Decolonization and Communism

By Nodrada

Republished from Orinoco Tribune.

“We have to give life to Indo-American socialism with our own reality, in our own language. Here is a mission worthy of a new generation.”

-José Carlos Mariátegui, “Anniversary and Balance,” José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology¹

While the turn towards analyzing ongoing settler-colonialism has finally reached the mainstream of North American political discussions, there is still a lack of popular understanding of the issues involved. Settler-colonialism is, ironically, understood within the framework of the ways of thinking brought by the European ruling classes to the Americas. By extension, the conceptions of decolonization are similarly limited. Although the transition from analyzing psychological or “discursive” decolonization to analyzing literal, concrete colonization has been extremely important, it requires some clarifications.

Settler–colonialism is a form of colonialism distinct from franchise colonialism. The colonizers seek primarily to eliminate the indigenous population rather than exploit them, as in the latter form of colonialism. Decolonization is the struggle to abolish colonial conditions, though approaches to it may vary. Societies formed on a settler-colonial basis include the United States, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia. For our purposes, we will focus on the United States in analyzing local ideas of settler-colonialism and decolonization.

Among North American radicals, there are two frequent errors in approaching decolonization.

On the one hand, there are the opponents of decolonization who argue that settler-colonialism no longer exists. In their view, to identify specific concerns for Indigenous peoples and to identify the ongoing presence of settler-colonial social positions is divisive and stuck in the past. They believe that settlers no longer exist, and Euro-Americans have fully become indigenous to North America through a few centuries of residency.

On the other hand, there are proponents of decolonization who believe that Euro-Americans are eternally damned as settlers, and cannot be involved in any radical change whatsoever. The most extreme of these argue for the exclusion of Euro-Americans from radical politics entirely.

Settler-colonialism is not over, contrary to the first view. Rather, Indigenous peoples still struggle for their rights to sovereignty within and outside reservations, especially ecological-spiritual rights. Their ostensibly legally recognized rights are not respected, either. The examples of the struggles of the Wet’suwet’en, Standing Rock Lakota, Mi’kmaq, and other peoples in recent memory are testimony to this. Indigenous peoples are still here, and they are still fighting to thrive as Indigenous peoples. Capitalists drive to exploit the earth, destroying ecology and throwing society into what John Bellamy Foster calls a metabolic rift.² This means that the demands of capital for expansion are incompatible with the ‘rhythm’ of ecology, destroying concrete life for abstract aims as a result.

An atomistic, individualist worldview is what undergirds the view of settler-colonialism as over and of contemporary Euro-Americans as being just as indigenous as Indigenous peoples. When settler-colonialism is seen as an individual responsibility or guilt, we are left with a very crude concept of it.

The denialists of settler-colonialism assume that it must be over, because the colonization of the Americas is apparently over. Thus, they think that modern Euro-Americans cannot be blamed for the sins of their forefathers, since individuals shouldn’t be held responsible for things which happened outside of their lifetimes. Guilt in this conception is an assessment of whether an atomistic individual is responsible for extremely specific crimes, such as participating in something like the Paxton Boys’ ethnic cleansing campaign in 1763 Pennsylvania.

The same ideological approach characterizes the other side, which obsesses over the individual status of “settler” and micro-categorizing the contemporary residents of North America within an abstract concept of settler-colonialism. They argue that having the individual status of “settler” means one is eternally damned, one is marked as a specific person by the crimes of a social system always and forever. This hefty sentence has high stakes, thus the obsession with categorizing every unique case within a specific box.

Neither of these approaches offers a successful insight into settler-colonialism. Instead, they project the thinking of European bourgeois liberalism. The individual is defined in an atomistic way, in their characteristics, rights, crimes, and so on. The individual as a node on a web of social relations is totally out of the question here. Yet, that is how we must think if we wish to understand settler-colonialism and, therefore, abolish it.

To focus primarily on categorizing atomistic individuals, instead of focusing on social relations, loses sight of the true engine of settler-colonialism. It is not that individuals choose one day to behave brutally, or that it is simply the nature of a specific people. Instead, it has very concrete historical motivations in the global system and the rise of settler-colonialism within it. For example, North American settler-colonialism was motivated significantly by the land hunger of capitalists who grew cash crops like tobacco and cotton, which were sold on the world market. Thinking in broad, structural terms is important in order to avoid reductive analyses and approaches.

While the side which focuses on damning individual Euro-Americans certainly have land in mind while thinking about this subject, they have a static and simple concept of land. In their minds, settlers are settlers because they are present in a certain place, to which a specific Indigenous group has an abstract, moral right to exclusive habitation in. To put it simply, their thought process is “if X person is in Y place, which belongs to Z people, then they are a settler.”

They do not understand the social relation of Indigenous peoples to their homelands, which extends into the aspects of ecology, history, spirituality, etc. That is, Indigeneity as itself a social relation. Indigenous peoples explicitly refer to their nations and homelands as relations. Their relation to land is not to land as an abstract thing, but to specific spaces that are inseparable from their specific communal lives.

In the context of describing his people’s history, Nick Estes (Lower Brulé Lakota) said in Our History is the Future:

“Next to the maintenance of good relations within the nation, an individual’s second duty was the protection of communal territory. In the east, the vast wild rice patties and seasonal farms that grew corn, beans, and squash demarcated Dakota territory. In the west, Lakota territory extended as far as the buffalo herds that traveled in the fertile Powder River country. For Dakotas, Lakotas, and Nakotas, territory was defined as any place where they cultivated relations with plant and animal life; this often overlaid, and was sometimes in conflict, with other Indigenous nations.”³

Identity and mode of life in communalist societies is specific to spaces, because keeping in the ‘rhythm’ of these spaces is a basic guiding logic of life. Because land is a relative, there was and is significant resistance among Indigenous peoples to the settler seizure of land and commodification of their non-human relative. The European bourgeoisie, meanwhile, was more concerned with what value could be extracted from the land, their worldview being based in abstract concepts of Right, Justice, Liberty and so on.

The faction in question does not understand settler-colonists as part of social relations which seek to negate that communal land social relation for concrete aims. They lack broad perspective, they only see society as a collection of atoms, falling into micro-categories, bundled together.

Having critiqued these two views, we can now give a better idea of how to properly approach the category groupings involved in analysis of settler-colonialism.

Indigeneity is defined by continuity of long-standing communal relations and identities indigenous to a certain region. Relation to a specific homeland or region is important to this, but the loss of direct ties to land does not necessarily negate Indigeneity. Rather, the continuity of belonging to a certain ‘mode of life’ and community is key.

A settler is one who is outside of these relations, and plays an active role in the negation of these Indigenous relations. A settler is not merely a settler because they are foreign. Rather, they are a settler because of this active negating role.

To play an active negating role does not necessarily mean one personally enforces colonial laws. Instead, it means that one directly benefits from their participation in the destruction of these relations, such as by gaining residencies or employment at the expense of those land-relations. An important aspect of being a settler is being a socio-political citizen of a settler-colonial society. This means that, in law and in social practice, one has the full rights of belonging to the settler-colonial nation, and is recognized as such in ideology.

Many analysts of settler-colonialism, such as Jodi Byrd (Chickasaw), use a third category in their analysis: arrivants.⁴ Arrivants are those who are part of social structures which dissolve those land-relations, but lack the citizenship and agency of settlers. An example of this would be Filipino debt peons. They cannot fully belong to the settler structures, in practice or in ideology, but they are still part of those structures. In North American history, these groups have at various times been explicitly excluded from the potential to own property or obtain full legal citizenship. Said citizenship was directly defined around whiteness, first de jure, and later de facto.

These categories should be treated in a nuanced way, as tools to understand a concrete society and history. We should avoid trying to bend reality to fit abstract categories. Otherwise, one assumes these categories are destiny. One assumes that Indigenous peoples cannot be part of settler-colonial structures, or that all settlers are eternally damned and cannot overcome their social role.

In history, there are many examples of Indigenous peoples participating in settler-colonial processes, such as with Tohono O’odham warriors participating in the Camp Grant Massacre against Apaches, or the Indigenous Vice President Charles Curtis sponsoring assimilation and allotment of communal lands. There are also examples of people without full socio-political citizenship participating in these processes, such as with Black Buffalo Soldiers fighting on the front lines of Manifest Destiny.

There are also examples of Euro-Americans defecting to Indigenous societies in order to escape bourgeois “civilization.” Cynthia Ann Parker was abducted and adopted as a child by a Comanche war band. Texas Rangers, who had massacred her adopted relatives, had to force her to return to Euro-American society. While adopted Euro-Americans remained Euro-Americans, inclusion in those communal relations transformed them. Instead of playing a negating influence on the part of bourgeois society, they became participants in Indigenous relations. To be a settler is not destiny, but is a status which can be negated through a revolutionary transformation of society. In a word, through decolonization.

To obsess over policing micro-categories is not helpful for understanding or fighting settler-colonialism. Being conscious of it is important, but the key is to focus on broad social structures. The way we alter individuals is by altering social relations, and the way we fight for Indigenous sovereignty is by abolishing the negating forces in society. To successfully treat a disease, one must keep in mind the body as a system rather than a simple collection of parts. The same applies to society.

Settler-colonialism in North America is the conflict of two social forms, one fighting to negate the other. The capitalist system: private, individualist, focused on expanding an abstract ‘god’ (capital). The Indigenous communal modes of life: premised on relationality, collectivist, focused on viewing the individual as a part of a whole.

The bourgeoisie seek exclusive, private ownership of land as property to be bought and sold as a commodity. They do not recognize communal land rights, or anything like having a social relation with a place. Instead, they seek to cut off the nerves connecting every aspect of communal life in order to box things in as commodities, so that they can be abstracted into an exchange-value.

The 1887 Dawes Act, which dissolved Indigenous communal landholdings in the United States, was aimed at forcing this system on Indigenous peoples.⁵ In the eyes of the ruling class, this was simply “civilization.” The bourgeoisie had to go to war with these communal ways of life to construct a capitalist system in its place. In the communal systems, unlike capitalism: land itself has rights as a relative instead of being merely a vehicle for value, people live off the land as a community instead of being landless wage-laborers, and exploitation is heavily frowned upon.

The first Red Scare in the United States was not during the 1919–1920 assault on organized labor and anti-war activists, but during the struggle of the government and capitalists against Indigenous communal modes of life.⁶

This war of generalized commodity production, capitalism, against alternative ways of being extended to ways of knowing. When forcing Indigenous children into boarding schools, the colonizers worked hard to destroy languages, religious practices, and cultural practices.⁷ In their place, they promoted individualism, bourgeois values, and a future as wage-laborers.

The liberal view of individuals is quite representative of typical bourgeois thinking. Liberalism posits individuals in an atomistic way, without considering them as concrete beings with concrete relationships in a real world. It sees individuals as simply bundles of rights, obligations, and so on. It premises meaning on extremely abstract, albeit universalizing concepts, such as “justice.” The rights of the liberal citizen are rights they have apart from society. Their freedom is a space separate from society, since they see others as fundamentally competitors.

