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.
no subject
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.