ResoluteReader: indigenous history & politics

Showing posts with label indigenous history & politics. Show all posts

Sunday, September 06, 2026

Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel with Sean Carleton - When the Pine Needles Fall: Indigenous Acts of Resistance

In July 1990 the Canadian state laid siege to an Indigenous Mohawk community near the town of Oka in Quebec. The 78 day siege saw violent confrontation, including the use of guns against the First Nations people, and self-defence and armed retaliation from the Indigenous community. Images of masked and armed First Nations people resisting the state made headlines across Canada, but few of the newsreports talked about either the wider issues or the way that the community's resistance was led by unarmed women. One figure who did stand out was Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel, the young spokesperson for the First Nations people.

The dispute was over the extension of an existing nine-hole golf course into Indigenous lands - the pinewoods suggested by the title. A further nine-holes were to be built on land that was considered sacred, but was also an ancient burial ground. The appalling dismissal of Indigenous beliefs and interests was shocking, but characterises the dismissal by the Canadian state of First Nation's interests. The resistance was, eventually, successful. The golf course was not extended, but the conflict itself exposes wider questions of Canadian history and colonialism.

Gabriel's account of the resistance is inspiring, and demonstrates that through collective resistance, injustice and be tackled. But she is keen to make wider points. Firstly she repeatedly emphasises the so-called Oka crisis was not an isolated example of injustice. It was part of an ongoing process of displacement and land-robbery. Indeed she makes the point that dispute the end of the resistance in 1990, the situation continues in different forms.

It's very frustrating that in the years since 1990... we're still dealing with the land issue. The federal government had an opportunity to do something about it in 1990 but did absolutely nothing to change it. Canada continues to commit land fraud. They've sold our land to a developer again, as they did in 1990. They sold contested land to a private individual, so they should be compensating the people (in Oka) that they fradumently sold the land to, but they won't acknowledge or take responsbility for creating this mess.

Of the wider Indigenous demand for #landback, a hashtag that has become a common demand by First Nation's people and their supporters, she points out that the state and its supporters

claim we want the keys to their houses, but that is absurd, really. Canadians need to direct their outrage at the right people: the Sulpicians, the Municipality of Oka, the provincial and federal government, settler-colonialists themselves. They all need to be held accountable for their ongoing complicity in land fraud and land theft at Kanehsata:ke... for the land fraud committed against all Indigenous Peoples in the Americas.

The Sulpicians were a French Catholic order that arrived in French Canada to convert and subvert Indigenous society. Gabriel argues, that "peace and reconciliation" is not about taking land back completely. But it is about recognising genocide and robbery and giving reparations and restitution.

Going further Gabrield explicitly places the blame for Indigenous genocide and repression on an economic system that puts profit before people. She says:

It feels like a war, the rich against the poor. It's a very dysfunctional society in which racism is the accepted norm and whereby systemic racism and environmental destruction are justified for corporate profits. I think that is the key reason why there's so much resistance to change: Land Back will mean less money in settlers' pockets and the coffers of the state... Canada's economic prosperity has always been at the expense of Indigenous Peoples' lands and our human rights.

She continues:

Canadians who are indifferent to our plight and history seem oblivious to the fact that their prosperity is built on the backs of Indigenous people. They're getting rich from developing outlands, which they've stolen, and their developments are protected by colonial laws. So, naturally, they stay quiet and benefit from the racism norms.

Would #landback be at the expense of most ordinary Canadians? I think probably not. In fact most ordinary Canadians probably can be won to such a struggle because they have a shared interest in resisting corporate greed and state racism.

Peace and reconciliation will not be straightforward. But it can be done in a rational and equitable way. The people who ought to pay are those who have concentrated wealth in their hands through centuries of exploitation - and that's a minority of super rich people and their corporations. This requires winning an argument in Canada that non-Indigenous workers have a shared interest with Indigenous workers. There are multiple hints that this is possible in Gabriel's book. One example, surprisingly, comes from the family of Corporal Marcel Lemay who died during the 1990 crisis. Lemay is likely to have been killed by "friendly fire" from the state/army troopers attacking the First Nations. But what is interesting is that his sister, has dedicated herself to a process of "peace and reconciliation" and has concluded that her brother died unnecessarily.

Gabriel does, however make the point, that while this is tragic, Lemay's death was used to blame and target Kanien'keha:ka people and the police "enacted a kind of revenge in which they did not listen to government and became a law onto themselves". Lemay's sister has "become a strong voice for reconcilation" says Gabriel. But she also wonders if there would have been the same outcry and indignation if it had been a First Nations person who was killed. For Gabriel the fact that Lemay's sister has spoken out demonstrates the potential for things to change among non-Indigenous people, but it also was "history repeating itself".

For me, this discussion of the tragic death of Corporal Lemay, highlights a central important theme of the book. Nothing that happens in Canada can be understood without reference to the colonial history of the state. And until that is acknowledged, there can be no justice. The problem is a systemic one, and it requires systemic change.

Since 1990, Gabriel has become a leading figure in the fight for Indigenous rights on a global stage. Much of this book explores her own thoughts and ideas, which naturally engage with wider issues such as the global environmental crisis. Ultimately Gabriel is clear

History will show that what we're doing is the only choice we have if we're to be true to ourselves and to honour Mother Earth, giving the future generations a fughting chance to survive the cataclysmic environmental changes from the climate crisis.

Socialists, like myself, will have their own ideas about how that struggle will manifest itself. What Gabriel's book makes clear is that that struggle cannot win without a recognition that historic colonialism is part of the basis for todays' capitalist destruction and that the repression and displacement of Indigenous Peoples is an ongoing structural part of contemporary society. Supporting the ongoing contempory struggles of Indigenous Peoples for economic and political justice is not a optional extra for the left, trade union and environmental movements. It is part of how we understand and challenge capitalism.

Thursday, July 23, 2026

Bryan D. Palmer - Capitalism, Colonialism & Crises: The Remaking of Modern Canada 1960-2025

The third volume of Bryan D. Palmer's trilogy on the history of Canada brings the account right up to the present date. Indeed, so recent is some of the material that it covers 2025. It means that there's the slightly uncanny experience, for this reader at least, of reading a history book cover events that are part of your own experience.

Palmer opens his book by making a general point about the period covered. Before the 1960s he says, there was "scan indication" that oppositional movements could unite together. As both the previous volumes have shown, there is a long and rich tradition of resistance and organisation from below in Canada. This includes movements such as Indigenous struggles, working class movements, including radical socialist and anarchist ideas, movements against war and movements for liberation. At times, particularly in the period covered in the first book, when those movements failed to unite. Had they done so, they was a potential for systemic and radical change. But Palmer says about the first decades covered in this volume:

In the 1960s, voices of anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism gew louder, amplified in many ways. There were also hints that the long-standing divide keeping those challenging the profit system and those opposing colonial thought and practice separate and consequently weakened was breaking down. This 1960s development was paralleled by a strengthening and increasing penchant for militancy among mainstream working-class trade unions and Indigenous organisations, groups and associations.

What these movements saw was a proliferation of radical groups, parties and organisations - a process that mirrored what was happening elsewhere in the world as the post-war boom turned to economic and political crisis, and the movement against US imperialism was fuelled by resistance on the ground. Revolutionary ideas inspired these movements. In Canada, "anti-capitalist and anti-colonial thought... captivated those drawn to the New Left" and "causes traversed one another". Palmer tells the story of an Abortion Caravan that left Vancouver in April 1970, but by the time it reached the capital, some of its participants were also raising demands as "Victory to the NLF" and "Smash Capitalism" was written on the outside.