This abstract thinking, individualism, and competitive view makes plenty of sense for a bourgeois. Their well-off conditions and obsession with preserving their private property against others reflect in their lack of concern for positive rights (rights to things, like food or shelter). What they want is to realize their capital, defeat their competitors, and pay as little as they have to for the working class’s living.

They only concern themselves with concrete things as far as they relate to their mission to realize abstract, congealed labor: capital. Capital commands them. If they do not expand their capital through exploitation and investment, they fall behind and decay in the rat race. Thus, the bourgeois is shrewd, atomistic, and anti-social.

By contrast, the communal view of individuals which is characteristic of Indigenous nations is focused on very concrete things. Individuals are part of specific communities with specific histories, who are relatives with specific land-spaces. To preserve balance in one’s real relations is an important value, contrasting sharply to the obsession with satisfying the god of abstract capital by feeding it concrete sacrifices. The key to this worldview is keeping in the ‘rhythm’ of life: the rhythm of one’s human relatives, non-human relatives, the ecology, the spirits, etc.

The latter view has a sibling in the views of Karl Marx. In the sixth thesis from Theses On Feuerbach, Marx said:

[…]the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.⁸

Further, Marx was very concerned with the metabolic rift wrought by capitalism. In his view, while capitalism had for the first time linked up the whole world and all people into one global social system of production, it had also unleashed forces it could not control. While everyone in capitalism depends on everyone else, the system is controlled by self-interested bourgeoisie, who have no concern for humans, animals, or ecology.

Therefore, there is a need for a working class revolution, where the people who produce what the world runs on establish social control of this social production. Through that social control, they must restore the balance of humanity and nature, using the planning of production to end the chaos and blindness characteristic of capital. Once they have fully developed this system of social control and planning and brought about a world where all people contribute to the social product instead of anyone exploiting anyone else, they will have established a communist society.

The basis for Pan-Indigenism in North America was laid by the proletarianization of Indigenous peoples during and after World War II.⁹ The Federal government explicitly hoped to use this to assimilate Indigenous peoples by removing them from communal life on reservations. Instead, the contact of many distinct peoples in urban workforces and communities led to the development of a new, broad concept of Indigeneity. These proletarians thought of themselves not only as, for example, Standing Rock Lakota or Chiricahua Apache, but also as “Indigenous.”

This had precedence with people such as Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee leaders of a Pan-Indigenous resistance to settler-colonialism in late 18th and early 19th century Ohio, or Wovoka, the Paiute founder of the Ghost Dance movement in the late 19th century. However, it had never reached this scale before. The same forces which sought to destroy Indigenous identity created means of establishing a new political movement in defense of it.

This universalization of identity from particular to general, without necessarily negating the particular, is something which must be done by social revolution as well. Proletarianization unites many distinct peoples into one class, leading to radical contacts between worlds. It lays the basis for a revolution which for the first time establishes a real community of all of humanity.

Decolonization ties directly into this project of social revolution. Capital attacks communal relations to establish and reproduce itself, yet by doing this it lays the foundation for a more universal form of communal life: communism. To decolonize is not to merely undo history and return to the past. We cannot undo centuries of change, of destruction.

Instead, as advocated by anti-colonial theorists like Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, we must assert indigenous aims on the basis of the world colonialism has brought. This must take the form of the social revolution, because capital leaves intact the negating force against communalism and the relations of domination between groups of people.

In our theorizing of communism, we must avoid the thought patterns of the bourgeoisie. We must not only avoid individualism, but avoid the denigration of communalist ways of life. Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of the defense of bio-diversity. They are staunch protectors of the earth, of their ways of life and of their relation with the earth. They resist capitalist primitive accumulation, defending their sovereignty, daily. Communism cannot be some form of universalized bourgeois society, nor can it carry over the denigrated view the bourgeoisie have of life. Instead, it must be communalism reasserted on a universal scale.

Decolonization does not mean one throws out settlers. It does not mean we send Euro-Americans back to Europe. This belief is premised on a bourgeois, colonial thinking about life. It assumes that behavior is ahistoric, inscribed into the DNA of people. Rather, it is social relations that we must expel, transforming people through incorporation into new ones.

In the past, the adoption of Euro-Americans served as an alternative to their behavior as settlers. A decolonized society can follow this model on a broader scale, while preserving the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples over their homelands. Indigenous conceptions of land are not based on bourgeois exclusive right, but the right of specific people to have an ongoing relation with specific spaces. Abolishing the negating force, capitalism, and asserting these ways of life while working to establish the universalist form, communism, must be our program.

To put it simply, decolonization should be understood as the indigenization of settlers. This necessitates a social revolution in all aspects of life. It does not mean settlers must immediately “play Native.” Within the context of bourgeois settler-colonialism, that is part of a process of dissolving Indigenous communities, destroying their ability to remain sovereign. Rather, it means that we must destroy the capitalist society which drives these antagonisms.

This decolonization also necessitates a conscious revolution in ideology as part and parcel of social transformation. As discussed, communalist societies have a strong sense of concrete locality, of specificity according to a space and the relations of that space. Capitalism seeks to negate that in favor of universalist abstractions. Communism must take the universalizing capitalism has engaged in and place it on a concrete, conscious basis.

We ought to oppose the negation of local life capitalism engages in, while having the universal goal of revolution. That is, unite the particular with the universal, establish the particular as the basis of the universal. The old, European bourgeois ways of thinking, lacking metabolism or relationality with other humans and with ecology, must be overcome.

Communism is the abolition of the present state of things on the basis of existing premises. The emancipatory project of communism should not be hostile to, but a student of Indigenous peoples. When all people are one kin, when they are not divided by class or other social antagonisms, then we will all be free. That is the relation of decolonization to communism.

Questioning Violence in the Wake of the Right-Wing Mob Attack in Washington, D.C.

By James Dugan

“The way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions about violence. . . . [V]iolence in any society is neither moral nor is it ethical. It is neither right nor is it wrong. It is just simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence.”

–Kwame Ture, 1969.

We won’t soon forget January 6, 2021—the day in which the nationalistic, xenophobic, and vitriol spewing conspiracy theorist, President Donald Trump, incited a violent far-right mob to descend upon and occupy the U.S. Capitol. The riot, all but ushered in by Capitol Police, resulted in 5 deaths, the evacuation of lawmakers, and the disruption of what is typically a ceremonial session to certify the Presidential election results. Elected officials quickly took to Twitter to denounce the siege and criticize violence from both sides of the political spectrum. Senator Ted Cruz tweeted, “The Constitution protects peaceful protest, but violence—from Left or Right— is ALWAYS wrong.” Presiding over the resumption of the Joint Session of the Congress, Vice President Mike Pence echoed the sentiments of many Twitter handles, stating, “To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, You did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins.” In short, condemnations of violence carried the day. Yet, as we continue to unravel and examine these extraordinary events, we might detour to ask why politicians were so quick to equate and denounce violence from both sides when the violence on January 6th came from only one: the extreme end of the far-right.

As a jumping off point, we might first question the assertion that violence is “ALWAYS wrong” by asking whether it has ever been true in our country. In what way is the claim that “violence never wins” accurate? Does not the State, from the Pentagon to the local police precinct engage in violence to enforce policy every single day? Is our country’s origin not rooted in and upheld by violence? These questions in mind, an initial attempt at interpreting the real meaning of the unified denouncement of violence by elected officials on January 6th might read, “Violence on both sides is wrong because violence has been monopolized by the State. Violence is only right when the State engages in it.”

While this definition is certainly more instructive, two lines of questioning should be raised before we accept its legitimacy. First, at what point in this country’s history has violence from the left and violence from the right ever been treated equally by the State? Isn’t our history littered with examples of white vigilante violence that the State either openly allied itself with or swept under the rug? From the civilian militias that assisted the State in quelling slave revolts in the 1800s, to the campaigns of terrorism deployed by the KKK throughout the 20th Century, to the police departments that align themselves with white supremacist organizations at protests today (E.g., Kenosha, Wisconsin), violence coming from the far-right has not only evaded punishment, it has been effectively endorsed by the State.

The second line of questioning that should be pursued relates to the position of the State itself. When the State is engaging in violence, is it doing so as some neutral enforcer of justice? Upon the political spectrum, does the State sit objectively in the middle between right and left? To answer this, we might first say that the function of the State is to maintain the structural integrity and stability of Society. At first blush, that sounds neutral enough. But, if our society is inherently unequal—if it is steeped in racial and economic inequality—if it is built upon a foundation of colonization, slavery, and imperialism—is the State which upholds it truly an unbiased authority? Or does it sit far to the right of the political spectrum as an entity that maintains systems of oppression on behalf of those who benefit from economic exploitation and white supremacy? Asked in simpler terms, if the status quo is unequal, and the State exists to maintain the status quo, to which side of the political spectrum does the State’s existence benefit? Understood in these terms, the State exists not as an impartial mediator between left and right, but—as put by Lenin—the “creation of ‘order’, which legalizes and perpetuates [] oppression.” The State thereby exists to deprive “the oppressed classes of definite means and methods of struggle to overthrow the oppressors.” As such, the position of the State is indistinguishable from the position of those who seek to maintain this country’s unequal conditions—i.e., the conservative right.

Why is the State willing to denounce violence from “both sides” if the State effectively exists to serve the right? Well, it should first be noted that this hasn’t always been the case. At times when the State has been unable to quell liberation struggles and social justice movements on its own, it has called upon reactionary civilians to assist in “maintaining order.” By way of example, we can point to the militias that assisted the U.S. Army in protecting settlers as they invaded unceded indigenous land and the militias that assisted the State in massacring coal miners who went on strike to improve working and living conditions. We can point as well to the Fugitive Slave Act—whereby civilians were required to enforce and return fugitive slaves on behalf of the State and wealthy plantation owners. That the street-level fascists—who, as an aside, were so anti-mask that they chose not to wear them while committing crimes in one of the most heavily surveilled buildings in the world—will certainly be made examples of and serve prison time for their federal offenses doesn’t change this reality. It is merely an example of what Benjamin L. McKean calls the “dance between the far right and the electoral right.” As stated in his recent take on the events for Jacobin Magazine, “Right-wing political parties can deplore right-wing street violence while using the disorder caused by reactionary mobs as another occasion for extending power.”

That aside, the State is comfortable in denouncing violence from “both sides” because, when push comes to shove, the State will act on its own behalf to violently suppress any movement that threatens the established order.  In an era in which the Defense budget is to the tune of $740 billion and nearly every local police department is militarized to the point of mimicking a Regiment in the U.S. Marine Corps, the State doesn’t need far-right extremists because the State has the ability to use violence whenever necessary. By monopolizing the use of violence, the State masquerades as a neutral body that proffers to only use force when absolutely justified. But, in practice, the left is typically the only side in which the use of force is ever necessary. The State need not use violence against the far-right because they exist on each other’s behalf—i.e., they are on the same team. The far-right doesn’t threaten the current order, which as we established above, is one of domination and inequality. Thus, in effect, we have finally reached an understanding of what the trope in question actually translates to: “Violence from the left—i.e., violence from the side of the oppressed—is always wrong.” This is the language that has been and will continue to be weaponized against pro-justice movements that yearn for a less oppressive existence. We should be unsurprised when the aforementioned tweets from January 6th resurface in the future to justify the brutal repression of efforts from the left to change the racist and exploitative status quo.

