Indigenous Solidarity An (Un)Settler's Place

Socialism, Solidarity, and Indigenous Liberation
By Deborah Simmons
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?id=1323

In Canada, a new radical movement of indigenous people is emerging that refuses to be co-opted by the “aboriginalist” policies of the state. This movement aims to resist the destructive, corrupting and oppressive aspects of the system that has been imposed on indigenous peoples since the arrival of the Europeans. At the same time, the new radical indigenism reaffirms and renews the positive aspects of the sovereign societies that existed on this continent before colonization. Inherent in this strategy is a strong sense of autonomy. Indigenous people are responsible for making their own revolution, in their own way.

It's easy enough to hedge about politics. It comes naturally and most of the time the straight answer isn't really going to satisfy the questioner, nor is it appropriate to fix our politics to this world, to what feels immovable. Politics, like experience, is a subjective way to understand the world. At best it provides a deeper vocabulary than mealy-mouthed platitudes about being good to people, at worst (and most commonly) it frames people and ideas into ideology. Ideology, as we are fully aware, is a bad thing. Why? Because it answers questions better left haunting us, because it attempts to answer permanently what is temporary at best.

http://www.greenanarchy.org/index.php?action=viewwritingdetail&writingId...

Text of a 1997 talk by Amor y Rabia (Mexico) member on the theme of Indigenous Autonomy

As a collective, Amor y Rabia has wanted to address the theme of Indigenous Autonomy, because we understand that in this time, as in other eras of history, it is the best model for organizing a movement of resistance and struggle that includes not only indigenous people, but also everyone who is convinced of the need to live in a different world.

On the eve of a new millennium, we meet once again, to look for the correct paths in the endless struggle to transform this society into a world of justice, of freedom, and of hope. Today, more than ever, in the presence of the possibility and the conditions for participating in a revolutionary process in Mexico, in the presence of the idea of changing the current forms of human community into new forms, more aware and therefore more egalitarian, and in the presence of the challenge of being ourselves part of this transformation, once again, for these reasons and many more, we allow ourselves to dream that utopia can be realized.

this post/article explores the need for placing colonialism properly in our theory and action, and the proper place is central."

this is a draft. (please don't reproduce)

My Thoughts on Leftism: thinking unsettling.
By Alex

There is a problem with the moral verbosity of Canadian leftists and their eurocentric political dogmas imported from England and France etc. They are problematic in the respect that the calls for egalitarianism are based on a specific historical context for a specific culture.

What We Believe

The white race is a historically constructed social formation. It consists of all those who partake of the privileges of the white skin in this society. Its most wretched members share a status higher, in certain respects, than that of the most exalted persons excluded from it, in return for which they give their support to a system that degrades them.

The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race, which means no more and no less than abolishing the privileges of the white skin. Until that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because white influence permeates every issue, domestic and foreign, in US society.

The existence of the white race depends on the willingness of those assigned to it to place their racial interests above class, gender, or any other interests they hold. The defection of enough of its members to make it unreliable as a predictor of behavior will lead to its collapse.

The Politics of Solidarity: Six Nations, Leadership, and the Settler Left
By Tom Keefer
http://uppingtheanti.org/node/2728

This article will address some issues which have arisen in the context of non-native activists doing solidarity work with the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) people of the Grand River Territory who recently reclaimed land near Caledonia, Ontario.1 I will begin by discussing the problems with how many non-native activists have used the concept of “taking leadership” to guide their activism around this struggle, and I then will look at the spaces and places where I think non-native activists should focus their efforts in support of indigenous sovereignty. In order to do so, I will draw on the work of black power activists Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton as their work provides a relevant model for non-native activists looking to build solidarity with Six Nations. I will conclude by addressing the importance of the work being done by trade union activists supporting the people of Six Nations.2

An Anarchist Study of the Rotinonshón:ni Polity

The traditional society of the Rotinonshón:ni (Iroquois), "The People of the Longhouse," was a densely settled, matrilineal, communal, and extensively horticultural society. The Rotinonshón:ni formed a confederacy of five nations. Generations before historical contact with Europeans, these nations united through the Kaianere'kó:wa into the same polity and ended blood feuding without economic exploitation, stratification, or the formation of a centralized state.

Contents:
* Introduction
* How Peace Came to the Rotinonshón:ni
* "One Bowl": The Communal Economy of the Rotinonshón:ni
* "We are left to answer for our women"
* The Beaver Wars, which were Not Only about the Fur Trade
* Kaianere'kó:wa as Constitution of a Stateless Polity?
* Anarcho-Indigenism

Read full detailed and illustrated version:
http://www.nefac.net/anarchiststudyofiroquois