The peculiarities of Canadian history however added new factors to the radicalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In Quebec, there was an "upsurge of radical nationalism, supported by many Québécios workers" which built upon a movement for independence that had grown up in the 1950s and 1960s. The movement included many who saw colonialism and capitalism as the "enemy". Canada's 1968 moment, in the summer of that remarkable year, saw a massive protest at Dorval Airport near Montreal. Traffic was stopped, buses set afire and molotov cocktails thrown. Gunshots were heard. Palmer says:

New Left aspirations, anti-colonialist indépendantiste demands, and a militant class struggle and anti-capitalist politics thretaened to come together. This was a rare development in Canada... The often young and unusually militant Quebec sovereigntists situatied their struggle within the global anti-colonail mobillisations of the 1960s. They railed against the mainstream politicians and capitalist interests, both French and English-speaking. They held this rich elite responsible for deepening the subordination of oppressed and working-class Québécios.

These revolutionary and radical ideas "appeared to resonate with wider sectors of society" terrifying the ruling class. Here, as in the previous volumes, Palmer places the history of Indigenous people, and their resistance, central to his account. He shows how revolutionary ideas influenced "Red Power" movements, and these in turn, fed back into wider radicalisation. In 1969, the Government struck back, it appeared to offer concessions, but did so by arguing that the Indigneous peoples of Canada, where "burdened... with a historically constued paternalism" this required dismantling and an end to the allocation of "First Nations a plus status as an addition t their citizenship". While superficially appearing radical, in reality this "would inevitably leave First Nations peoples without any possibility of successfully pursuing land claims or holding on to entitlements that shored up their traditional ways of life". The backlash, including the publication of the tremendously successful book The Unjust Society by Harold Cardinal, saw a retreat by the Canadian government, but it did see the "drift of Indigenous leadership into collaboration with the colonial state" and the decline of the revolutionary Red Power movement.

The radicalism of these movements was the context for a wider awaking of knowledge of Canada's colonial past. In the years after the 1960s Canada saw renewed attempts at control of radical movements and First Nations peoples, what Palmer calls "coercive continuities". If the 1960s had seen Red Power, revolutionary radicalism and "class war from below", including some spectacularly powerful trade union movements, 1975 onward saw "class struggle from above". The political and economic gains of the 1960s that had been won by working class and First Nations struggles, were eroded as Canada turned toward neoliberalism and austerity to try and resolve the contradictions of its economic crisis. This period saw systematic and brutal deindustrialisation as thousands of workers lost their jobs. In Montreal, for instance, between 1976 and 1996, 27,000 jobs in the garment industry were lost. What strikes there were, were unable to significantly turn this tide. In the case of Montreal, a strike against job losses was sold out, a "scathing indictment of the cozy relationship between the union leadership and garment industry bosses".

The final chapters of this book are perhaps the most depressing. They paint a picture of Canada dominated by economic precarity, low levels of struggle and rampant capitalism - massive levels of homelessness, low wages and economic insecurity are one picture of the period. But Palmer is careful to note that there is resistance, including another rise in the level of organisation by First Nations peoples, often building links with the wider working class movements. This includes the struggles against oil infrastructure and the expose of the horrors of the Residential School system. A horrific chapter on the "murdered and missing Indigenous Women", the thousands of women who have lost their lives and disappeared, makes it clear that much more needs to be done. Indeed the racism at the heart of the Canadian state continues to be exposed by the lack of action on this.

The weakness of the trade union movement, Palmer argues, means that there is a tendency for the trade unions to respond to the current economic situation, including the pressures from the Trump administration, with nationalist answers rather than class struggle. As the labour movement lines up behind national demands, "working people and their interests were hitched to the cart of Canadian capital and the state".

Palmer's book is, however, written in the spirit of the need to rebuild a new and radical left, that can shift the narrative. If the urgent need is there, so the crisis creates the potential. As Palmer says Canadian capitalism, like that around the world, is "increasingly riddled with contradictions and challenges". Understanding the history of Canada, and the interplay between class struggle, anti-colonial and Indigenous resistance, and updating that for the 21st century is an urgent need.

The final volume of such a series will be distorted by the narrowing of the writer's lens. If the first two books covered sweeping periods of history, this later book covers shorter periods in more detail. This reflects both the author's and the readers' experiences. Inevitably it means that things are missed. For instance I thought it would have been helpful to have more detail on the growth of Canadian fossil capitalism and the politics and economics of (say) the Tar Sands. But this is a minor complaint against a powerful book and a wonderful series. Everyone who is interested in the fight for liberation and the struggle against capitalism today ought to read these three books.

If Bryan D. Palmer's book teaches us anything it is that the history of Canada shows that ordinary people have frequently resisted oppression and exploitation, and they have often done so in the most militant and inspiring ways. The knowledge of that history will be immeasurably helpful in rebuilding the sort of radical left we need to face the challenges of 21st century capitalism. Palmer is owed a huge vote of thanks.

Related Reviews

Palmer - Colonialism & Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500-1890
Palmer - Capitalism & Colonialism: The Making of Modern Canada 1890-1960

Monday, June 15, 2026

Crystal Gail Fraser & Sara Komarnisky - Talk Treaty to Me: Understanding the basics of treaties and land in Canada

I picked up Talk Treaty to Me at a left-wing bookshop in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as part of my reading during a trip to Canada this month. Indigenous struggles over land, social and ecological issues have come to the forefront frequently in the last few decades as social movements by Indigenous people have fought to defend and extend their rights, and these have meshed with wider environmental and social struggles. The First Nations people of what is now called Canada have made a global impact with some of their struggles, but there have also been bitter right-wing back lashes against them - including the racist attacks on Mik'maq fishers in Nova Scotia - documented in a book I reviewed recently Contested Waters.

Talk Treaty to Me is not a pure history of the First Nations. Rather, as the title suggests, this is a book that is designed to educate Canadians about the history of the treaties that shape contemporary debates about First Nations' social and political issues. But history cannot be ignored. The history of treaties in Canada includes the history of treaties made between Indigenous people before European settlers arrived. This is important because sometimes there's a crude suggestion that First Nations people could not understand treaties because they had no concept of them. It is true that Europeans arrived with completely different understandings of land ownership and use, commodity exchange and culture. But First Nations people always made treatments. The authors quote Elder Danny Musquq, of the Keeseekoose First Nation:

All of the agreements they [First Nations] have had between one another as peoples and as nations were always based on [land] use - on how they were going to use that land. And.. when... I say... the use of that land, we had agreements between one another, hunting territories that we shared, trapping lands that we shared, gathering lands that we shared, medicinal lands that we shared [sacred lands,... lands that were designated for the shelter and safety of all people.

Crucially these treaties were different to those made with Settlers. One historian Leanne Beasamosake Simpson has described a treaty between two First Nations, which "did not involve interfering with one anothers' sovereignty as nations. It represented harmony and interconnection, as bot parties were to be responsible for taking care of the dish.

The "dish" referenced here, refers to the "Dish with One Spoon" concept, an understanding about how to share land and resources, equitably and sustainable. The authors of this book comment that this agreement is "vastly different from how Canada acts as a treaty partner today".

In my review of Sheldon Krasowski's book No Surrender: The land remains Indigenous I described some of the ways that treaties made by European settlers and the British government were constructed on falsehoods and deliberate subterfuge. Krasowski's book is referred to by Fraser and Komarnisky several times, and they also cover similar ground. These are stories of racism, lies, and deliberate attempts to sideline and undermined Indigenous communities and Nations and take away their land and resources.

In particular the authors write that the 1876 Indian Act

Was created to control and oppress Indigenous Peoples. As a mechanism of assimilation and genocide, it controlled movements on and off reserve via a pass systeml it criminalised cultural ceremonies and celebrations; it enfranchised First Nations persons who earned a postsecondary education or joined the miltary; it altered the identities of First Nations women and their children; and it imposed a system of governance for Indigenous Nations radically difrerent from their own systems. The Indian Act, by every means, was designed to obliterate Indigenous cultures, traditions, languages and governance.