So, let’s return once more to the premise that violence is “ALWAYS wrong.” How can this be true? We have shown that the State has engaged in violence for centuries. We have also shown that the right has done the same without reprimand. Finally, we have established that the current order of our society is one of inherent inequality; an immoral condition of antagonism between—as Malcolm X once put—“those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation.” At this juncture, Paulo Freire’s words are instructive: “With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?”

What do we do with the apparent paradox that Freire raises? Perhaps it is the initiation of violence, rather than violence itself, which is always wrong. Is violence always wrong, or is violence only wrong when it is used to oppress and exploit; to subjugate and tyrannize? Maybe the more important conclusion to reach here is that self-defense, whether violent or not, is not wrong. Malcolm X had one of the most percipient understandings of the nuances between violence and self-defense. To quote his words once more, “I don’t believe in violence—that’s why I want to stop it. And you can’t stop it with love. So, we only mean vigorous action in self-defense and that vigorous action we feel we’re justified in initiating by any means necessary.”

Alternatively, the paradox could be resolved even if we come to agree with establishment politicians and reactionary conservatives in saying that violence is always wrong. Taking Freire’s words as true, this is merely an admission that the current conditions in this country—the current relationship of oppression—is violent and wrong. If such is true, then perhaps we narrow the definition of “violence” so that it doesn’t include self-defense. Nonetheless, whether only the initiation of violence is wrong, or whether violence is inherently wrong but is defined in such a way as to exclude acts of self-defense, the result is the same: the oppressed are justified in striving for freedom by any means necessary.

With this analysis in mind, we can test the veracity of the Mike Pence/Ted Cruz assertion by raising a few historical questions:

Was Toussaint Louverture wrong to lead the Haitian revolution?

Was Nat Turner wrong to initiate the Southampton insurrection?

Was John Brown wrong to raid Harpers Ferry?

As we ruminate on these final inquiries, we might keep the wisdom of Assata Shakur and Kwame Ture in mind. The former informed us, “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” The latter concisely stated, “In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.” 

The Case Against the Fourth of July

By Ryan Wentz

In 1992, indigenous leaders succeeded in pressuring Berkeley, California to drop the Columbus Day holiday and replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day. Since then, hundreds of U.S. cities and a handful of U.S. states have followed suit. This shift is merely symbolic, but it does reflect a change in how the general public understands American history. Today, in 2020, a national uprising against anti-Black state violence has pushed the discourse into uncharted territory: all around the country, protesters are tearing down statues of notorious racists, from Christopher Columbus to Thomas Jefferson. This reckoning is long overdue; American exceptionalism, militarism, and patriotism must be challenged. Displays and celebrations of oppressive structures like settler colonialism and white supremacy must be put to rest. This year and each of the next, don’t celebrate the Fourth of July.

As it was in 1776, the U.S. today is a genocidal, anti-indigenous, and anti-Black settler colony;  the country’s anti-indigenous, anti-Black past has transformed into an anti-indigenous, anti-Black present. The U.S. government’s response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and national uprising against racist police violence illuminates how little it values indigenous and Black lives. For indigenous communities, coronavirus has been especially devastating. Navajo Nation has recorded more cases per-capita than any U.S. state, and had to sue the federal government to receive the funding that it was promised. Meanwhile, police forces across the country continue to terrorize Black communities. That this global pandemic has not been able to slow down state terror against Black people speaks volumes. In fact, authorities have cracked down harder; police murdered Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, among others, during this global pandemic. Additionally, it is stunning to compare how authorities have responded to protests for justice for Black people with protests demanding the U.S. reopen its economy. 

Considering that the Fourth of July is a celebration of the U.S. and its so-called “independence,” perhaps it’s important to relitigate why the so-called “Founding Fathers” fought the British. In his 2014 book, “The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America,” Dr. Gerald Horne asserts that the revolution was in fact a counterrevolution to preserve slavery. At the time, the British empire was inching closer to abolishing slavery, which scared American capitalists who relied on slave labor to accumulate massive fortunes. Thus, the following question must be asked: what is the Fourth of July actually celebrating, if not the creation of an inherently violent settler colony built on stolen land by stolen labor? 

These are the types of difficult questions that we must ask ourselves as we seriously interrogate U.S. history. It may be unpleasant, or even earth-shattering, to reconsider the narrative that we have been told about the U.S. But that is precisely what needs to happen; the public must grapple with the lies that it has been told to justify and uphold white supremacy, settler colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. 

Every year on July 4th, it is nearly impossible to escape the flag-waving and fireworks. We can, however, reject everything that the holiday stands for and make the choice not to celebrate it. The U.S. government is currently terrorizing entire indigenous and Black communities both inside and outside of its colonial borders; we cannot go on ignoring these crimes.

In Bolivia, for example, last year’s U.S.-backed military coup forced Evo Morales, the first indigenous leader in a country with an indigenous majority, into exile. The coup regime and its supporters are explicitly racist towards Bolivia’s indigenous communities; in 2013, Jeanine Áñez, the unelected leader who has ruled the country since November, tweeted that “I dream of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites.” Additionally, after the coup, its supporters declared: “Bolivia is for Christ.” Many burned Wiphala flags, a symbol of Bolivia’s indigenous majority. In the following weeks, the military massacred at least 18 indigenous protesters in Sacaba and Senkata. Protests against the unelected government continue to this day.

In addition, U.S. support for the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestine illuminates how central anti-indigenous racism is to U.S. policy. In 1923, Vladimir Jabotinsky, an influential Zionist leader, wrote: “Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population.” Today, as Israel moves closer to the annexation of the occupied West Bank, Zionist leaders share the same understanding. The U.S., meanwhile, enables Israel to colonize Palestine “against the wishes of the native population” by providing its military with $3.8 billion per year, approximately $10 million per day, to continue ethnically cleansing Palestine and entrenching the illegal occupation. 

Just as it has propped up anti-indigenous movements around the world, the U.S. has supported explicitly anti-Black regimes, like in Apartheid South Africa. In November 1973, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (ICSPCA). The U.S., however, neither signed nor ratified the convention. Over one decade later, in 1984, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, declared that “apartheid is an evil as immoral and unchristian in my view as Nazism, and in my view the Reagan administration's support in collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil, and totally unchristian, without remainder.” The U.S., along with its Western allies, was one of the last states to officially cut ties with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In the twenty-first century, the U.S.’s assault on Black lives on the African continent has continued. The U.S. has been meddling in Somalia for over three decades, and continues to drone bomb the country with impunity. Meanwhile, the U.S., with the support of N.A.T.O. and Western-backed rebels, overthrew Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. By 2011, Libya was atop the African continent in Human Development Index; nearly 85% of Libyans were literate, while the average life expectancy hovered around 75. Yet because Gaddafi refused to completely submit to Western imperialists, he was deemed a threat that needed to be taken out. Today, Libya is a collapsed state where Black people are being sold in open-air slave markets.

The U.S.’s horrific treatment of indigenous and Black communities abroad is a reflection of the crimes it has committed against both communities at home. It is essential that we understand that anti-indigenous and anti-Black racism is foundational to the existence of the U.S.; without them, there would be no U.S. empire. Thus, celebrating the U.S. is celebrating anti-indigenous and anti-Black racism. It is celebrating settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, slavery, genocide, and imperialism. Ultimately, what Christopher Columbus represents is no different from what the U.S. represents.

Ryan Wentz (any pronouns) is a Los Angeles-based field organizer for Beyond the Bomb, a grassroots organization committed to preventing nuclear war. Ryan has experience in the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements, and has in the past worked at the American Friends Service Committee and CODEPINK. 

America Is Indefensible: Reflections on Donald Trump and American History

By Adrienne Cabouet

Some people say Trump is America's Mussolini. Some other people say Trump is America's Berlusconi. Silly people say Trump is America's Hitler.

Here's a thing that no one says:

The world's first concentration camps were built in Africa. Thirty years before the Holocaust, Germany murdered over one hundred thousand Africans in three years in Namibia. From 1904 to 1907, Africans were driven into the desert to die or placed into concentration camps where they were worked and starved to death by the thousands.

Today, seventy years after the Holocaust (the capital H one where mostly white people died, not any of the THOUSANDS of lower letter h ones where brown people died), Germany still maintains a colonial presence in Namibia. Indigenous Africans live in poverty and squalor yards away from Nazi war memorials, windmills, and expensive high-rise condos filled with openly racist German investors and 'entrepreneurs.' Today the land where the concentration camps stood is a popular tourist destination for visiting Westerners.

Here's another thing no one says:

Hitler literally came out and said the tactics of extermination the Nazis used during the Holocaust were inspired by American treatment of Natives in the US.

As John Toland writes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Adolf Hitler: "Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination-by starvation and uneven combat-of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity. He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government's forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination."

And yet: when the capital-h Holocaust happened, Americans and Europeans (the white ones) reacted in shock. HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED, they said. WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?

Africans and Native peoples were not shocked. The colonized people of "the third world" were not shocked. We watched the West go to war with itself over who would have control of the darker nations with weariness and caution. We understood then, as we do now, the true nature of Western so-called civilization. No matter who won, we lost.

America Has Never Been Great

American greatness, upheld by Donald Trump in his much derided but now iconic campaign slogan but also by Hillary Clinton in her many unapologetic exhortations of this country's exceptionalism, has always been fueled by atrocities and by the deaths and dehumanization of hundreds of millions of people all over the world. America's foreign and domestic policy is, and has always been, genocide, theft, torture, slavery, and organized campaigns of sexual abuse and rape that have spanned the entire globe.

Everyone knows about this country's birth in blood - few people will argue about the barbarity that characterized the Euro-American settler conquest of this nation: approximately 110 million Natives and over 30 million Africans raped, sold, enslaved, and murdered so the American empire could be born. But how many people know about the 2 million Filipinos who died in the Philippine-American war? Or the 1.5 million Haitians worked to death on sugar plantations during the American occupation of the island? Or the 3 million Arabs and Muslims dead from American sanctions and interventions in the Middle East? Or the tens of millions of Indigenous people murdered and disappeared in Argentina, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Honduras, El Salvador, Chile, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Cuba, equatorial Guinea, and Mexico by dictators, secret police, and cartels installed, funded, and trained by the US government?

