l33tminion | Thanks for Not Yet

Went home with Julie and Erica for Thanksgiving. Quick trip this time, but was great to see the family. Melissa's family was in town, too.

This year I am thankful that of all the terrors at humanity's doorstep, some of them have been put off so far, and some could continue to.

Best reading from this weekend is Noah Smith's post No, You Are Not on Indigenous Land, a really cogent takedown of (including nominally-"decolonial") ethnonatialism.

The latest political news is Joe Biden's blanket pardon of his son, Hunter Biden. It is sad that we have come to this, and despicable that Biden is reneging on his promises. Unlike Charles Kushner, the father of Trump's son-in-law who he pardoned for witness tampering and then nominated for an ambassadorship, Hunter Biden surely wouldn't have been prosecuted but for his association with the President in question. But say, maybe Biden should just go ahead and pardon the January 6 criminals himself at this point. Surely they are more worthy: After all, not only their prosecutions but also their crimes would not have happened but for Trump.

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I dunno, I don't really think that post is where it's at. It's absurd to frame land acknowledgments as equivalent to a call for ethnic cleansing, or to ignore the differences between colonization and previous territorial changes among indigenous groups. And it feels like the same logic in that post against "decolonization" would suggest that ending apartheid in South Africa or the creation of Nunavut would have required massacring or expelling all white people. And then it circles around by saying giving additional land to tribal governments might be a good thing, so it feels like it's just creating a strawman of the landback movement and but not actually particularly disagreeing with it? I'm not aware of any actual USA decolonization or landback organization that has a stated position of expelling or subjugating white people, and plenty have explicitly addressed this (e.g. https://www.hcn.org/issues/54-9/indigenous-affairs-social-justice-questions-about-the-landback-movement-answered/ or https://zen-catgirl.medium.com/is-decolonization-genocide-lets-see-de91184cb8af). And I don't think assuming a free Palestine would inherently be an ethnonationalist state is reasonable either. Conflating landback and decolonization with ethnonationalism seems highly problematic.

It's absurd to frame land acknowledgments as equivalent to a call for ethnic cleansing

Where in the text is it doing that?

to ignore the differences between colonization and previous territorial changes among indigenous groups

That's more of a reasonable criticism, though it's equivocation to group together a bunch disparate events, some of which are violent conquest and some of which are not, as "previous territorial changes".

the same logic in that post against "decolonization" would suggest that ending apartheid in South Africa or the creation of Nunavut would have required massacring or expelling all white people

I think the post is inveighing against the sort of "decolonization" cited in Najma Sharif Alawi's infamous October 7, 2023 tweet. The post always puts "decolonization" and "decolonized" in quotes, and that's the only specific quotation in the post using that word, so I think it's reasonable to take that as referring to that specific characterization of quote-unquote "decolonization", not opposition to colonialism or apartheid more generally.

it feels like it's just creating a strawman of the landback movement and but not actually particularly disagreeing with it?

Yeah, the post outlines that broad agreement explicitly, especially continuing for a few paragraphs from where it starts, "So does this mean we should paper over, ignore, or deliberately forget America's history of violent conquest? Absolutely not." Rather, it's suggesting that movement is taking the wrong moral grounding by focusing on the wrong implicit "moral claims about rightful land ownership", i.e. that land belongs to those who possessed it earlier (often one iteration of conquest earlier) and their descendants.

I'm not aware of any actual USA decolonization or landback organization that has a stated position of expelling or subjugating white people

I think one could reasonably argue that's making a strawman of American indigenous land-back movements, or at least that it mischaracterizes or over-focuses on land acknowledgements specifically.

I think you're undermining your point with that first post, though. Their vision of "LandBack" is extremely radical and seeks the complete abolition of major US institutions ("ultimately, the abolition of the United States' concept of real estate altogether"). It seems quite dismissive of the idea that America is actually home to non-indigenous people who have lived here their whole lives ("Honestly, though, is Europe really that bad? I mean, France is there! White people love France, right?"). It at the very least seems to downplay the downsides of ethnonationalism (it describes the "blood-quantum requirements" of American Samoa's system, which it looks to as a model, as "not without problems"). And it's assurance that wouldn't go wrong is an appeal to inherent goodness ("white people would not be deported after LandBack, because Indigenous people are not colonizers"), immediately before saying basically "would that really be so bad".

And I don't think assuming a free Palestine would inherently be an ethnonationalist state is reasonable either.

I agree, though it's depressingly unclear to me how that can happen. Currently, both the Israeli government and Hamas are intentionally trying to move away from peace. It's dismaying to me how much of the pro-Palestinian movement in the US (and globally, but obviously some of my focus is here) has become implicitly or explicitly pro-Hamas. Hamas is ethnonationalist. As is the Israeli government. (And both are terrorists and war criminals.) I think ultimately that's just not ever going to be the basis for a stable solution, whether that involves one shared state or two neighboring states.

> Where in the text is it doing that?

To directly quote, "Yet what should we think of the morality of following the principles behind land acknowledgements to their logical conclusion? “Decolonization” of the land of the U.S. would likely be an act of ethnic cleansing surpassing even the previous conquests — there are 330 million people here now, and almost none of them descend from Native Americans. An attempt to dispossess 330 million people would inevitably involve violence on a colossal scale."

I mean, I also find it hard to imagine a "good future" with major US institutions in their current form. I do think meaningful landback-as-manifesto is going to be pretty radical, and it's not bad to have radical movements in the mix. (My read is that the interviewee there is proposing that blood-quantum requirements are not where it's at, which moves things a bit away from ethnonationalism, and it's worth noting that my understanding is that in general blood quantum has been imposed on native american tribes by the US government, which has legally prevented some tribes from removing such requirements in the past.)

Definitely agreed that I don't really see a good path to resolving things in Palestine in a good way, it definitely feels like in a lot of ways the material conditions there at this point make reasonably-peaceful resolution like in South Africa or Ireland seem infeasible.

To directly quote, "Yet what should we think of the morality of following the principles behind land acknowledgements

"The principles behind" instead of "the implications of". It's saying the practice is implicitly (mis)grounded in a moral framework that leads to bad conclusions, not that it's explicitly calling for ethnic cleansing or might as well be.

My read is that the interviewee

It's not an interview.

there is proposing that blood-quantum requirements are not where it's at

That's why I said "downplay" instead of "support" or "agree with".

material conditions there at this point make reasonably-peaceful resolution like in South Africa or Ireland seem infeasible

Yeah. The thing I try to keep in mind to fend off despair is how often things seem infeasible until they're not.

I definitely feel like saying that the principles behind land acknowledgements are ethnonationalism feels like a strawman or at least not clearly substantiated. Feels like he's saying "we need to remember America's history of violent conquest, but saying that you live on stolen land is taking that too far".

Definitely feels weird to me that this guy seems to think that the (largely empty) symbolic gesture of land acknowledgments is based in ethnonationalism but not the Squamish Nation literally being immune to laws that apply to everyone else in Vancouver based on organization membership tied to ethnicity. *shrug*

Thanks for Not Yet

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