This process continued into the 20th century, the authors write about how "Indigenous northerners were not consulted even though their Lands were being used, sold, and exploited by both the federal and territorial governments." A foundational moment for contemporary relations between Settlers and First Nations came in the 1970s when the first modern treaties were signed. This was a period when Indigenous movements were reasserting themselves and fighting to extend their rights at the same time as pushing the boundaries of existing treaties. "At their best", the authors say, more recent treaties, "provide frameworks for the management of Lands, wildlife, resources, and programs and services and ultimately a plan for how Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous peoples and our governments will relate to each other." The authors encourage readers living in Canada to find out what treaties cover the areas they live in to understand how their own role in taking these forward.

The problem is that Treaties don't always match up with the interest of government and big business. For instance, the British Crown and then the Canadian state signed treaties that said one thing, but allowed them to institute highly repressive and genocidal policies. This is because First Nations peoples might be talking about "treaty rights" at the same time that the government is thinking about "rule of law". The Indian Act, in many places, "violated the spirit and intent of treaties" causing appalling damage and harm to individuals and communties. Explains that the authors explore include the "Indian Residential Schools" which devastated the lives of young people in an attempt to systematically destroy Indigenous cultures and assimilate people into Settler society. Thousands of lives were lost and there are ongoing generational traumas for many people today.

These issues matter however not just because individuals and communities need restitution, support and reconcilation. But because solving the legacy of Treaties and the Indian Act and what has happened to First Nations peoples is not just about creating new treaties. What is needed are completely new relations to develop that are based on breaking existing social, political and economic relations. One key example of this is the "Land Back" movement. This means, the authors say, starting a "process of regaining Indigenous sovereignty and political authority over Indigenous lands". Ultimately it means "getting Lands back under the jurisdication of Indigenous people".

Such questions are crucial - but they are a challenge. Increasingly activists and socialists from Settler backgrounds are recognising the need for "Land Back" demands and similar changes. One of the fascinating things about reading Talk Treaty to Me as someone who comes from a former colonial power, but doesn't live in Canada, is how the authors take time to recognise that non-Indigenous readers might find the ideas and language challenging. But this is not just about language. It is also about recognising that settler colonial powers like Canada cannot give "Land Back" without undermining their own right to exist. This is why, as the authors point out, "Canada is more concerned about protecting its statehood, soverignty, and economy than about implementing human rights". Giving "Land Back" or offering proper restitution for past and present genocidal policies would be a challenge to corporations that want to extract resources and wealth from land and people, and undermine Canada's very existance. As the Mohammed Mamdani has written of the US in the context of a discussion on Settler Colonialism:

Engaging with the native question would require questioning the ethics and the politics of the very constitution of the United States of America. It would require rethinking and reconsidering the very political project called the USA. Indeed, it would call into question the self proclaimed anticolonial identity of the US.

Similar the existence of the Canadian state itself is incompatible with offering genuine restitution to First Nations peoples. Thus the project becomes a revolutionary one - and one that out of necessity needs the unity of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the struggle against Canada and capitalism. In this process new Treaties will be written, but they will be done in very different contexts, which see all the signaturies fully empowered.

Crystal Gail Fraser's and Sara Komarnisky's book is aimed at a Canadian audience, but it covers material that is relevant to everyone who is fighting for social and environmental justice. It is deliberately challenging to its readers and takes on difficult questions. But it is an engaging and important read. I'm glad I was able to read it during my time visiting Canada and engaging with activists here.

Friday, May 15, 2026

Fred Wien & Rick Williams - Contested Waters: The Struggle for Rights & Reconciliation in the Atlantic Fishery

In 2020 Indigenous fishers from the Mi’kmaw First Nation in Nova Scotia came under attack from settler fishers. The Indigenous fishers were exercising their treaty rights, as granted by the Canadian Supreme Court, to catch lobster for ceremonial, personal use and to make a "moderate" living. The White settlers physically attacked Indigenous fishers, racially abused them, destroyed equipment and boats and threatened supporters. The Canadian police stood by and watched.

Why did this happen? What was the background? How have Indigenous fishers won their rights? And how can we ensure that all fishers are able to support their livelihoods in Nova Scotia and beyond, in a sustainable and equitable way? These are the questions that are addressed in Contested Waters, a collection of essays by fishers, Indigenous leaders and activists, politicians and scientists.

The first thing to understand is that fishing is not a peripheral part of the economy of the Canadian economy. In 2018, "the fishery generated almost $870 million in employment income flowing through fishing communities in the three Maritime provinces and Quebec." The industry is growing rapidly, and income is growing fast as the cost of fish increases. This does not mean that more fish are being landed. This point is also crucial as some see the industry as growing exponetially in terms of its impact on the maritime ecology.

Indigenous people have responded to this in a number of ways. The most significant and dramatic change has been the consortium of six First Nations who have bought a 50 percent ownership in Clearwater Seafoods, "the largest shellfish processing company in Canada". This enables those Nations to profit from the regions fishing through becoming a clearing house for fishing catches and a reseller. Other Nations have formed networks to similar manage the fishing. Elsipogtog First Nation in New Brunswick, "to build up a fleet of more than seventy inshore vessels harvesting lobster, snow crab and a few other species". In 2021 this fllet brough in $19 million and $16 million in lobster and crab for the Nation. Other Nations have successfully managed quotas and licenses to bring new Indigenous fishers into the industry and manage the economic benefits.

These changes have been possible in part, because of the activism that forced the Canadian Supreme Court to recognise Indigenous fishing rights, in the so called Marshall Decision. Marshall runs like a thread through the book, and there is a fascinating chapter by L. Jane McMillan, Fishing with Donald Marshall Jnr, whose arrest for asserting his right to catch eels saw a "wrongful prosecution, conviction and denial of his appeals". It was, she rights, "emblematic of the systemic discrimination and racism expereinced by Canadian Indigenous Peoples during the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries."

One of the key outcomes of the Marshall Decision was the "Indigneous right to a moderate livelihood". The problem was that this has never been clarified, and indeed it is awfully nebulous. As one group of authors' right on this, the outcome has led to further confusion even as it as asserted the rights of the First Nations:

Criticism... has persisted among Indigenous communities that there has been insufficient effort by Department of Fisheries and Oceans to ensure the Treaty Rights the Court affirmed in the Marshall decisions can be integrated and respected within current regulatory regimes. As a result, Indigenous communities, like the Sipekne'katik First Nation in Nova Scotia, have moved forward with their own self-regulated fisheries. In respnse, there has again been tension and even violence.

As they conclude "there's further work to do for all parties to agree on just what an Indigenous moderate livelihood looks like and how an Indigenous moderate livelihood fishery can be implemented in Atlantic Canada.

One chapter, A Mi'kmaw Approach to Managing Fisheries looks at the history of Indigenous fishing practices and the alternative they pose to commerical fishing. This discusses how fish and eels are respected, not caught when they are breeding or vulnerable and not collected in too large quantities:

Eelers, regardless of age or having children, spoke of wanting to make sure that the eels would be around for the next seven generations due to the important lessons eeling can teach about respect and the environment.

They continue:

Many respondents felt htat commerical fishing for eels had caused the decline of populations.. Several participants shared their anger and frustration with the non-Indigenous elver fishery and that it is allowed to continue when the eel population is low.