Scratch the surface of any part of American history and you will find atrocities barely hidden beneath the myth. It is these atrocities which have made America the most powerful country in the world. The American Empire is an explicitly white nationalist, settler colonial project whose economic foundation is genocide and theft targeting the darker nations and peoples of this planet. There is no you, America, without the death of us. It is only with this context that one can provide a proper analysis of Donald Trump and what he and his so-called movement represent.

Donald Trump as a candidate and Trumpism as a movement do not represent an aberration or departure for American politics. They are the inevitable consequence of American nationalism and the violent expansion of the American Empire.

Every single horrifying thing that Americans quake in fear of Donald Trump bringing to the US, the US has inflicted in their name - often with their enthusiastic support - on people all over the world and within these borders. The difference is that the victims of these accepted American atrocities were African. Arab. Asian. Native. Poor. Brown. Women, queer folks, and children. Within the expansive cloud of hot bullshit known as Western conscience and Western morality and in particular American exceptionalism, those lives do not matter. Those lives are slaughtered so that the last gasp of the American dream may live. The sad fact is that the overwhelming majority of Americans are more or less ok with this reality as long as they don't get it too. The ones who think they have the moral high ground - the 'progressives' - will tsk tsk before ultimately hand waving it all away as a necessary evil.

But the thing about building an entire culture and economic system rooted in the exploitation of huge swaths of life on this planet is that it warps your humanity. It makes monsters. Monsters are real and in this context they are distinctly Euro-American, pink faced, stubby fingered, and they have bad hair.

You CAN NOT separate the brutal reality of American domestic and foreign policy from the conditions that gave birth to Trump. You CAN NOT separate Trump the candidate from the history of this country and what it has done. You CAN NOT hope to stop the ideology and consequence that Trump represents by voting in a person who will in every way continue the legacy of brutality, depravity, and pain that turned America into a superpower except this time wearing a three thousand dollar pantsuit and kitten heels.

Donald Trump is America, and America is Donald Trump. Americans cannot run from him. They also can't save themselves by voting for the more politically sophisticated lady version of him. By refusing to acknowledge the basic reality of their history, Americans are guaranteeing that another, much worse Trump will come.

So, What Do We Do?

So what do we do? Where do we go? How do we stop the inevitable rise of a new American fascism and how do we survive these times?

Americans must divest from empire. They must refuse to be complicit with atrocities committed in their name. They must reclaim their humanity and understand that their fate is tied to the fate of the rest of life on Earth. Americans must reject the parasitic relationship they have developed with the rest of humanity and they must join the growing revolutionary anti-imperialist movement while organizing to resist the empire's interventions abroad. Americans must struggle in solidarity with the global south and the colonized people of this land to overthrow this empire, destroy capitalism, and with it racism and white supremacy. They must stand on the side of the coming global revolution.

In practice this looks like rigorous study and political education focused on unlearning the indoctrination of American nationalism and learning the true history of the American empire. This looks like a complete rejection of so-called lesser evil politics. This looks like creating and supporting programs of dual power like the AAPRP breakfast program and the School of African Roots here in Portland and MXGM's Cooperation Jackson program in Mississippi. This looks like materially supporting the resistance of colonized people who are rising up all over the world and right here in the US: this means getting the fuck to North Dakota to resist DAPL with the Sioux Nation if you can or sending them money and supplies if you can't. That means moving beyond just saying "Black Lives Matter" to organizing for police and prison abolition, helping your community develop alternatives to keep each other safe, talking to your racist ass relatives, and spreading the word about and supporting the ongoing national prison strike, the largest in American history.

Above all it means understanding that you can't vote your way to liberation and feeling bad isn't enough. Realize that capitalism, imperialism, racism, and fascism are a feedback loop. The bigotry that you allow your state and media manufacture at home, provides justification for American barbarism here and abroad.

Divest from empire and reclaim your humanity.

This was originally posted at Adrienne's blog, The Race Card.

*The title of this essay is inspired by a line in Aime Cesaire's Discourse on Colonialism . You should read it.

Lying to Children About the California Missions and the Indian

By Deborah A. Miranda

All my life, I have heard only one story about California Indians: Godless, dirty, stupid, primitive, ugly, passive, drunken, immoral, lazy, weak-willed people who might make good workers if properly trained and motivated. What kind of story is that to grow up with?

The story of the missionization of California.

In 1769, after missionizing much of Mexico, the Spaniards began to move up the west coast of North America in order to establish claims to rich resources and before other European nations could get a foothold. Together, the Franciscan priests and Spanish soldiers "built" a series of 21 missions along what is now coastal California. (California's Indigenous Peoples, numbering more than 1 million at the time, did most of the actual labor.) These missions, some rehabilitated from melting adobe, others in near-original state, are now one of the state's biggest tourist attractions; in the little town of Carmel, Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo isthebiggest attraction. Elsewhere, so-called Mission décor drenches Southern California, from restaurants to homes, apartment buildings, animal shelters, grocery stores, and post offices. In many neighborhoods, a bastardized Mission style is actually required by cities or neighborhood associations. Along with this visual mythology of adobe and red clay roof tiles comes the cultural storytelling that drains the missions of their brutal and bloody pasts for popular consumption.

In California schools, students come up against the "Mission Unit" in 4th grade, reinforcing the same lies those children have been breathing in most of their lives. Part of California's history curriculum, the unit is entrenched in the educational system and impossible to avoid, a powerfully authoritative indoctrination in Mission Mythology to which 4th graders have little if any resistance. Intense pressure is put upon students (and their parents) to create a "Mission Project" that glorifies the era and glosses over both Spanish and Mexican exploitation of Indians, as well as enslavement of those same Indians during U.S. rule. In other words, the Mission Unit is all too often a lesson in imperialism, racism, and Manifest Destiny rather than actually educational or a jumping-off point for critical thinking or accurate history.

In Harcourt School Publisher's California: A Changing State, the sacrifice for gold, riches, settlements, and violence by Spanish, English, and Russian explorers is well enunciated throughout Unit 2 and dressed in exciting language such as on page 113: "In one raid, Drake's crew took 80 pounds of gold!"

In four opening pages to Chapter 3 devoted to Father Junípero Serra, the textbook urges students to sympathize with the Spanish colonial mission:

"Mile after mile, day after day, week after week, the group traveled across the rugged terrain. As their food ran low, many of the men grew tired and sick. Father Serra himself suffered from a sore on one leg that grew worse each day. And yet he never gave up, calling on his faith in God to keep himself going."

The language jumps between an acknowledgement of the subjugation of Indigenous Peoples and of mutually beneficial exchanges. In Lesson 3, "The Mission System" opens: "Indians were forced to build a chain of missions." Subsequent language emphasizes the alleged benefits to the Indians:

"At the missions, the priests worked to create loyal Spanish subjects… They wouldmovethe California Indians into the missions, teach themto be Christians, andshow themEuropean ways." [Emphasis added.]

Visiting the mission as an adult, proud, mixed-blood California Indian woman, I found myself unprepared for gift shops well stocked with CDs of pre-researched Mission Projects; photocopied pamphlets of mission terms, facts, and history (one for each mission); coloring books; packaged models of missions ("easy assembly in 10 minutes!"); and other project paraphernalia for the discerning 4th grader and his or her worried parents.

The Carmel Mission website maintains a "4th Grade Corner" where daily life for padres and their "Indian friends" who "shared what little food and supplies they had" is blissfully described. Other websites offer "easy," "quick," and "guaranteed A+!!!" Mission Projects, targeting those anxious parents, for a price.

Generations of Californians have grown up steeped in a culture and education system that trains them to think of Indians as passive, dumb, and disappeared. In other words, the project is so well established, in such a predictable and well-loved rut, that veering outside of the worn but comfortable mythology is all but impossible.

On my visit to Mission Dolores, I found that out in a particularly visceral way.

It was over winter break, 2008. I was in San Francisco for a conference, and my friend Kimberly and I had hopped on a streetcar to visit Mission Dolores. As we emerged from the mission church via a side door into a small courtyard (featuring one of those giant dioramas behind glass), we inadvertently walked into video range of a mother filming her daughter's 4th-grade project.

Excusing ourselves, we studiously examined the diorama while the little girl flubbed her lines a few times. She was reading directly from the flyer given tourists in the gift shop and could say "basilica" but not "archdiocese," but she maintained her poise through several takes until she nailed it.

Both mothers ourselves, Kimberly and I paused to exchange a few words of solidarity about school projects with the mother, which gave Mom the chance to brag about how she and Virginia were trying to "do something a little different" by using video instead of making a model.

"That's great!" I said, giving them both a polite smile. "I'll bet your teacher will be glad to have something out of the ordinary."

"Well, it is different actually being right here," Mom said excitedly. "To think about all those Indians and how they lived all that time ago, that's kind of impressive."

I could not resist: "And better yet," I beamed, "still live! Guess what? I'm a member of the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation myself! Some of my ancestors lived in this mission. I've found their names in the Book of Baptism." (I didn't mention that they are also listed in the Book of Deaths soon afterward.)

The mother was beside herself with pleasure, posed me with her daughter for a still photo, and wrote down my name so she could Google my work. Little Virginia, however, was shocked into silence. Her face drained, her body went stiff, and she stared at me as if I had risen, an Indigenous skeleton clad in decrepit rags, from beneath the clay bricks of the courtyard. Even though her mother and I talked a few more minutes, Virginia the 4th grader-previously a calm, articulate news anchor in training-remained a shy shadow, shooting side glances at me out of the corner of her eyes.

As Kimberly and I walked away, I thought, "That poor kid has never seen a live Indian, much less a 'Mission Indian'-she thought we were all dead!" Having me suddenly appear in the middle of her video project must have been a lot like turning the corner to find the (dead) person you were talking about suddenly in your face, talking back.

Kimberly, echoing my thoughts, chortled quietly, "Yes, Virginia, there really are live Mission Indians."

The problem is, thanks to Mission Mythology, most 4th graders will never know that and the textbooks don't help to give visibility to modern California Indians.

Throughout the rest of California: A Changing History, mentions of California Indians are brief and as victims fading into history. On page 242, under the heading of "A Changing Population," Harcourt states simply, "California Indians were hurt by the gold rush… Many were forced off their lands when the miners found gold there."

Many pages later, California Indians are mentioned again when the textbook devotes five paragraphs to Indian Governments. Although 109 tribes are recognized in California, in the text, they are faceless and noted only by red square dots on a map.

It's time for the Mission Fantasy Fairy Tale to end. This story has done more damage to California Indians than any conquistador, any priest, and soldado de cuera (leather-jacket soldier), any smallpox, measles, or influenza virus. This story has not just killed us, it has also taught us to kill ourselves and kill each other with alcohol, domestic violence, horizontal racism, internalized hatred.

We have to put an end to it now.

This article is part of the Zinn Education Project's If We Knew Our History series. It originally appeared on March 23, 2015 at zinnedproject.org. Deborah A. Miranda is the author of "Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir" (Heyday Books, 2012). Miranda is an enrolled member of the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation of California, and is also of Chumash and Jewish ancestry. She is a John Lucian Smith Jr. Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, and says reading lists for her students include as many books by "bad Indians" as possible. Visit Deborah Miranda's blog, BAD NDNS.

