Coulthard, Bury My Heart at Wounded by Dee Brown, and then any sources for topics are in the show notes and we are working on an index of our resources so people can know what we know.
Resources and additional reading
Sauvage perfume commercial
1. www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/style/dior-sauvage-cultural-appropriation.amp.html
On the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the United States
1.Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz
Poverty on Reservations
Sexual violence against Indigenous Women
Decolonization is Not A Metaphor
Mauna Kea protests
Karl Marx on Primitive Accumulation
David Harvey on Accumulation by Dispossession