While it is worth celebrating this approach to natural resources, it is clear that it clashes with reality of commerical fishing for profit. An additional problem is caused because the First Nations themselves are engaging in the industry in a commerical way. This means that there will be a tension between the First Nations' ethos and the need to compete with non-First Nations fishing. This is reflected in the book's chapter on "commerical harvesting". The authors note:

The progressive expansion of First Nations fisheries holds some potential to destabilise the fisheries co-management system and harvester trust in it. Whether fairly and correctly or not, harvesters at the wharf level feel their livelihoods and the sustainability of thewir communities are threatened. They are putting increasing pressure on their leaders and organisations to advocate for the interests as publicly and aggressively as they see Indigenous leaders advancing their cause and defending their rights. These feelings of powerlessness and uncertainty about the future are exacerbating the miustrust and polaristaion between communities and seeding the ground for future conflict.

The authors go on to hope tha tther ewill be new forms of dialogue and engagemetn that can solve these issues. While it is clear that there are real dialogues taking place between communities and places to try and resolve tensions, I'm unsure that this will be enough. Part of the problem is that fishing is extremely profitable, but little of the value makes it back to the communities who need it. While Indigenous communities remain poor, non-First Nation communities also rely on government support during the non-fishing season. In these situations it is easy for politicians and corporations to blame others, rather than offering support and help. Tensions will likely break out again. This contradition is brought out by Fred Wien and Jeff Denis who, in a chapter on "overcoming racism" conclude:

An effective anti-racism strategy must come to grips with the underlying tensions and issues,. The fundamental issue is one of a gruop legitimately seeking reater participation in accessing a limited resource where existing interests are entrenched and the struggle is defined in zero-sum terms. Strategies need to be purused that involve measures such as making room for First Nations fishers in such away that the livelihoods of non-Indigenous fishers are taken into consideration... it also involves clarifying and obtaining acceptance of the ground rules for the fishing effort, how the moderate livelihood fishery will be managed and by whom and how sustainability of the resource will be ensured.

Firstly racism must be confronted. But at the same time ordinary fishers on the Atlantic Coast, both from the First Nations and non-Indigenous communities need to recognise that they have more in common than divides them. This means recognising that the fight has to be to ensure that both communities benefit from the hard and dangerous work at sea, and that both communities have to be tasked with managing, democratically, the resources. It also means acknowledging that fishing for profit will always lead to resource depletion as corpoations try to maximise profits. That has to be fought and challenged.

This will not be easy. There are people who are racist and prepared to use violence. They need to be exposed and challenged. While the book is perhaps overly optimistic about doing this within the framework of existing institutions and organisations, the authors clearly feel hopeful. The challenge however will be for ordinary fishers and their supporters to unite and resist both the commerical destruction of fisheries and the disunity caused by hundreds of years of government racism towards Indigenous peoples.

Thursday, April 30, 2026

Martha A. Sandweiss - The Girl in the Middle: A recovered history of the American West

In 1868 the pioneer American photographer Alexander Gardner joined a delegation from the US government that was negotiating with the Lakota and other Native American tribes. They met at Fort Laramie in Wyoming Territory, and Gardner made a number of images of the negotiators, the Native Americans and the landscape. One of these is a striking picture showing six men, some in military uniform, others in different smart clothes. All of them stand rather incongrously, facing the camera, each other, or staring into the middle distance. In the middle, a young woman faces the camera directly on. To my eyes there's an air of defiance about her look. She is not named on the back of copies of the photos though the others are.

When Martha A. Sandweiss came across this image she was immediately, and unsurprisingly, struck by it. But she was also taken by the fact that the woman was unnamed. The anonymity might stand for the way women are written out of history, something doubly true for indigenous women. Who was she? Why was she there? What became of her? Answering these questions required a lot of detective work, a bit of luck and dogged determination. In finding out the answers Sandweiss unearthed a lot about American history, its violence and the complicated and intersecting lives of the subjects of the picture.

Standing over the story is Gardner. The photographer's fascinating life began with his immersion in the Scottish radical movement. Emigrating to the Americas with others he hoped to set up a utopian town were settlers like him could live equally. Ironically, given the book's context, the land they settled on was taken forcibly from Native Americans. The project, like many others of its type, fell apart. Gardner tried his hand at many things, but eventually became a celebrated photographer who almost single handedly was responsible for inventing photo-journalism. His pictures of the aftermath of Civil War battlefields brough the war home to the American public and were taken with not a little risk to himself. His portraits of the great and the good were also celebrated, and Gardner is perhaps most famous today for his pictures of Abraham Lincoln and his assassins.

Of the other white men in the picture, some were veterans, some politicians and all of them had led lives that reflected aspects of American history and life on the frontier. One of them was a killer. General William S. Harney is the only white person in the photo who is looking directly at the camera. He was experienced in "Indian affairs" though the nature of his experience is best illustrated by the name the Lakota gave him: "Woman Killer". He epitomises both the violence of the US government against Native Americans, but also the insidious way that the violence of US society embedded itself in individuals. Sandweiss describes him:

Harney carried with him to Fort Laramie not just a long military record but also a pesonal history of cruelty and abuse. He beat subordinates. He abused women. He drove away his own family. And he was a murderer. Not just according to the fuzzy rules of wartime engagement, but within his own household. His violent streak often erupted in public life, yet early on, it was honed at home.

The murder "within his own household" was the beating to death of Hannah, an enslaved woman whom he suspected of stealing his keys. While he was found to killed her according to the coroner, he was acquitted in court. The lives of enslaved people mattering little.

The young Native American woman was Sophie Mousseau. We owe this knowledge to a chance identification by someone who saw the picture and annotated it for Sandweiss to stumble upon later. Oral and family history, archival material and legal documents have fleshed out an incredible tale.

The Mousseaus were a mixed heritage family, who arrived in Fort Laramie after losing their business due to a Native American attack. The backstory is a fascinating account of life on the US frontier, settler history and the way that families were destroyed by the US Army. Sophie's parents were married fifty years. Her father was a French-Canadian trader, M. A. Mousseau. Her mother, Yellow Woman, was a Lakota woman who survived a horrific massacre at Blue Water Creek. This massacre saw almost 90 Native Americans murdered by troops led by General Harney. Coincidences like this abound throughout the book and throughout the stories of those who are in the photo.

Sophie's life is complicated and chaotic. One feels that she was never far from the horrors of the American West and the poverty inflicted on Native Americans by the victorous government. In 1890, she was working in the Pine Ridge Reservation when the Wounded Knee Massacre took place.

But by failing to name Sophie on the photograph, Gardner showed how unimportant Native Americans were to those who were building the United States. Her anonimity stands for the rewriting of history, which relegated Native Americans to being people who were lost to time. Gardner's title for the collection of images of which this was one was "Scenes from Indian Country". It reflects the way that Native Americans were being turned into curiosities.

But as Sandweiss says, by knowing who Sophie was and what happened to her, we rescue her history and wider history. She is no longer just surrounded by famous white men. She represents the lost and forgotten history of the Native American peoples. Sandweiss writes:

But knowing who that girl is shifts things, refocussing our attention from the men around her to her. In centering her, we decenter them. Sophie's living descendants have had scattered stories, but no picture with which to visualise their ancestor. Conversely the viewers of Gardner's photograph have had a face without a name. Put the name and the face together, dig into the historical records and a largely forgotten life becomes more knowable.

This matters because Sophie had a life that was inseperable from the history of America. Tragically her life reflected the violence of US history, a violence that is often ignored or downplayed. It is mostly a violence done to Indigenous people. But it is also domestic violence, murder and family trauma.

If Sandweiss had only rescued Sophie from anonymity it would be important and interesting enough. But something more comes from this. Martha A. Sandweiss reminds us all, but American people in particular, that we have to resist the current US government's attempts to rewrite US history.

In National Parks across the United States, on monuments and in museums, officials are removing historical markers, names and descriptions that seek to tell visitors and tourists real stories. The story of The Girl in the Middle - Sophie Mousseau - reminds us of the importance of all those labels, nametags, markers and monuments. If history is a battleground, this book is a good example of the fights we need to wage to remember the past and shape the future.