The History of Education as Colonial Apologist: A Marxist Critique

By Curry Malott

The three interrelated premises of historical development (i.e. the satisfaction of needs, the creation of new needs, and with them, the growth of the size and complexity of society), for Marx and Engels, are universal aspects of history that always exist despite mode of production, mode of cooperation, or degree and form of productive development.

Within capitalism the creation of new needs is driven by the capitalists' quest for expanding capital. The global expansion of capital was already presupposed by its emergence. The colonization of what would become the U.S., for example, represents one of capital's chief moments of primitive accumulation. This paper examines the way history of education texts have dealt with this fundamental aspect of the global expansion of capitalism. I argue that the genocide of America's Indigenous peoples and the theft of their lands have been downplayed in the history of education, even within Marxist approaches. This paper therefore argues that this shortcoming represents an unfortunate distortion of Marx who wrote extensively on how the European capitalist conquerors ruthlessly waged war on Native North America. Marx's last works, his ethnographic notebooks, focused on Native American societies and what they have to offer in terms of social existence after capitalism. The correction of so-called Marxist and traditional history of education texts is fundamental for building a socialist movement in the twenty first century based on the self-determination of oppressed nations and national minorities (i.e. true to the international solidarity of the Marxist-Leninist tradition). However, in responding to history of education texts that align themselves with the work of Marx I do not address their most common charges (i.e. functionalist economic reductionism), but rather, I focus on what I believe is their capitulation to the capitalist conquest of the Americas. As a result, this work, in my estimation, departs from some of Marx's more relevant and important insights for transforming capitalist relations into socialist ones in the contemporary era.

Marx's dialectical approach to constructing historical narratives always takes as its place of departure a critical engagement with existing narratives refracted through the light of empirical evidence and systematic reasoning. The error made by most history of education texts is that the connections between the settler-state, colonialism, and the uniquely capitalistic quest to perpetually expand capital are either loose and undeveloped or they are treated as separate, mostly unrelated spheres or aspects of human society. What follows is a critique of history of education texts' engagement with the colonial era. The following critique of history of education textbooks demonstrates the fields' disconnection with Indigenous studies. I present the analysis as a chronological history of the history of education and point to how its shortcomings can be overcome through an engagement with Indigenous studies (see, for example, Coulthard, 2014; Mohawk, 1999; Venables, 2004).

The Colonial Era

The discovery of America was another development of the desire for travel and discovery awakened by the Crusades. (Cubberley, 1919, p. 11)

This quote from Elwood Cubberley's 1919 history of education book represents a combination of what the late educational historian Michael Katz (1987) describes as an approach that seeks "superficial causes" (p. 140). Katz argues that this approach "signals a retreat from any attempt to find a principle or core within a social system," consequently, "the levers of change remain obscure" (p. 140). Clearly, Cubberley's explanation for European expansion and colonial pursuits as the result of a thirst for adventure can be described as "superficial." Cubberley's larger discussion of the history of education is unapologetically Euro-centric. We can observe this legacy of pro-capitalist Euro-centric apology reproduced in history of education textbooks in the decades following Cubberley. Vassar's (1965) history of American education text offers an example:

The missionary organizations were far more successful in their endeavors among the Negroes than among the Indians…in this great crusade…developing honest hard working Christian slaves…A large population [of Native Americans were] not slaves [adding to the difficulty of educating Indians]. (pp. 11-12)

While Cubberley's (1919) Euro-centrism stems from his glaring omission of even the mention of a Native American presence, Vassar's (1965) narrative is equally Euro-centric implying that the assimilation of Native Americans and Africans into bourgeois society represents a "great crusade." That is, Vassar presents colonialism, a process that led to centuries of physical, biological, and cultural genocide, as a positive force. Unfortunately, the racism and white supremacy of traditional bourgeois historians was either not discussed by the Marxist historians, or they themselves reproduced it. Consider:

The Western frontier was the nineteenth-century land of opportunity. In open competition with nature, venturesome white adventurers found their own levels, unfettered by birth or creed. The frontier was a way out-out of poverty, out of dismal factories, out of crowded Eastern cities. The frontier was the Great Escape. (Bowles and Gintis, 1976, p. 3)

I present Cubberley (1919) and Vassar (1965) next to Bowles and Gintis (1976) to demonstrate both the difference and continuity between traditional education historians and so-called Marxist education historians on the issue of colonialism/Westward expansion. As previously suggested, Bowles and Gintis' somewhat apologetic statement on the colonization of the Americas is not a position they borrowed from Marx for Marx was well aware of the barbaric destructiveness the expansion of capital had on the non-capitalist and non-Western societies it expanded into.

What is most obvious here is Bowles and Gintis' empathy for the children and grand-children of the expropriated peasant-proprietors of Europe who were "chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers" (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 734). The acknowledgement of the destructive and oppressive nature of capitalism here represents a clear break from the corporate apologist narratives that have dominated before and since Bowles and Gintis (1976). However, at the same time, there is a haunting silence within Bowles and Gintis' narrative seemingly more interested in the fate of immigrant laborers than the ancient tribes and confederacies that continue to struggle for national sovereignty within a colonial present that can too easily seem perpetual or permanent. This exclusionary tendency within much of the Marxist tradition, despite the contrary testimony of Marx's own work, has contributed to an unfortunate misunderstanding of the contributions of Marx.

Even progressive education historians in the 1980s and beyond continued to reproduce colonialist narratives. Button and Provenzo (1983/1989), for example, after explaining the colonization of the Americas as the result of a growing middle-class gaining wealth from a period of "peace, prosperity and trade" (p. 6), portray Native Americans as the helpless, primitive victims of progress:

The Native Americans…belonged to hundreds of tribes with almost as many different languages. In general, they had little in common with one another and did not unite to resist the settlement of their lands by the early colonists. The existence of numerous rivers and harbors, of a moderate climate, and natives unorganized for resistance, made North America splendid for colonization, if not for immediate exploitation. (p. 6)

Button and Provenzo (1983/1989) seem to offer this short passage as their explanation for the disappearance of Native Americans on the Eastern seaboard-an assumption that is patently false. Even more recent history of education texts written from progressive, constructivist perspectives too often reproduce the old colonial narratives. For example, it is astonishing that a book published in 2013 called Education and Social Change (Rury, 2013) would continue to depict American Indians or Native Americans as primitive victims helpless against the powerful onslaught of Europe's superiority.

Fortunately, there exists other history of education texts offering some diversity of narrative. For example, and to their credit, Wayne Urban and Jennings Wagoner (2009), in the fourth edition of their text, American Education: A History, reassess the old narrative reproduced by Boers (2007), arguing, instead, that the colonies were not established with the intention of building a new society, but rather, were a business venture, that is, an investment opportunity. To understand the first New Englanders' relationship with pre-existing indigenous confederacies, it is important to remember that the colonists faced the continent and its communities as religiously-mediated investors who came from a pre-existing English capitalist society that had long been primitively accumulated and normalized and naturalized traditions of private property and a market in human labor.

In Jamestown, VA, the continents' first permanent English settlement established in 1607, relied on a friendly relationship with the local Powhatan Confederacy for their own survival and for the success of their investment. However, the capitalist purpose of the colony, and thus its very existence, presented a major barrier to peace. At the same time, renowned American Indian historian, Robert Venables (1994), makes a compelling case that, before dissolving, the relationship between the colony and the Powhatan Confederacy was mutually beneficial.

…The London Company's investment in the highly profitable tobacco plantation business relied on peaceful relations with the local Powhatan Confederacy. Tobacco farmers supplied Powhatans with trade goods in exchange for food, which allowed colonists to invest their labor in the cash crop not worrying much about food. Powhatan's access to trade goods allowed them to grow stronger and defeat their rivals to the west thereby gaining access to trade with the copper-producing Indians of the Great Lakes (Venables, 2004, pp. 81)

Clearly, Venables does not see the Powhatans' as helpless victims, but as savvy negotiators committed to their own national interests. However, because of the labor-intensive nature of tobacco production and because of its profitability as a use-value, by 1619 a Dutch ship brought the first shipment of African slave-laborers to Virginia to keep pace with the demand for labor. Because of these reasons, it also made more sense to focus labor on tobacco production and continue to rely on the Powhatans for food. Consequently, fifteen years after their arrival, the colonists continued to rely on the Native communities for food, which might not have been a problem, but their numbers were forever growing, therefore placing increasing pressure on the Powhatan's food supply.

The colonists also came to the Americas with an old racist ideology stemming from an invented, Christian-related, European identity (Mohawk, 1999), which resulted in a long legacy of colonists viewing and treating Native Americans as inferior. Consequently, it was not uncommon for colonists to disregard Powhatan national authority and settle land without compensation or consultation, leading to tension and conflict with Native communities. Perhaps one of the last straws was the colonialists' plans to establish an Indian college, which American Indians saw for themselves no advantages. It was understood that adopting the settlers capitalistic ways would give the elites among the new settlers a major advantage by stripping the Powhatans of their own economy and means to satisfy and expand their needs. If the foreign capitalist becomes the ruler of the land, then the American Indians would forever be subordinate in the relationship. Eventually, having their land-base, food supply, culture, and very existence threatened, the Powhatans decided to terminate the colony. Commenting on this decision Venables (2004) explains:

In 1622 Powhatan warriors, intimately familiar with colonists routines from being their primary food vendor, simultaneously struck 31 locations across a 70 mile area killing nearly 350 of a population of 1200. (Pp. 81-82)

In the aftermath, hundreds of settlers sailed back to England. Cut off from their food supply as many as five hundred more colonists died of starvation that winter. As a result, James I took over the London Company's investment. That is, having been operated as a private venture for the first 17 years, Virginia, "became a royal colony in 1624 and control transferred to the Crown appointed governor" (Urban & Wagoner, Pp. 18). While this was an important development, following Venables and other historians, the ten years of bloody war that followed and the ways Indian policy were forever transformed (from co-existence to extermination), have had far more serious implications for the fate of the indigenous communities in North America. According to Venables (2004), "the 1622 attack did more than merely define future Indian policy in Virginia as one of conquest…It encouraged an already existent English colonial attitude of racial superiority" (p. 84). For example, after learning of the Powhatan war, the Pilgrims in Massachusetts erected a fort fearing the Narragansetts. However, the struggle for the Eastern seaboard was ultimately determined in 1633/1634 as smallpox wiped out Indians in a massive epidemic. Puritans, as might be expected, viewed this unintentional genocide as an act of God. Governor Winthrop:

If God were not pleased with our inheriting these parts, why did he drive out the natives before us? And why does he still make room for us by diminishing them as we increase? (Quoted in Venables, 2004,Pp. 89)

Following conquest, which was not the result of European superiority, but was made possible by an accident, settler-state policy toward indigenous communities has consistently eroded indigenous independence/sovereignty. A new Marxist history of education must therefore not only rethink the past, but it must embrace the national sovereignty of Americas' first nations as part of the movement for a socialist alternative to capitalism.

