this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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[–] aaronbieber@beehaw.org 5 points 23 hours ago

Isn't it fair to say that Native Americans didn't consider land to be "owned" by anyone? What colonialism (and agriculture) did was assert control over land that was previously thought to be communal.

The tragedy of the commons is a capitalist invention. Shared resources have all been managed effectively until the point where they become considered private resources.

[–] Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Of course they are. They are both prime examples of settler colonialism in action.

People forget that Israel started as a British colony

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don't worry, we'll put it in the textbooks 100 years from now to talk about how cruel we were

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago

Then 50 years later well put someone in power that says it never happened and rip it back out of the books.

[–] BananaPeal@sh.itjust.works 136 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You forgot the pre-1700s picture where all of the US is red.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 80 points 2 days ago (17 children)

Bloodthirsty british and european settlers, greedy for land, wiped out hundreds of native tribes, each with rich cultures, art, languages, and beliefs. And most of this happened less than 150 years ago.

Clearing an entire continent of peoples is unprecendented in history, and what's worse, is that it's still ongoing, and no one has had to account for this earth-shattering crime.

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

british and european

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[–] redchert@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 1 day ago

Back then the ideological split inside american settlers was between actively killing all natives or putting them into reservations to left them naturally die off over time - as they were "evolutionary obsolete". In fact the bourgeois revolution of the american landlords was started because the British tried to limit american settler expansion and the expansion of slavery into Creek and Chickasaw lands.

The idea of not killing off natives was never present in any large capacity in the early united states.

[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 51 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (9 children)

"Indian reservations" are concentration camps

German labor camps were obviously concentration camps

and the strategic hamlet program were concentration camps

and ICE detention centers are concentration camps

either way it is always white people and their concentration camps

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[–] frenchfryenjoyer@lemmings.world 42 points 2 days ago (9 children)

To see diagram progressions like this is really sad. like a beautiful rainforest gradually being chipped away into nothing. same perps too considering the vast majority of Israelis are European

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[–] MaybeNaught@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Wait a sec, wasn't the majority of that land in the western states claimed by New Spain and then Mexico? How is the maker of this map qualifying "land of native nations"?

[–] Saurok@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 days ago (5 children)

There were people there before New Spain and Mexico claimed the land. I imagine they're qualifying it using something like the map I linked.

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[–] edel@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 days ago

The lands you are probably referring was the Mexican Cession (most of the US western lands now). That cession happened after the Mexican war that ended in the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo signed in 1848. So the map mostly accurately reflects that as US territory in 1850.

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[–] Samsuma@lemmy.ml 32 points 2 days ago (40 children)

"Ah but you see, a long time has passed by! There's generations [of settler-colonialists] that have already lived through these times, and the people of today have nothing to do with their past!"

Motherfucker, landback means the LAND which is rightfully the Indigenous' is taken BACK, and it means you GO BACK too, no one should give a fuck about which gen. you're currently a part of.

They're going to say the exact same shit for Palestine if it's allowed to be festered long enough by settler-colonialists, as if it already hasn't been festered.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 40 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (43 children)

and it means you GO BACK too, no one should give a fuck about which gen. you’re currently a part of.

This would mean that like 99.9% of Earth's population has to move somewhere. Almost all land was fought over endlessly and changed metaphorical hands multiple times over. What we call "indigenous people" in a territory is usually just whoever was winning those wars before written history began.

What "landback" actually means is recognizing the systemic racism that was and still is perpetuated against the indigenous people by means of taking away their ancestral lands, slaughtering and enslaving their ancestors, and destroying their way of life; and addressing that racism by giving jurisdiction and sovereignty over their lands back to them. It doesn't mean that everyone but the indigenous people have to move out; descendants of colonizers born there are technically natives of that land too. The difference is that they get systemic advantages from their ancestry whereas indigenous people get systemic discrimination. This is the thing that ought to be addressed. (well, the horrifying economic and governance system that the colonizers brought and festered must be addressed too, but all three are tightly coupled together)

In the case of Israel the difference is that a lot of colonizers are first gen, they are not natives, they do have somewhere to "go back to", and they are actively perpetuating colonization and genocide rather than simply getting an advantage from their ancestors doing so. In such cases it of course makes sense for the decolonization effort to focus on direct expulsion of invaders.

[–] procapra@lemmy.ml 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

In the extremely unlikely event that indigenous people got direct executive control over what happens in the continental united states, I don't think they'd even want the mass exodus of all white people. Nor do I think they'd want full cultural assimilation. My entire life, the prevailing narrative has always just been the end of systemic oppression. Very frequently I've heard indigenous rights activists demand the free use of/free travel across land for things like hunting, which is a pretty small ask. Just because this or that action would be justified, doesn't mean it's the action people want. IMO the second minority ethnic groups feel safe and represented these kinds of mass exodus narratives will fade away. Doubly so if there was a transition to socialism that went with it, and some thought went into identifying the different national identities (so something akin to a soviet of nationalities could be formed).

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The last will be first. Landback and decolonization means putting the reigns into the hands of the indigenous people's hands, and letting go of the reigns, not just holding onto the reigns but giving the colonized people some of the reigns. The best settlers can hope for is to be treated kinder than they have treated the people whose land they stole. I myself was born in the US, and am still a settler here, just because I was born here does not absolve my role. It means I have a historic duty to help carry out decolonization and land back, from the back, not as a leading role.

Read Fanon.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 hours ago

While I agree in general, there's also nuance to be had IMHO.

For example: Russian Empire colonizing Siberia was a bloody affair. Of course it was not anywhere near the atrocities committed in the new world, but still a lot of natives died due to localized warfare and disease. Do you think that when USSR formed, the Siberian peoples should have been given full sovereignty, as separate countries (not even part of USSR), and rule over themselves and the descendants of russian settlers that were left there; or was the actual solution of giving them autonomous republics within the RSFSR the better one? I lean on the latter. I think if a socialist revolution ever happens in the US, this is the way it would happen. Full jurisdiction and sovereignty for indigenous people in certain areas (they need to be much larger than current reservations, though), shared jurisdiction and sovereignty in other limited areas where descendants of settlers live. And, of course, land to the peasants, factories to the workers - I strongly suspect both casual and systemic racism will be much less of an issue once capitalism no longer burdens the working class.

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[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 34 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I call this the finders keepers rule of colonialism. The western supremacists think that as long as you

  • Kill a large enough percentage of the native population, and
  • Wait long enough

Then the finders keepers rule kicks in, and you get to keep anything you stole. They even will yell "no ethnostates!!" at indegenous peoples they evicted and stole land from.

The main point is that its not for anyone but indigenous peoples to determine what they want to do with their land.

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[–] Ilixtze@lemmy.ml 26 points 2 days ago

Same perpetrators as well.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 26 points 2 days ago (1 children)
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