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Bryan D. Palmer - Colonialism & Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500-1890

Running through this, the first of a trilogy of books on Canada's history, is an emphasis on the way that Indigenous Peoples were dispossed of their land and power through the "reciprocal historical projects" of colonialism and capitalism. "Canada's story", Bryan D. Palmer writes, "has always involved the interface of colonialism and capitalism,even as the latter was not truly and unambiguously established". The expansion of colonial powers into what is now called Canada, and the development of capitalism, saw the "obliteration" of some Indigenous People, and the subjection of all to a "cultural genocide" which, "was thwarted by Ingenous resiliency, as continuous historically as was the process of dispossesion that First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people resisted".

This first volume of the trilogy traces this process. But it begins with what was lost. Palmer explores the First Nations life before colonialism. This was not a Utopia, but it was one with a completely different conception of property to that of Europeans. One of the first European settlers, Jazues Cartier was, according to Palmer, "unsettled" by his encounter with the "original inhabitants of the St. Lawrence Valley". He sais, "These people live as it were in a community of goods". A frightening thing for Europeans obsessed with money and natural resources as a source of wealth accumulation.

This "community of goods" meant that Europeans would struggle with their relations with First Nations. The seemingly free landscape was not unused or unvalued. First Nations expected compensation for the loss of resources, and were prepared to fight if they didn't get it.

But Palmer is also careful not to idolise pre-colonial Canada. He quotes an incredulous First Nations account of visiting Paris in 1649 shocked at the extreme poverty adjacent to the wealth of the Court. But he rejects a romantic view of Indigenous Peoples. They suffered "want and war" and sometimes "abhorred one another". But Palmer notes how this view often dominated early accounts of Canadian history (and some more recent ones):

Romanticized notions of the innate goodness of Indigenous people - the 'noble savage' or the ecological preservationist - are thus misplaced, the mirror image of stereotypical, ethnocentric denigrations... Both judgements should give rise to discerning skepticism.

But, he also points out that colonialism destroyed all the realities of Indigenous life, upsetting and transforming social and cultural relations and dividing, or increasing, divisions between groups. As he says:

A struggle for dominance in the fur trade pitted First Nations against one another in new, intensified ways. Commerical, commodified exchange relations with white traders played a significant role in an evolving state of conflic, undeniably exacerbated by the introduction of trade goods, European-based pathogens and technologies.

The Canadian state, which emerges out of the colonial conflict between Britain and France, and then that between Britain and the US, was shaped by white supremacy, racism and the acceptability of forced dispossession and genocide. Canada itself was "born a conservative, counter-revolutionary colony" shaped by wider forces of industrial development and colonial conflict. But it was also born in the era of Revolution and this meant that Canada's capitalist development had to be "mirrored... in a rhetoric of constitionalist, liberal-democratic rights".

The contradiction of Canada's supposed liberalism and its treatment of Indigenous Peoples and workers is a key part of Palmer's analysis in the second part of the book. The development of industrial Canada, based on its plentiful natural resources - land, wood, fish, coal and so on - combined with racist genocide and the brutal exploitation of workers shapes the country on the eve of the 20th century.

The early Canadian capitalist class also had to be wary of a different dynamic. As land became the "decisive" commodity European settlers could hope to break free of their proletarian chains. Indeed just as in the United States, capitalism's development depended on a section of people doing just that and in doing so "opened up and developed land, enhancing the value of the larger holds of the elite". Simultaneously this helped to discipline and further displace Indigenous Peoples. But the capitalist class were worried. Lord Goderich, the British colonial secretary, worried in 1831 that "without some division of labour, without a class of persons willing to work for wages, how can society be prevented from falling to a state of almost primitive rudeness, and how are the comforts and refinements of civilised life to be procured?"

It is tempting to think that the "primitive rudeness" that Lord Goderich feared was one of "community of goods", but what this illuminating paragraph actually shows is that the capitalist class knew that they had to fight to construct a society in their interests. It was, as Palmer notes, the story of English enclosures "all over again" but "in a colonial setting in which Indigenous displacement seemingly created land's availability". At the same time though the British state was terrified of losing control of its wealthy colony, and deliberately tried to hold back industrial development in order to keep Canada's reliance on Britain.

The book's final chapters trace how, in the aftermath of independence, the late 1800s in Canada were characterised by two parallel processes. The first was the further dispossesion of First Nations, including such brutal experiences as Residential Schools, as well as their resistance including the Métis rebellion in 1885. The second process was a massive wave of workers' resistance and trade union struggle which emerges from the development of a new industrial working class. The "Great Upheavel" of 1886 saw mass strikes and the ruling class feared revolution. But the failure of these struggles to break through partly lay in the inability of the struggles to connect. This reflects, Palmer argues, the "Canada's history of uneven capitalist development combined with its historically evolving colonialism" which structure the struggles differently. The tragedy was the failure of these two struggles to connect in significant ways. And while Palmer highlights the "faint indications" that "both challenges to capitalism and colonialism were nonetheless gravitating in directions that might feed into common struggles", he also notes:

Labour's uprising rarely espoused an unequivocal anti-capitalism to the same extent that the Métis-led war of resistance in the North-West categorically rejected colonialism.

Having said this, Palmer finishes his fantastic book on a positive note:

Canadians need not be confined in the shapes that colonialism and capitalism have hammered out for them, over centuries, on an anvil of developmental determination. Paths once taken can be reversed; choices advocated and refused might now well be embraced, adapted to new circumstances. And struggles long separated from one another can be brought into new and exhilarating alignment.

It's a fitting conclusion for a remarkable history that traces the tragedies and horror that mark the birth of Canada at the same time as celebrating the struggles and resistance that shaped the state. I look forward to the next two volumes which will no doubt show these processes continuing in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Monday, March 30, 2026

Mahmood Mamdani - Neither Settler Nor Native: The making and unmaking of permanent minorities

I came across Mahmood Mamdani's work while researching for an article on settler colonialism. Mamdani is a key thinker of decolonialism and this book is a study of both the processes of colonialism and decolonialism - or the aftermath of colonial rule. It is a dense and intense work, wide ranging in its scope and sharp politically. In setting out his view, Mamdani contrasts the Ancient Roman method of colonialisation with the British Empire:

The Romans were content to rule peoples as they found them, but the British were not. In this sense nineteenth-century indirect rule turned out to be a far more ambitious project than direct rule had been: whereas direct rule aimed at civilising elites, indirect rule looked to impose a native subjectivity on the entire local population.

Mamdani explores this through a study of several different colonial experiences - the dispossesion and destruction of the Native Americans, the experience of Apartheid in South Africa and colonialism and independence in Sudan. Regarding the later he writes:

Colonial authorities did not have to tell Sudan's various peoples that they were different from each other - the people already knew that. They pracrtices different religions, spoke different languages, tended different crops and animls, and had different ideas about how to structure communities. They dressed, ate, amrried and died differently. Rather, what the British did was to invest these differences with political meaning. The British turned differences of culture into boundaries of authority and decided what power that authority would possess.

This classic form of divide and rule was enormously successful. The problem was that the divisions were cemented to such an extent that the post-colonial experience was shaped by them. In Sudan this was devastating. As Mamdani says, "colonialism made ethnic violence thinable because colonialism made ethnicity an important contour of public life". In Sudan, post-colonial violence, civil war and the eventual separation of South Sudan saw tens of thousands of lives lost, ruined or displaced.

In contrast, notes Mamdani, South Africa was able to transition away from Apartheid in a peaceful process. Why the difference? In Sudan, "everyone in control was committed to perpetating the colonial nightmare", but in South Africa "various groups learned to reject the political identities they had been given under colonialism." Through political mobilisation, "Afrikaners... came to relaise that they did not have to be members of a racist white national majority".