References

Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. New York: Basic Books.

Boers, D. (2007). History of American Education Primer. New York: Peter Lang.

Button, H.W. & Provenzo, E. (1983/1989). History of Education & Culture in America: Second Edition. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Coulthard, G.S. (2014). Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Minnesota University Press.

Cubberley, E. (1919). Public Education in the United States: A Study and Interpretation of American Educational History. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Marx, K. (1867/1967). Capital. Volume 1. New York: International Publishers.

Mohawk, J. (1999). Utopian Legacies: A History of Conquest and Oppression in the Western World. Sante Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishing.

Rury, J. (2013). Education and Social Change: Contours in the History of American Schooling. New York: Routledge.

Urban W. & Wagoner, J. (2009). American Education: A History (Fourth Edition). New York: Routledge.

Vassar, R. (1965). Social History of American Education: Volume I: Colonial Times to 1860. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company.

Venables, R. (2004). American Indian History: Five Centuries of Conflict & Coexistence: Volume I: Conquest of a Continent 1492-1783. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light.

Salt in the Wounded Knee: Psychopathy in the Commemoration of Genocide

By Sonasha Braxton

Hannibal Lecter, Jason Voorhees, Norman Bates. What do these people have in common? They tormented us in our dreams. There was something particularly callous in the way that they engaged in their homicidal acts, which left us shuddering. Cold, calculated, without remorse or feeling, we might casually call them psychopathic. But what actually is "psychopathy"? Psychopathy assessed with the PCL-R 9 [1] includes a grandiose sense of self-worth, lack of remorse or guilt, lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility for actions. Does anything about the history of the United States, more specifically its celebration of holidays, makes sense within the context of this symptomology? While we could most certainly name quite a few, let us take for example just two holidays, Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day. To understand how the celebration of each of these holidays resembles psychopathy, then we must have a clear comprehension of the history and reason for celebration.

Columbus Day

The Myth: In fourteen hundred ninety-two,/Columbus sailed the ocean blue/ He had three ships and left from Spain/ He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain … /Ninety sailors were on board;/ Some men worked while others snored … / Day after day they looked for land;/ They dreamed of trees and rocks and sand./ October 12 their dream came true,/ You never saw a happier crew!/ " Indians! Indians!" Columbus cried;/His heart was filled with joyful pride./ But "India" the land was not;/ It was the Bahamas, and it was hot./ The Arakawa natives were very nice;/ They gave the sailors food and spice./ Columbus sailed on to find some gold/To bring back home, as he'd been told./ He made the trip again and again,/ Trading gold to bring to Spain./ The first American? No, not quite./ But Columbus was brave, and he was bright. [2]

Exclusionary Detailing

Many of us may be familiar with this poem. I remember learning it at some point in my actually quite progressive elementary school. Columbus's first voyage had about 90 men. Some men probably snored. It is possible they dreamed of sand. It is more than likely they were quite happy when they reached land. They were not in India. The indigenous Arawak population gave them gifts and Columbus did come back. I deny none of the veracity of the poem. But I do have questions, like why it exists. Why is it taught to children in an educative setting? While it is only a children's rhyme, it is the omissions, and the implied "happily ever after" that beyond problematic, are in fact quite insidious. Almost immediately after meeting the "very nice" Arawak natives, the rhyme conveniently ends, thus implying that this is the conclusion, when it most certainly is not. It is selective, exclusionary detailing, where the most important facts simply are not there. One might argue that a children's rhyme should not include a story about mass murder, and therefore the rhyme appropriate as-is. To this I would reply that there should be no children's rhymes about mass murderers. For those of us who best understand the deplorability of such when compared to the Jewish experience, allow me to ask, were you ever taught a delightful ditty about Hitler in primary school, which talked about his mustache, what he dreamed about, and how smart he was, and then conveniently left out the Holocaust?

A Truth

In Columbus and his crew's multiple interactions with the Indigenous People, the word "discovery", while now admittedly less widely circulated, is still used erroneously in describing Columbus's encounters with several Caribbean islands, and countries in Central America. Columbus never saw the present day United States. He embarked on four different voyages while looking for the "East Indies", in search of King Solomon's gold mines, riches, and a route to India. By accident, he stumbled upon the Bahamas, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, and parts of North Eastern Central America. Much of what we know about the atrocities Columbus committed against the indigenous Arawak/Taino populations was documented by Bartolome de Las Casas, a Spanish Historian and Dominican Friar in A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. [3] Take for example the following quotes from the book:

" The Christians with their horses and swords and lances, began to slaughter and practice strange cruelty among [the Arawak]. They penetrated into the country and spared neither children nor the aged, nor pregnant women, nor those in child labour, all of whom they ran through the body and lacerated as though they were assaulting so many lambs herded in their sheepfold "

" In this Kingdom or (I'm certain) in some Province of New Spain, A Spaniard Hunting and intent on his game, phancyed that his Beagles wanted food; and to supply their hunger snatcht a young little Babe from the Mothers breast, cutting off his Arms and Legs, cast a part of them to every Dog, which they having devour'd, he threw the remainder of the Body to them. "

" [The Spaniards] made bets as to who would slit a man in two or cut off his head at one blow: or they opened up his bowels. They tore the babes from their mother ' s breast by their feet and dashed their heads against the rocks … They ' spitted ' the bodies of other babes, together with their mothers on their swords … They made a gallows just high enough for the feet to nearly touch the ground … they put wood underneath and with fire, they burned the Indians alive " .

In one incident, a member of Columbus's crew "drew his sword. Then the whole hundred drew theirs and began to rip open the bellies, to cut and kill a group of Taino … roasted them, cut off their hands and burned them alive"

" [the Spanish] rode the backs of the Indians as if they were in a hurry, " and they " thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades. "

As if this were not enough, rape too was a common occurrence. In 1493, Columbus had already began rewarding members of his crew with Arawak/Taino women to rape. This was not simply confined to women, but extended to pre-pubescent girls. In Columbus's own words he stated "… girls… from 9-10 … are … in demand" .[4] In one single day, de Las Casas saw Columbus's soldiers "dismember, behead or rape 3,000 natives". It is clear that the Arawak/Taino population were not considered sufficiently human to be treated as such. And distant from the eyes of the crown, no one policed Colmbus nor his crew's despicable moral engagement with the people he miraculously discovered and subsequently made extinct.

The Tribute and Encomienda Systems

In 1495 Columbus created the "tribute system" in Haiti and the Dominican Republic (Hispaniola). Columbus at this time, still seeking the source of gold that he had not yet managed to find, implemented a system in which non-compliance, resistance, or inability to produce the expected results, bore the consequence of torture and capital punishment. According to Ferdinand Columbus, Columbus's son, "[The Indians] all promised to pay tribute to the Catholic Sovereigns every three months, as follows: In the Cibao, where the gold mines were located, every person of 14 years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk's bell of gold dust; all others were each to pay 25 pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment. Any Indian found without such a token was to be punished" . [5] The punishment was that those who did not provide sufficient gold every three months, had their hands cut off, and were left to bleed to death. Columbus had grossly overestimated the amount of gold that existed and it soon became clear that he had to exploit the Arawak/Taino by other means in order to reap profit. By then over 10,000 Arawak/Taino had been killed this way. Thus the encomienda system was created around the time of Columbus's third voyage.

There are a variety of arguments which examine if the encomienda system was actually slavery. These become important because this distinction contributed directly to the total extinction of the Arawak/Taino population; encomienderos did not own the Arawak/Taino, so they could not be bought or sold. The encomiendas were not inheritable by subsequent generations. And the Indigenous populations could not be moved from one geographical location to another. [6] Because the Arawak/Taino were not inheritable under the encomienda system, there was no impetus for the conquistadors to keep the Indigenous people alive. If the Arawak/Taino attempted to escape, they were hunted and killed. Thus the system thus sought to regulate Indigenous labor and behavior, in order to profit the conquistadors. Under the encomienda system, encomienderos received grants of a number of Arawak/Taino, from whom they could exact "tribute" in the form of gold or labor. In turn, the benevolent encomienderos were supposed to "protect" the physical bodies of the Indigenous population on the very land they had stolen from them, as well as "protect" their immortal souls by Christianizing them. This was a lose-lose for the Indigenous people who in an exchange under duress, gained the bible, and lost their land, many spiritual concepts, language, history, and lives.

Another untold story is that of the Indigenous resistance. Even when aspects of the true history of Columbus's genocide are told, the narrative is one written in the passive voice, in which Indigenous people, are not the agents, rather the objects, and one which excludes their narratives of resistance and survival. The Arawak/Taino fought back frequently in multiple uprisings and even the "Indian wars" on Hispaniola. However, the conquistadors had the advantage of "advanced" weaponry. The conquistadors deterred future uprisings by torturing and killing prisoners of war in the way de Las Casas described. This was by no means unfamiliar to the conquistadors as the exact same system had been used against the Black Moors in Spain.

Slavery and Capitalism

Columbus, who had already been engaged in slave trade on the West African coast years prior, familiar with systemic dehumanization, and the encomienda system's success against the Moors in Spain, became one the most "successful" European slave traders in the Americas. The Spanish, under the leadership of Columbus, selected 500 Arawak/Taino to be sent to Spain as enslaved people (of whom less than half survived the journey). In 1493 there were approximately 8 million Arawak/Taino. The disease that the conquistadors brought with them, combined with the destruction of the ecosystem by European livestock and rodents and the intentional systemic genocide of the Arawak/Taino people resulted in a population of 100,000 remaining by 1504.

Having nearly totally depleted the Arawak/Taino population, and the conquistadors unwilling to do the work themselves, Columbus continued to look for an alternative work force to exploit in the gold and silver mines and in agriculture. The "protector of the Indians" Bartolome de Las Casas initially supported the idea that African enslaved people be used to replace the massacred Arawak/Taino. Columbus had created the perfect model for other Europeans who were fast on his heels to guarantee their own wealth in the "New World". The same method of dehumanizing, destroying, murdering, and enslaving Arawak/Taino was used with the enslaved African population. The encomienda system was done away with and the trans-Atlantic slavery system erected in its place. Capitalism built on the backs of Arawak/Taino and African populations became a leading source of Spain's wealth for centuries. By 1555, not a single Arawak/Taino remained.

How it Became a Holiday

In 1828 Washington Irving, perhaps best known for his fictional, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, with the same imaginative zest, constructed a purely fictitious account of Christopher Columbus, in A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. In the book Columbus was a brave and benevolent leader who treated the Arawak/Taino with respect, kindness and dignity. This book was responsible for much of the myth-making around who Columbus was, and the ever-present invented version of the man and his legacy. In 1892, president Benjamin Harrison established the day as one to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landing in the Bahamas to spite the British. And in the 1890s large swells of Italian immigrants, who at the time were facing ethnic discrimination in the United States, held tightly to and propagated the image of the great Italian Columbus who had "discovered America" and used it as a way to ease their integration into the United States. By 1972, President Nixon, well-known for his incredibly honest and scrupulous behavior, made it a holiday.

