Return the Land
Dear Beloved,
Homeland Security shared a post on the Nazi-owned social media site X glorifying US colonization. The post included the infamous “American Progress” 1872 John Gast painting and text with some loud fucking dog whistles.
This comes a little more than two weeks after white supremacist, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter shared “We didn’t kill enough Indians” on the same Nazi-owned social media site. It is also one month after Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who built his political career by attaching himself fascists like a tick and laundering tax money, shared his vision for Florida’s latest concentration camp and coined the name “Alligator Alcatraz” on said Nazi-owned social media site. The concentration camp is occupying Miccosukee Tribe’s land, one of just two federally recognized tribes in Florida, and threatens Miccosukee people’s traditions and way of life.
Meanwhile, “white only” settlements are making a comeback. One group is spreading its cancer from Arkansas into southwest Missouri and aims to proliferate all 50 states. What do these “white Americans who value their ancestry” call their campaign? Return to the Land.
One cannot return to a land that was never theirs.
White supremacy claims that land is property that certain privileged groups are entitled to extract from and control. Capitalists sell the lie that land, water, and living matter are commodities to be bought, traded, and owned. The truth is that the land is a living ecosystem to which humanity belongs, an entity with whom we have a relationship.
Hand in bloody hand, white supremacy and capitalism denaturalize us. We are not at the top of a food chain. We are life nurtured by millennia of evolution, no different from the mouse, the owl, the whale, the rivers, or the dandelion. Humans are nature.
When we care for the land, the land cares for us. The same evil that seeks to destroy the very people whose existence is rooted in the land also aims to sever our connection to land, waters, air, and peoples.
Eurocentric cultures have demonstrated a notable - and violent - immaturity in land stewardship.
Over 75% of England was covered in ancient forests 5,000 years ago, but they have significantly dwindled over the centuries. 1,000 years ago, forests accounted for around 15% of the country. When the British Empire’s quest for conquest began, significant deforestation occurred to harvest timber for boats and charcoal. By 1870, just 5% of England had any woodland cover. In 1919, there was even less.
When Nordic people arrived in Iceland in the ninth century, a quarter of the land mass was forested. Shortly after, native birch trees were toppled to create pasture for settling people and their sheep. Now the landscape is largely barren.
When European colonizers first arrived on Turtle Island, northeastern forests were alive with old-growth forests: beech, red oak, sweet birch. The North Atlantics’ sycamores measured over 20 ft. around at just 3 feet above ground. Bison flourished east of the Mississippi River. There are accounts of European settlers crying when they first beheld what is now called Ohio because of its immense greenery. When they came upon the ancient redwoods, Europeans saw something to be conquered rather than an ecological companion older than any of their kingdoms.
They claimed, extracted, and profited from the land without giving anything back. That is Manifest Destiny, “American Progress,” the legacy of western imperialism: destruction.
“The reciprocal relationship between land, redwoods, and Indigenous peoples was dramatically altered following colonial westward expansion and the resultant genocide. The severing of ties between people, their nonhuman companions, and their ecological lifeways has led to generations of trauma for the relatively few who survived, as well as massive biodiversity loss — human and biodiversity plummeted in tandem. The dutiful stewards of ancient evolutionary relationships were replaced by often detached and naive extractivists looking to commodify the biology of redwoods and their affiliate species.”
- Dr. Patricia J. Kaishian, Ph.D.
When the land’s people are pillaged by colonial forces, so too is biodiversity.
Today, 5% of the original two million acres of redwood forest remain. Likewise, today’s Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria 1,450 enrolled members are descended from just 14 survivors out of 20,000 who lived in the area now known as Marin County and southern Sonoma County when settlers arrived. In place of its native plants, California is covered in invasive black mustard and blue gum eucalyptus - both of which are extremely flammable.
This colonial destruction is mirrored across the world in the Levant, where Zionists claim a divinely ordained “right” to “return” to the land while simultaneously ethnic cleansing the land’s Indigenous people and destroying its native ecology. Since 1948, Zionists have uprooted olive trees and Palestinians to replace them with pine trees and settlers.
In occupied Palestine, ethnonationalism is state policy: Zionist settlers in the West Bank are not only protected but celebrated for terrorism. Murdering Palestinian people gets a slap on the wrist at most. Destroying farms and harassing Palestinians is rewarded with weapons, night vision goggles, and ATVs. Where ancient Palestinian villages were destroyed, Zionists plant invasive plants and establish national parks.
The Zionist settlers in the West Bank are a reflection of the white supremacist groups establishing “white only settlements” in the Ozarks. Both are extensions of larger white supremacist projects: the United States and Israel.
While each may utilize laws designed to benefit them, the question of legality is not a matter of morality. Ethnic cleansing will never make a colonizer indigenous to the land they occupy. Supremacist ideology is a self-cannibalizing force, eating away at one’s humanity, and inevitably leaves a forever empty shell. However much land stolen, however many resources hoarded, however many people killed, it will never be enough. To colonize is to destroy oneself and everyone in the vicinity.
The violence of these groups will keep “returning” until they are stopped. As evidenced by the US, any meager progress propped up by liberal administrations will always be rolled back until the state itself is uprooted. The people will never be free until the land is returned to Indigenous stewards.
Water is Life
Led by Native communities of Turtle Island, this grassroots mutual aid campaign brings water to Gaza. Water is Life has successfully delivered over 410 water trucks - the equivalent of 4,000,000 water bottles - to meet urgent drinking needs.
This campaign is about standing in solidarity with those resisting colonialism and genocide. It’s about recognizing that the people of Gaza are not passive victims, but active agents in their own struggle for survival. The situation is urgent and the need is immediate.
Through collective solidarity, we can ensure that they have the resources to survive and stand with their fight for justice, dignity, and freedom.
100% of donations go towards safe drinking water for Palestinian people in Gaza. Donate today and share this campaign.
Seeds for Change
Read The Indigenous Critique: The Dawn of Decolonizing our Minds by Stephen Carr Hampton (Cherokee Nation).
Access the Yellowhead Institute’s free online Land Back course.
Read A Tangled Web: Redwoods, Colonialism, Eugenics, and Climate Change by Dr. Patricia J. Kaishian, Ph.D.
Just came across
because of another writer’s recommendation. After reading this essay, I immediately subscribed.Decolonize: Whiteness is an invented concept that has been used as a tool of oppression.
“…whiteness enacts violence without being spoken. By remembering the history of whiteness, however, we might begin to address the legacies of empire and slavery.”
Share The Story of Palestine’s Colonization, and Resistance, Is Embodied in Trees.
Learn about how three terrorist groups formed the Israel “Defense” Force.
Join at knowledge sharing session at the Herban Cura’s digital school.
Print and distribute the zine How To Organize Your Friends and Foes
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Thank you for this piece and the ❤️