The problem is that this doesn't really hold. Apartheid was dismantled by the Black majority. The white minorty did not abandon racism. They just understood that they could not longer hold on to their systems of power and in this they were helped by concessions from the ANC to maintain the South African capitalist state. Civil war was a real possbility.

Mamdani continues:

In South Africa today there is little angst about the results of the Truth Reconcilation Commission. The focus is on the deficits... specifically [the] failure to achieve a more socially just country.... If the demand is that the end of apartheid should have delivered socila justice, then it ignores the political contxt of the transition. The political prerequisite for attaining social justice would have been a revolution, but this was not attainable given the balance of forces. There was instead a stalemate between forces supporting and opposing apartheid, which was broken through a compromise agreement.

But this outcome was not inevitable. What was underminded the possibility of revolution of the Black majorty working class was not the balance of forces, but political leadership. Revolution, like Civil War was a possibility. But by abandoning the struggle for the former, to avoid the latter, social inequality was baked in. There's a similar absence in Mamdani's treatment of Sudan. While its an exemplary discussion of the crises caused by colonial divisions, the story stops short of discussing the Sudanese Revolution. This is, in part, because of when the book was published. But that Revolution demonstrated a real possibility for uniting disparate groups. A different future was possible there too - as I wrote in my own book Socialism or Extinction.

These weaknesses undermine Mamdani's chapter on Israel/Palestine which ends up looking to a politically rejuvenated Israeli middle ground who can decolonise the Israeli state. Indeed Mamdani is critical of BDS as seeing this movement as undermining potential allies within the Israeli population. The problem is that these groups have demonstrated no desire to overthrow Israeli Apartheid. Indeed, mass protests and criticism of Netanyahu during the most recent genocide have failed to raise Palestinian solidarity in anyway. Israel, as Mamdani says, is a racist settler colonial power - liberation for the people of Palestine will come from the wider working class of region dismantling Israel and building a new state where Jews, Arabs and others can live together. This requires revolution. Mamdani says that "in place of the nation... we might imagine a new political community". But its not enough to imagine, one has to strategise how to get there. The process of "stripping away the nation" as Mamdani wants requires struggle and the way that the Israeli working class have become tied to the interests of the Israeli state (and by extenstion Western Imperialism) makes this process impossible. That state will need to be defeated, and wishing or imaging isn't enough.

These are harsh criticisms. Mamdani's book contains, however, much of interest to socialists. There's a lot of detail about the processes of colonialisation in the US, Sudan, Palestine and South Africa that shows how settler colonialism created and expanded differences to maintain colonial power. There's also some fascinating accounts of struggles against that. A chapter on the failure of de-Nazification in Germany post-WW2 is also particularly good at exposing the methods and hypocrisy of the United States. That said, I was left wanting, because Mamdani wasn't able to articulate a strategy for liberation or clearly identify the agency for that change.

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

Alfred W. Crosby - Ecological Imperialism: The biological expansion of Europe, 900-1900

In his infamous book Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond tried to answer the question of why it was that European settlers arrived in the Americas, and not the other way around. His geographical determinism left many wanting in their quest for answers to these important historical questions. Before Diamond however Alfred W. Crosby asked similar questions, and while his book Ecological Imperialism is much better than Guns, Germs and Steel, it still is flawed in providing answers.

Crosby is, however, good at exploring what happened when Europeans arrived in the Americas. He begins with the brief arrival of the Norse and that will not detain us here. He then looks at various aspects of the arrival of Europeans after 1492. The impacts he discusses are primarily biological - disease, weeds, crops and animals. What was driven extinct? What survived well? What caused the decimation of the indigenous people?

The first thing that Crosby notes is the "striking paradox" that

The parts of the world that today in terms of population and culture are most like Europe are far away from Europe - indeed, they are across major oceans - and although they are similar in climate to Europe, they have indigenous floras and faunas different from those of Europe. The regions that today export more foodstuffs of European provenance - grains and meats - than any other lands on earth had no wheat, barly, rye, cattle, pigs, sheep, or goats whatsover five hundred years ago.

While Crosby is very detailed in what happened and always sympathetic to the human cost of colonialism, his answers to the questions such as "why did so few of the natives of the Neo-Europes survive?" are often rooted in quite crude biological determinism. Take this point:

A very specific advantage of the Norse over the Skraelings, Eskimo or Amerindian, was the ability of their adults to gain nourishment from fresh milk.

On the question of disease, and it's impact, he writes:

The Amerindians, Aborigines, and Australiasians were true isolates. They had been different from Europeans, Asians and Africans for thousands of years, and so, perhaps, were the capabilities of their immune systems.

Essentially what Crosby argues is that for a number of reasons European biology was able to supplement and destroy indigenous people, flora and fauna. But while this is true in a general sense, it fails to explain why it happened. Here, for instance is Crosby's key argument around the queston of pathogens:

We must examine the colonial histories of Old World pathogens, because they success provides the most spectacular example of the power of the biogepgraphical realities that underlay the sucess of European imperialists overseas. It wa stheir germs, not these imperialists themselves, for all their brutality and callousness, that were chiefly responsible for sweeping aside the indigenes and opening the Neo-Europes to demographic takeover.

But here Crosby plays a neat trick. He starts by saying we must examine colonial histories of pathogens. But then he doesn't and simply says that it is the biological realities that did the horrifc deads that saw enormous numbers of indigneous people in the Americas and Australisia die. What Crosby misses is that the diseases cannot be separated from colonialism. There are, for instance, multiple examples of settlers using disease to infect and kill (the infamous smallpox blankets for instance). But Crosby also misses something else - if the Europeans had not had smallpox and other diseases, they would have used the musket and gatling gun to murder their way to supremacy. In fact they did exactly this in many places were disease hadn't killed vast numbers. The Europeans did nothing to try and stop the spread of disease, and they did nothing to help its victims. They simply took the vacant land.

But there's a deeper problem. Crosby doesn't articulate any real understanding of what it was about (say) European culture that was different to that in the colonies. Part of this is that he doesn't really get how the economic dynamics of societies in Europe meant that they were much more productive - particular;ly after the 17th century. They could produce more to overwhelm indigenous people. Secondly the reshaping of the environment of the colonies was part of developing capitalism. The slave trade, the introduction of industrial agriculture and so on all strengthened Europe's ability to subsume the colonies.

Crosby does make some interesting points about the biological processes themselves. He argues, for instance, that European biology thrived in conditions of disturbance, and it was disturbance that was introduced by the Europeans. By this he means, "condition[s] of continual disruption: of plowed fields, rzed forests, overgrazed pastures, and burned prairies, of deserted villages and expanding cities, of humans, animals, plants and microlife that hav eevolved separately suddenly coming into intimate contact."

But really these conditions are not about "Europe". They are more about the particular mode of production of capitalism, and how capitalism treats the natural world and the humans it encounters. Those people were subsumed into the process of accumulation and either died, or were distorted by it. Crosby is not entirely ignorant of this. He notes, when discussing the horrific impact of sexual diseases on Native Americans, hat their economic world was turned upsidedown:

A physician serving the Sioux at Fort Peck toward the end of the last century assessed the tragedy of veneral infections among their women not simply as a result of immorality but as the result of a more general change: "They were chaste till the disappearance of the buffalo".

What Crosby doesn't say here is that this is partly because Native American women, to survive, had to turn to sex work. Another example of biology following economic change, not the other way around.

In conclusion there is a tendency here for Crosby to end up blaming the victim's circumstance/biology for their misfortune, rather than the nature of the settler states that arrived in the Americas, Australia or New Zealand. Crosby has a tendency to associate more advanced societies with those in Europe which means there is an inevitability to his analysis of what happens. Crosby doesn't in any way celebrate the destruction of indigenous societies or people. But his conclusions are inadequate to explain what happened and why, and while there is much of interest here, the book is flawed.