Thanksgiving

The Myth: One hundred two passengers on the ship,/ Sixty-five days was a very long trip./ 'Twas November 11 when there was a shout./ "Land ho! We've made it!" a voice yelled out./ Their very first winter was cold and was gray./ The Pilgrims worked hard in the new land each day./ People got sick and some even died./ Still others continued to work side by side./ To the Pilgrims, Squanto was a teacher and friend./ He helped them from sunrise until each day's end./ He told them to plant corn in rows long and narrow./ He taught them to hunt with a bow and an arrow./ When the leaves once again turned gold in the fall,/ Enough food for the winter was stored up for all./ The Pilgrims felt joy they wanted to share./ They wanted their Indian friends to be there./ There were tables piled high with fish and with meat./ Vegetables, fruits, and good things to eat./ The Pilgrims gave thanks for all that they had. / Pilgrims and Indians together were glad.

Another Truth

Like Irving's account of Columbus, this poem goes beyond exclusionary detailing, and is almost pure invention. We can acquiesce certain details like the date, the coldness of the winter, and Squanto's teaching the Pilgrims how to plan corn. But Squanto's relationship to the Pilgrims, how Thanksgiving came about, and most certainly the idea that the "Indians" were somehow "glad" is pure fallacy. Prior to the Pilgrims' arrival John Smith and the colony at Jamestown had already set an early precedent for the Indigenous encounter. In summation, the English colonists who arrived in the United States, were always wholly unprepared for the harsh conditions they would find upon arrival, and in their times of desperation, reverted to animalistic means of survival, including cannibalism. Captain John Smith wrote, "So great was our famine that a savage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and ate him; and so did divers ones another boiled and stewed with herbs. And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered her and had eaten part of her" [7]

For the Pilgrims in particular, after a series of successions of the throne, feeling that their religious beliefs were resulting in persecution, and seeking potential wealth and a fresh start in the "New World," they left South Hampton, England in the Mayflower with a total of 102 people. After about two months the ship landed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. On December 16, 1920, according to the dark humor of Will Rogers, the Pilgrims "fell upon their knees… then fell upon the aborigines". [8] The Pilgrims, unused to the harsh winter, incapable of finding food on their own, with little idea how to engage in agriculture, lost about half of their population. At that time, the Pilgrims were half-crazed from loss, grief, hunger, and their unpredictable and consistent deaths. George Thorpe, wrote a first-hand account of what he witnessed, stating "more do die here of the disease of the mind than of the body" [9]

Enter Squanto (Tisquantum), whose existence is highly contested. If and when the "friendly savage" appeared, he was not seen as a teacher and friend but rather a clear sign of God's deliverance, as Squanto was a baptized, educated, English-speaking Christian. What more lucid sign of God's favor? Squanto, who had been formerly enslaved by John Smith's men was able to escape to England and return to the U.S. to find most of his tribe had been wiped out by the Plague. Members of the Pokaoket and other tribes, having lived in the area over 10,000 years were also able to communicate with the Europeans as they had already had interactions with European fishermen. They taught the colonists how to plant and where to hunt fish and beaver. In fall of 1621, Governor Bradford of Massachusetts issued a proclamation calling for a three-day feast to commemorate the first harvest and survival throughout the winter, to which the Wampanoag were invited in order to negotiate a treaty that would secure the lands of the Plymouth Plantation for the Pilgrims and to be placated to ensure the Pilgrims' survival.[10] Perhaps it was a feast in the name of brotherhood, but with dual and duplicitous intentions.

More ships came. The Pilgrim settlement expanded exponentially. European-borne diseases spread rampantly through the Indigenous population, killing them off with precision. There were multiple tribes living in the area, each with particular alliances with one another. As tribes engaged in numerous alliances with the Pilgrims, relations were ruptured amongst the other Indigenous American tribes living in the area, and power differentials substantially altered.

In 1637, when the first, officially proclaimed "Thanksgiving" took place another event was actually celebrated. At that feast, the New England colonists celebrated their massacre of the Pequots in the Connecticut Valley. William B. Newell, a Penobscot Indian and former chairman of the Anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, says that the first official Thanksgiving Day celebrated the massacre of 700 Indian men, women and children during their annual Green Corn Dance…[11] William Bradford, the former Governor of Plymouth and one of the chroniclers described it in the following detail:

" Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire … horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory. " [12]

Once the Pilgrims had become self-sufficient, their reliance on the Indigenous population dwindled. In 1675, continued aggression by the European invaders led to King Phillip's war, resulting in the massacre of over 3000 Indigenous people and about 1000 Pilgrims. At the end of the conflict most of the surviving Indigenous population were either hung, burned, killed or sold into slavery in the Carolinas. The enslavement of Indigenous people was highly successful, but raiding the Ivory Coast of Africa to enslave Africans and sell to the Southern colonies proved even more successful, and thus perpetuated the trade of enslaved Africans and their uncelebrated Holocaust.[13]

While in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, it had already been celebrated annually for centuries. Dr. Ishakamusa Barashango sums up what Thanksgiving celebration is quite nicely, describing it as "a holiday celebrating the beginning of the almost total extermination of an entire race of people, commonly called "Indians" and the enslavement, continued oppression and genocide of the Afrikan, by European settlers". [14]

Whitewashing Genocide

Article 2 of the The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm; (c) deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births; (e) forcibly transferring children from one group to another group". [15] Given the history of the calculated intent of destroying in whole or in part both Indigenous and African people, there is no doubt that both of these holidays are based in historical genocide. The colonists cut off hands, fed babies to dogs, raped and sold children, and burned people alive. The Indigenous Holocaust and even embryonic stages of the African Holocaust, are the epitome of genocide. However, the truth is conveniently erased from the rhymes that are taught in class, and in its place a revisionist victor's history, which not only scrubs away the horrendous war crimes perpetrated by the English and Spanish invaders, but takes a white paintbrush and layers it finely in a beautiful coat of glorification. In celebration, the U.S. not only honors genocide, but its literal whitewashing as well.

Colonization of Narrative

The idea that we live in a post-colonial society, is perhaps as ridiculous as the thought that we live in a post-racial society. We cannot separate the repercussions and systemic infrastructure built as a result of the exploitative nature of the European encounter, from colonialism itself. Colonialism is a dynamic process, not simply a static moment in time that has now passed. And just as colonialism exists as the exploitation and subsequent domination of a people, it is just as assuredly a domination of history and narrative. To the victor goes the spoils and the rights for the victor to write history however he likes. The loss of ownership of one's own narrative, a narrative of genocide and resistance, especially in favor of one that honors the sordid actions of the victor's in triumph over the defeated, is surely salt in the wound of an already grotesque injury. The narrative represents an interactive relationship between the teller and the listener. The teller (dominant U.S culture) exercises its power over the controlled narrative and to some extent the audience, by legitimizing 1) its right to tell the story and 2) the truthfulness of the narrative [16]. The colonization of the Indigenous and African destruction and resistance narrative, using the fallacious "discovery narrative" thus honors manifest destiny, imperialist occupation, and dehumanization of "the other".

Collective Memory and American Identity

The way in which events are remembered has particular importance, especially within the context of celebratory ritual within American (U.S.) cultural memory. Cultural memory relates to fixed points of the past… "whose memory is maintained through cultural formation (texts, rites, monuments) and institutional communication (recitation, practice, observance)" called figures of memory. [17] These figures of memory, the observance of celebration, Columbus and Thanksgiving poems, festivals, parades, etc., create "islands of a completely different temporality suspended from time" which maintain preservation. The memory is not questioned, as the narrative, dominated by the conquerer, is clear. This cultural memory provides "concretion of identity or the relation to the group… from which a group derives an awareness of its unity and peculiarity" [18]. Thus the reconstructed narrative supports the cultural memory which supports the construction of American identity and our normative self-image as independent, brave, righteous and benevolent. This is then reinforced by the ritual celebration.

Equally important are the existence of various forms of denial and silence. In response to blatant historical violence, the U.S. has exercised both literal and interpretive denial in collective forgetting. This manifests on a spectrum from wholesale literal denial, "that genocide never happened" to the deliberate construction of historical violence "in ways that make them appear less atrocious". [19] " Silence and forgetting also result from particular forms of presence or mention that transform potentially threatening events into transgression-denying objects" . [20] This is calling genocide an "encounter" or using "meeting" to replace "massacre". Perhaps most reprehensible continues to be the anti-silence, which is the commemorative glorification of genocide exercising both literal and interpretive denial.

That Country Crazy.

In the DSM-V "antisocial personality disorder" has replaced the "psychopathy" diagnosis. It provides multiple areas of dysfunction which meet the criteria for this particular psychopathology. Let's see how the U.S. fares with respect to just the two discussed holidays:

"Ego-centrism; self-esteem derived from personal gain, power, or pleasure. Goal-setting based on personal gratification; The colonists (to be Americans) came to the "New World" for gold, the acquisition of a different socio-economic level, or power their religion did not allow them to exercise in England.

Empathy: Lack of concern for feelings, needs, or suffering of others; lack of remorse after hurting or mistreating another. The colonists exterminated millions of Indigenous people, and initiated the Indigenous and African slave trade as well as the Indigenous and African Holocausts and didn't seem too concerned about it.

Antagonism, characterized by: Manipulativeness, dishonesty, callousness and disinhibition:

The colonists used the Indigenous population's assistance for their own survival…then killed them. They created narratives which became holidays that destructed truth and reconstructed a collective cultural memory of benevolence as well as a cultural amnesia around the genocide. The U.S. continues to celebrate and commemorate these genocides annually with turkey and parades.

So What...?

The influence of American (U.S) culture is not always obvious. Many of us fully embrace it and many of us deliberately remove ourselves from it, denouncing citizenship, changing our last names, consider ourselves part of it solely by hyphenation, or understand ourselves as distinct from it due to lack of legal recognition of citizenship. But we cannot escape from it. We drive to work in it. We must operate in its systems. We use its currency. We breathe its air. We pay its bills. We bury our heads in work that funds it. We get lost in its distractions. We depend on its functionality for our survival. We celebrate its holidays. Yet if we think critically about why we engage in celebration we might consider also calling these reasons crazy, insane, pathological, and an affront to both indigeneity and humanity.

The narrative of resistance exists, but is rarely told. There are numerous active Global Indigenous Advocacy networks.There have been multiple Indigenous-led movements which have successfully changed Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day, such as in Seattle, Washington. Similarly cities and towns in the United States have adopted resolutions to change the day's name. On October 12th, Venezuela celebrates the Day of Indigenous Resistance. Thousands march in Chile in what the people celebrate as the Day of Mapuche Resistance. The American Indian Movement (AIM) has been actively engaged in petitioning government to make Thanksgiving a day of mourning. Colonialism has evolved from slavery and small pox blankets. It now unashamedly offers neo-liberal policies in the name of economic globalization, which continue to result in illegal acquisition of land, deprivation of resources and human casualties. And there continue to be countless examples of both armed and unarmed Indigenous resistance occurring throughout America, from Canada to the Cape Horn. Indigenous people did and are resisting occupation of their lands and transnational exploitation of resources, despite the frequent disproportional militarized response to their demands.

So sitting in traffic at the Columbus Day parade, or even while we are having a huge meal with our families, let's take a few seconds to be a little pensive. If perhaps, we are not willing to give up the perks of our day off, or if we use the celebration as a time to be with family or reflect on gratitude, we can also be curious about how we do so in a way that acknowledges that the struggle for Indigenous liberation is pulsing vigorously. We can challenge the dominant narrative, our distorted cultural memory and resultantly our own (inextricably) American identities, and we can reshape them. If indeed practices of commemoration "provide a unified sense of who we are now and project a sense of collective purpose into the future" [21] then we must approach psychopathy with the intention of constructing an identity that is both principled and "sane", and a future purpose which is directed towards being honest in this world by honoring complete truths however vicious or painful these may be.

Oh yeah. Happy Thanksgiving.

Notes

[1] Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised. http://www.minddisorders.com/knowledge/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist.html

[2] http://www.teachingheart.net/columbus.htm

[3] Casas, B., & Griffin, N. (1992). A short account of the destruction of the Indies. London, England: Penguin Books.

[4] Loewen, J. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: New Press

[5] ibid

[6] Yeager, T. J.. (1995). Encomienda or Slavery? The Spanish Crown's Choice of Labor Organization in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America. The Journal of Economic History, 55(4), 842-859. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2123819

[7] The General History of Virginia Fourth Book p. 294 (1606-1625)

[8] Deloria, V. (2002). The Indian Reorganization Act: Congresses and bills. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

[9] Rogers, J.A. Africa's gift to America: the Afro-American in the making and saving of the United States : with new supplement, Africa and its potentialities. (1961). St. Petersburg, FL: Helga Rogers Publishing

[10] http://historyofmassachusetts.org/squanto-the-former-slave/

[11] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/10176871/ns/msnbc-the_ed_show/t/thanksgiving-day-time-mourn/#.Vkko7q6rQXo

[12] Donald, G. (2009). Lies, damned lies, and history: A catalogue of historical errors and misunderstandings. Stroud: History Press.

[13] Jennings, F. (1975). The invasion of America: Indians, colonialism, and the cant of conquest. Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press.

[14] Barashango, I. (1979). Afrikan people and European holidays: A mental genocide. Silver Spring, MD: IVth Dynasty Pub.

[15] United Nations General Assembly. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html

[16] Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou. (2011). Narrative power, authority and ownership. In: Analyzing Narrative. pp. 125-154. [Online]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available from: Cambridge Books Online <http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139051255.008> [Accessed 15 November 2015].

[17] Collective Memory and Cultural Identity Jan Assmann; John Czaplicka New German Critique, No. 65, Cultural History/Cultural Studies. (Spring - Summer, 1995), pp. 125-133.

[18] ibid

[19] Kurtiş, T., Adams, G., & Bird, M. (2010). Generosity or genocide? Identity implications of silence in American Thanksgiving commemorations. Memory, 18(2), 208-224

[20] ibid

[21] ibid

Confronting Columbus: Revisionism Versus Reality

By Colin Jenkins

Regarding the painstaking process of historiography, someone of relative importance once remarked, "History is written by the victors." A statement which echoes Plato's dictum that, "those who tell the stories also hold the power," its modern source is unclear. Still, many do not hesitate to attach these words to Winston Churchill, Britain's renowned Prime Minister during the Second World War. Considering Churchill's own history - born into an aristocratic family; his grandfather the 7th Duke of Marlborough; his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, a wealthy British statesman; his mother, Jennie Jerome, an "American socialite," herself the daughter of a financier, speculator, and mass landowner - and the fact that he made an early living overseeing the mass killing of indigenous Africans and Indians located everywhere from Bombay to Sudan to South Africa, such a statement would hardly come as a surprise. If "victory" is defined in terms of deploying one's immense privilege - whether socioeconomic, "racial," or national - to enslave, oppress, and murder others who lack such privilege in order to maintain that very system for oneself and generations to come, then Winston Churchill was certainly one of history's "victors."

The act of whitewashing history - whether literally through the domination of Eurocentric perspectives, or figuratively through blatant omission and revisionism - is certainly common practice. It is the "victors" main tool in shaping history. Historical revisionism has been defined as "a consciously falsified or distorted interpretation of the past to serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present;" "a collective task in a nation's cultural development, the full significance of which is emerging only now: to redefine a nation's status in a changing world;" or the act "of 'truth-seekers' finding different truths to fit the needed political, social, or ideological context." In the United States of America, such revisionism becomes immediately apparent when one steps into a public school classroom - where histories of indigenous genocide and human enslavement are, at best, minimized; and, at worst, utilized to stroke a false sense of superiority and exceptionalism; and where the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity are magically transformed from conquerors to "explorers," from murderers to "adventurers," and from slave masters to "patriots" and "founding fathers," all in the stroke of a pen or the voice of a lecture.

The act of historical revisionism has deep-seated cultural effects. Essentially, it creates two worlds:

1. The first based in quasi-fiction, informed on selective data and historical accounts from either the actual "victors" or the direct beneficiaries of the perceived "victory;" and one that enjoys unquestioned dominance through manipulation and a process of layered assimilation where commonly accepted "knowledge" is constantly reproduced through academia and seamlessly delivered to its intended audience.

2. The second based in reality, informed on factual data and historical accounts from not only the "victors," but also from the supposed "losers;" and one that faces almost certain or near-extinction through numerous acts of manipulation and/or omission which are carried out over a number of years, decades, or even centuries.

Historiography is the proving ground for this ongoing struggle between revisionism and reality. The ruling classes deploy their army of "traditional intellectuals," born and bred of privilege and churned through the most prestigious schools and universities, to protect the dominant ideology through a sophisticated presentation of revisionism. The working classes, struggling to maintain actualities, look upon their own ranks to create a semblance of reality as the torchbearers of truth. Hanging in the balance is the direction of society: towards continued polarization, inequities, and dehumanization; or towards a sense of being - something that cannot be realized without truth.

Revisionism gives us Columbus Day; a federal holiday "in commemoration of Christopher Columbus's historic 1492 voyage," for which, in 1934, the U.S. Congress "duly requested the President proclaim the second Monday of October of each year as such"

Reality gives us Indigenous People's Day; "a holiday celebrated in various localities in the United States, begun as a counter-celebration to Columbus Day, with the "purpose of promoting Native American culture and commemorating the history of Native American peoples."

Revisionism gives us the following announcement from the White House: "When the explorers laid anchor in the Bahamas, they met indigenous peoples who had inhabited the Western hemisphere for millennia. As we reflect on the tragic burdens tribal communities bore in the years that followed, let us commemorate the many contributions they have made to the American experience, and let us continue to strengthen the ties that bind us today."

Reality gives us the words of Columbus himself: "(The natives) are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone."

Revisionism gives us the words of Michael Berliner of the Ayn Rand Institute: (Western civilization) brought "reason, science,self-reliance,individualism, ambition, and productive achievement" to a people who were based in "primitivism, mysticism, and collectivism," and to a land that was "sparsely inhabited, unused, and underdeveloped."

Reality gives us yet another dispatch from Columbus: "I promise this, that if I am supported by our most invincible sovereigns with a little of their help, as much gold can be supplied as they will need, indeed as much of spices, of cotton, of mastic gum, also as much of aloes wood, and as many slaves for the navy as their Majesties will wish to demand."

Revisionism gives us this official statement from the U.S. government: "In the centuries since that fateful October day in 1492, countless pioneering Americans have summoned the same spirit of discovery that drove Christopher Columbus when he cast off from Palos, Spain, to pursue the unknown. Engineers and entrepreneurs, sailors and scientists, explorers of the physical world and chroniclers of the human spirit -- all have worked to broaden our understanding of the time and space we live in and who we are as a people."

Reality gives us Columbus' words: "They (the Arawak Indians) brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

Revisionism gives us this:

Reality gives us this:

The "whitewashing" of history has an intended purpose -to control information and knowledge, to keep the "huddled masses" ignorant, and to maintain the status quo. The Churchills of the world and their keepers would have it no other way. For if history were reality-based, the immense wealth and power they have enjoyed and continue to enjoy - of which has been accumulated through the stolen resources of indigenous peoples, and multiplied on the backs of the enslaved, the imprisoned, the working classes and the peasantry - would cease to exist. If history were reality-based, the hierarchical systems that keep this illegitimate wealth and power intact, and the government watchdogs that protect these systems, would cease to exist.

On this day, reality begins with recognizing the real consequences of Christopher Columbus' "expeditions," which continued far beyond the hallowed year of 1492. "In 1493, Columbus returned with an invasion force of seventeen ships, appointed at his own request by the Spanish Crown to install himself as 'viceroy and governor of [the Caribbean islands] and the mainland' of America, a position he held until 1500," explains Ward Churchill. "Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa-ola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of slavery (encomiendo) and systematic extermination against the native Taino population." In all, "Columbus' programs reduced Taino numbers from as many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of his departure" some seven years later.

As working class women and men, we have an intimate connection with indigenous peoples who were "so free with their possessions" that "they would offer to share with anyone," just as we do with our neighbors. We have a bond with those whose only wish was to be left alone, to live and carry on as they please, to progress their livelihoods, and to care for their families, loved ones and neighbors, just as we do. The conditioned need to possess "worldly goods" at the expense of enslaving and murdering other human beings does not exist for our benefit, and should not be celebrated. Reality does and should mean something.

Reject revisionism. Embrace reality. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

References

James McPherson, Revisionist Historians. Perspectives, 2003. American Historical Association.

Harold D. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in World War I (1927), MIT Press, pp. xxii-xxvii.

Matthew d'Ancona, History men battle over Britain's future. The Times, May 9, 1994.

Presidential Proclamation, Columbus Day 2012. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/10/05/presidential-proclamation-columbus-day-2012 . Accessed on 10/13/13.

"Winston Churchill" . Historylearningsite.co.uk. 30 March 2007. Accessed 10/13/13.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States: 1492-present. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

http://www.amstudy.hku.hk/columbusletter.html . Accessed 10/13/13.

F. David Peat, Blackfoot Physics: A Journey into the Native American Universe (2005), Weiser, pg. 310.

Medieval Sourcebook: Christopher Columbus: Extracts from Journal, Fordham University archives. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columbus1.asp. Accessed 10/13/13.

History Not Taught is History Forgot: Columbus' Legacy of Genocide. An excerpt from Ward Churchill's book, Indians Are Us (Common Courage Press, 1994) http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v9/9.11/1columbus.html. Accessed on 10/13/13.