Thursday, February 19, 2026

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

When I reviewed Peter Cozzens' The Earth is Weeping which tells the story of the "Indian Wars for the American West" in 2024 I complained that it was wekaned because the author "did not have the framework to tell it properly. His desire at "historical balance" means that he sees no difference between the violence of the oppressed and the violence of the oppressor." This is not a complaint that can be leveleed at Rozanne Dunbar-Ortiz's superb history of the United States through the eyes of indigenous people.

Since its first publication in 2014 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States has become somewhat of a touchstone for histories of the Americas that seek to look at the history through the lens of settler colonialism. That said, this is not a dry academic text. It is a polemical work that seeks to link the ongoing settler colonial destruction of indigenous people with their resistance historically and today. The link to today is important. Dunbar-Ortiz makes it clear that the settler colonial origins of the United States, which are themselves rooted in the original and early settler project dating from European arrival in the Americas, continue to shape the US imperialist project today. As she says:

Why then does the popular US historical narrative of a "natural" westward movement persist? The answer is that those who still hold to the narrative remain captives of the ideology of 'manifest destonu,' according to which the United States expanded across the continent to assume its preordained size and shape. This ideology normalises the successive invasions and occupations of Indigenous nations and Mexico as not being colonialist or imperialist, rather simply ordained progress. In this view, Mexico was just another Indian nation to be crushed.

She continues that while the US invasion of Mexico is called the first foreign war by the US, it was not. "By 1846, the US had invaded, occupied and ethnically cleansed dozens of foreign nations east of the Mississippi".

One of the great strengths of the book is that Dunbar-Ortiz links the destruction of indigenous societies with wider, global questions, such as slavery and the development of global capitalism. Take the question of land. This is, she argues, central to the project of settler colonialism. But the structures of settler colonialism incorporate those at the bottom of society into the logic of land. Thus, writing about slavery, she says:

Every settler in the Southern states aspired to own land and slaves or to own more land and more lsaves, as both social status and wealth depended on the extent of property owned. Even small and landless farmers relied on slavery-based rule: the local slave planatation was the market for what small farmers produced, and planters hired landless settlers as overseers and sharecroppers.

Lincoln, as an opponent of slavery (though not genocide) had to offer "free land" to those that supported him and those that fought the South. But this free land was in the hands of indigenous nations. As such, "the dispersal of landless settler populations from east of the Mississippi served as an 'escape valve' lessening the liklihood of class conflict as the industrial revolution accelerated the use of cheap immigrant labour."

Resistance to the settler colonial project has shaped US policy. "Between the alternatives of extermination and termination (war policies) and preservation (peace policy) were interim periods chraacterised by benign neglect and assimilation." The delay in states like Montana getting recognition was because of native resistance. Opposition by indigenous people and their allies has helped protect and defend communities.

Why does this matter? Dunbar-Ortiz says that the structures built by settler colonialism remain today, both ideologically and in terms of politics and economics. The tactics learnt by the US military in exterminating Native Americans are still studied and used today. In some depressing quotes she shows how this even influenced how the US military and politicians thought about the enemy in the Middle East during the various Gulf Wars - reflecting policies and racism at the same time.

Even those whose ancestors were not part of the destruction of indigenous people come to be part of the structures because of the nature of the system itself. She writes:

In a settler society that has not come to terms with its past, whatever historical trauma was entailed in settling the land affects the assumptions and behaviour of living generations at any given time, including immigrants and the children of recent immigrants.

Restitution cannot come from compensation, though given the poverty of some many indigenous communities today, that would be helpful. It requires more thorough going change. Treaties need to be acknowledged. Sacred lands need to be returned, as do "stolen sacred items and body parts". But more importantly there needs to be a "radical reconfiguration" of the continent, "physically and psychologically". As Dunbar-Ortiz hints in her final lines, a quote from the poet Simon Ortiz, this will have to be revolutionary change.

The question of agency for that change matters though. Settler colonialism in some of its interpretations can lead to the idea that all descendents of Settlers are complicit in the ongoing destruction of indigenous communities. In this book Dunbar-Ortiz doesn't take up that issue explicitly. The question of land ownership or the aspiration to own property remains one way that the US system does try to buy off its population, and this land is always originally that stolen from the indigenous people. But it is also true that sections of the working class can be won to a strategy that sees indigenous people as allies, and is prepared to fight for their interests. These struggles (and perhaps the most obvious is the Standing Rock anti-pipeline protests) have demonstrated that it is possible to create unity against the Settler state. Those struggles together with wider anti-imperialist and anti-racist movements are what point towards a strategy for shattering the Settler Colonial structure that is the United States.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is perhaps one of the most impressive of the many books I've read on Native American history. Together with Nick Estes' book Our History is the Future I recommend it as required reading for those trying to understand the United States today. It is a remarkable book that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Saturday, February 14, 2026

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - Not A Nation of Immigrants: Settler colonialism, white supremacy & a history of erasure & exclusion

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a leading historian of settler colonialism in the Americas and the history of indigenous people and their struggles. Not a Nation of Immigrants is a response to one of the most enduring myths of the history of the United States - the idea that the US is made up of immigrants, and immigrants alone, whose struggles and labour has transformed the barren, inhospitable and virgin landscape into a country emblematic of freedom and hope. That myth has taken some battering in recent years from the second Trump Presidency. Nonetheless, the liberal idea (beloved of the Democrats) of a liberal nation of immigrants, a melting pot of cultures and societies is one held on to by many - perhaps increasingly so as ICE agents arrest and kill on the streets of US cities.

But, Dunbar-Ortiz argues, it is a myth that needs to be demolished for there to be true equality, freedom and liberation. Rather than a nation of immigrants, we should understand the US as a Settler Colonial power, whose origins were shaped by colonialism and imperialism from the start, and whose legacy of injustice, dispossession and genocide cannot be ignored. As she writes, the US constitution "created a people empwered to sustain a powerful military to carry out conquest of the continent, with the full participation of the settlers. This was what the war for independence was fought for, with great sacrifices; this is what the Anglo-American settlers desired."

She continues:

The history of the US is a history of settler colonialism. The objective of settler colonialism is to terminate Indigenous peoples as nations and communities with land bases in order to make the land available to European settlers. Extermination and assimilation are the methods used. This is the very definition of genocide.

She quotes the indigenous historian Michale Witgen who concludes:

The US was founded as, and continues to be, a nation of settler immigrants locked into a struggle over the meaning of place and belonging with the Native nations of North America.

The scale of the extermination almost defies comprehension. In hte mid 19th century, around 100,000 Native people in California were "exterminated". Not just murered, but the entire ecological system that they had created was destroyed in a few years by people hunting for gold. Though, as Dunbar-Ortiz points out, if it had not been for their resistance "there would be no indigenous peoples remaining in Northern California", because the settler's "objective" was "to eradicate them".

The argument for a "nation of immigrants" is predicated on the idea that Native Americans no longer exist, no longer have any claim to land and that their history is essentially finished. In her book Dunbar-Ortiz shows however that that this is not true. The treaties and laws that dispossed indigenous people of their lands and livelihoods were ones that continue to be used, and must be challenged. A process of decolonisation is required, but this is one that would require the destruction of the settler colonial state itself. The process of immigration to the US has been a process whereby settlers and immigrants have been incorporated into the structures of settler colonialism itself. She says:

The migrant forced into migration to the US or other states structured on settler colonialism - Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Israel - is susceptible... to the ideology of settler colonialism, which in the US is imprinted in the content of patriotism, Americanism. Without consciousness of and resistance to this pull, the migrant can passively contribute to the settler-colonial order.

She continues:

This book is a call for all those who have gone through the immigrant or refugee experience or are descendants of immigrants to acknowledge settler colonialism and the Americanization process that sucks them into complicity with white supremacy and erasure of the Indigenous peoples. It's a call too for descendants of original settlers to understand and reject settler colonialism and the romanticizing of original white settlers... It's a call for those who work tirelessly for workers' rights and working class solidarity to recognise that it's not nly racism that divides the working class but also the effects of settler colonialism. It limits workers' identification as even being working class and work solidarity in the US and with other workers of the world.

Dunbar-Ortiz goes on to reject the "eurocentric model of a proletarian revolution challenging, much less overcoming, the US... state". She says instead "a revolutionary working class must be able to acknowledge its enemy and eschew not only capitalism but also colonialism and imperialism".

At the core of this argument is one that says the structures of US imperialism and settler colonialism needed the dispossession of indigneous lands. Settlers were able to acquire this land and could reconsitute themselves as the original Americans. The structures, ideology and racism of this setup then shapes the attitudes of millions of people - and unless this is shattered, historic injustices and contemporary ones will continue.

Racism and settler colonialism are at the heart of US ideology - Dunbar-Ortiz shows the horrors of racism towards Chinese, Mexican and Vietnamese people, among others. She also demonstrates how ideas of White Supremacy became central for many trade unionists and white workers, against Black and Asian people in particular.

But it is also true that the realities of life in the US constantly create a tension with these ideological realities. Growing numbers of people understand that the US is a society built upon systemic racism and white supremacy. Indeed the very success of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's earlier work, including her brilliant Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, demonstrates this (and shapes it, dialectically). Indeed, the recent retreat of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from Minneapolis following major protests by local people, demonstrates this. On ICE, Dunbar-Ortiz has written (quoting Mexican immigration historian Alexandra Délano Alonso):

The project of dismantling ICE can't be left to the will of the government; rather it will require reimagining society's vision of justice and "a reckoning with the racial and economic injustice built inot the 'nation of immigrants' from its very origins."

It is clear that tens of thousands of people have come to this conclusion as a result of Trump's recent actions in Minneapolis. The task for the US left is to ensure this mood is not diverted by the Democrats into another tiresome electoral strategy that embraces the "nation of immigrants" rhetoric and destroys the potential for generalisation of radical ideas.

But agency too matters. When Dunbar-Ortiz dismisses what she calls the "eurocentric model of a proletarian revolution" I felt obliged to ask what other alternative there was. What agency exists for the root and branch transformation of US society and the destruction, from the bottom up, of settler colonialism? Here, I think we have to note, that few workers actually gain a stake in the system from settler colonialism. Racism does, of course, divide. But it also disempowers White workers as well as Black workers.

The taking of indigenous land, which is central to the settler colonial project, produces "free land". But not everyone gets that, and when it "presented possibilities for white workers to own property", it also in doing so transformed them from their working class position into that of small producers and smallholders. In turn many of those workers were dispossed by big business and large landowners. Thus few workers have a material stake in the settler colonial society of today. This opens up a contradiction to be exploited. Settler colonialism offers something, but that is out of reach of most workers.

But, I want to emphasis, in concluding this review while these are important debates they do not undermine systematically the importance of Dunbar-Ortiz's central thesis. Settler colonialism is an ongoing project and it must be destroyed. The structures of settler colonialism in the US were emulated everywhere - from Nazi Germany to the racist South African apartheid state and Zionist Israel. Learning the lessons of its history and the resistance to it, are crucial to the liberation project for humanity. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's book is a crucially imformative tool in developing our own revolutionary struggles.

Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Brian W. Dippie - Custer's Last Stand: The anatomy of an American myth

In 1876 George Armstrong Custer's forces attacked a Native American village. In the battle that followed around half of his troops, including every single man that was with him, was killed. It was a major victory for the Lakota, Dakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho who had temporarily united and a significant blow to the US Army, and the American state which was in the middle of celebrating its centennial year.

There are a plethora of books about the Battle of the Greasy Grass, which is known to White people as the Battle of the Little Bighorn. I've reviewed some of them on this blog. There is a modern tendency to understand Custer as a spoilt, over-confident, inadequate military leader whose lust for glory led him and hundreds of troops to an early grave. This was not the case in the immediate aftermath of the Battle. Indeed as Brian W. Dippie's brilliant book points out it was not until the death of Custer's widow Elizabeth Custer in 1933 that more critical accounts began to circulate.

What did circulate in the aftermath of June 1876 was the myth of Custer's "Last Stand" and his heroic battle against "savage" hordes. Dippie's book is a study of the process by which this myth was constructed and the role it has played in how the US sees itself. The book was first published in 1976, and the edition I have was republished with a new introduction in 1994. In that introduction Dippie points out that some critics were frustrated by the repeated descriptions of the "last stand". These, Dippie shows, took places in multiple formats - reenactments, paintings, poetry (such terrible poetry), novels, comics and most recently films.

The problem of the Last Stand is it is a myth. As Dippie points out it was constructed immediately after the Battle with a press dispatch "from the field" reporting "Custer, surrounded bya chose band... all lying in a circle of a few yeard, their horses beside them". It made, according to Dippie, "a deep impression on the minds of contemporary Americans... they became the basis of a heroic national myth".

There is no need in this review to repeat the various accounts that Dippie has collected. Some of them are dire, and bear little resemblance to what happened at the Battle. Custer has, by turn, been ambushed by devious enemies, killed by a rush, killed escaping, died by his own hand, died by betrayal and died as literarily the last man, fighting with a cavalry sword (which neither he, nor any other cavalryman, were carrying on the day). There was a strong tradition of poetry being written, usually heroic, and almost always laughably bad. But poetry was widely read at the time and perhaps more than anything else it helped recast the defeat as a victory - even as Custer was lying in his grave.

But other formats have also played their role - some also influential on me. A very large number of paintings depicted the battle and continue to shape perceptions of how the fighting took place. Dippie notes that one of the most important was that distributed by brewer Anheuser-Busch in 1896. They began promoting Budweiser a million prints of "Custer's Last Fight" sent out to bars and pubs across America. Generations of drinkers looked at that painting as they sipped their beer. Similar paintings graced the covers of childrens books that impressionable kids like me read, marvelling at heroism in the face of American Indian savagery. Looking at the Anheuser-Busch print today one is struck by how laughable it all is. Custer standing tall in the middle of dead and dying soldiers brandishing a sword (he didn't have) as troopers are violently scalped and clubbed around him. Its an awful image that only surfices to portray Custer and his men as the brave, civilised people, in the midst of savagery.

Custer’s Last Fight (1888) by Cassilly Adams

There is a certain irony in this. Dippie points out that for Indians, "Custer is the core of a complex of white racist beliefes. For guilt-ridden whites in turn, he is a convenient cultural scapehoat: 'Custer died for our sins.' " But, he says, ironically, "Custer was no hardline racial bigot". However it's hard to agree completely with where Dippie takes this. "To cast him in the form of a zealous racial exerminator is simply to substitute rhetoric for fact". But in June 1876 Custer had every intention of exterminating a village of Native Americans, just as he had in 1868 when at the Battle of the Washita River Custer's troopers killed men, women and children in a Cheyenne camp.

Nonetheless Custer's death and the myth of the "last stand" became both a justification for further assaults and extermination of Native Americans and a myth of white supremacy. As Dippie concludes, of the Battle, "precisely because it was a deviation from the relentless pace of Western conquest, because it was a temporary imperiment in the path of that 'resistless restless race' of pioneers, Custer's Last Stand was elevated into a realm apart".

Dippie's systematic cataloguing and recounting of pictures, films, poetry and literature, demonstrates both the centrality of the myth to the US's self image and the construction of a particular vision of America. It is a fascinating account.

ResoluteReader

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