What does it mean to free this continent from Americanism? It doesn’t just mean abolishing the United States government, as all who’ve seriously studied revolutionary socialist theory intuitively recognize to be necessary for establishing socialism here. It means returning full jurisdiction over all of the stolen Native lands to the 562 indigenous First Nations which exist within U.S. borders, allowing these nations to develop towards socialism as they choose. This part of decolonial theory is not something that’s intuitively recognized as necessary by all socialists, especially not white socialists who live within the U.S.
To see why this vision for full tribal independence is essential, just look at the model for national liberation that the indigenous people of Hawaii have embraced in response to the colonial contradictions which they’re confronted with. Since all of the indigenous nations under the occupation of the U.S., Canada, and the other settler-colonial states face the same contradictions, Hawaii’s route towards freedom is one and the same with these nations. At the 1985 conference on Hawaiian sovereignty, Huanani-Kay Trask described this path:
I am a member of the movement for Hawaiian independence, and I am here to discuss the liberation of my people. How can we show our people that they cannot be both American and Hawaiian, because that is an impossibility? Make no mistake about it, you cannot be American and be Hawaiian. To be American is to be money-oriented, to be Christian, to be selfish, and above all to be disconnected from and disrespectful towards the ʻĀina [land]. We all know that what is unique about our culture is its dependence on and love of the land. Only Hawaiian culture comes from Hawaii. Every other culture comes from someplace else…we did not come from Adam and Eve…and we will not be saved by the Christ child from Bethlehem. We came from this earth, we grew right out of this earth, and our survival depends, especially today, on understanding and connecting to this land of our ancestors. Our first and last loyalty has to be to Hawaii…not to Washington DC.
When anti-colonialists like Trask say that to be “American” is to be capitalist-minded and disrespectful towards the lands and Native peoples of this continent, they mean that this corruption and taint will always be inherent to Americanism. Americanism can’t escape its taint, can’t be made compatible with socialism. So the only way to escape the parasitism of colonialism and capitalism is to rectify Americanism’s legacy, which will require making all the occupied nations independent in the way that Hawaii or Puerto Rico are fighting to become independent.
This isn’t just because the names “United States” and “Canada” symbolize genocide. It’s because the very existence of these states, and of the borders they enforce, violates the right of the colonized nations to self-determination. As Land Back movement advocate Brooks Arcand-Paul said last year, “Borders are a colonial construct. Any border was imposed unilaterally, without consulting the Indigenous Nations that would be impacted. Resolving these issues is not difficult. In Canada, provinces should include Indigenous Peoples, from the bottom up, in discussions about interprovincial borders.” The same must apply to the African population on this continent, which is owed the equivalent amount of reparations and should have the right to form an autonomous African oblast. (After the tribes are in a position to negotiate with the colonized African nation towards realizing this goal.)
What are the steps that the indigenous liberation movement has to reach this point? The Native group the Red Nation describes them as:
1. The Re-Instatement of Treaty Rights
2. The Full Rights and Equal Protection for Native People
3. The End to Disciplinary Violence Against Native Peoples and All Oppressed Peoples
4. The End to Discrimination Against the Native Silent Majority: Youth and The Poor
5. The End to the Discrimination, Persecution, Killing, Torture, and Rape of Native Women
6. The End to the Discrimination, Persecution, Killing, Torture, and Rape of Native Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Two-Spirit People
7. The End to the Dehumanization of Native Peoples
8. Access to Appropriate Education, Healthcare, Social Services, Employment, and Housing
9. The Repatriation of Native Lands and Lives and the Protection of Nonhuman Relatives
10. The End to Capitalism-Colonialism
Under the last statement, the Red Nation concludes that “The whole system depends on violence to facilitate the accumulation of wealth and power and to suppress other, non-capitalist ways of life that might challenge dominant modes of power. Political possibilities for Native liberation therefore cannot emerge from forms of economic or institutional development, even if these are Tribally controlled under the guise of ‘self-determination’ or ‘culture.’ They can only emerge from directly challenging the capitalist-colonial system of power through collective struggle and resistance.” This obviously isn’t saying that a post-colonial society wouldn’t build up its own political and economic systems. The Red Nation is decrying the neo-colonial political and economic system which prevails within the existing tribal governments, where the bourgeoisie hold control over the state and where colonized peoples therefore continue to be subject to the racial inequities colonialism has created.
Tribal sovereignty has lately been getting expanded as colonialism’s contradictions mount, with the colonial Supreme Court having conceded last year that half of the land within the settler state of “Oklahoma” belongs to the indigenous peoples. When colonialism’s contradictions become severe enough, the other half of Oklahoma, along with the rest of the continent, will undergo the same process. If the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chicksaw, and Choctaw nations have all been able to effectively govern their ancestral territories for what’s now been a full year, despite the diminished Native population and the continued presence of whites within these places, the same can be applied to the rest of the land without a breakdown in governance or mass deportations of whites. (As the colonial chauvinists constantly claim will happen in the event of decolonization.)
This recent history where a big chunk of stolen land has been returned to its rightful owners disproves the most hyperbolic arguments of the colonial chauvinists. But what about the socioeconomic concerns of the socialists who claim that a full return of tribal land sovereignty would hinder this continent’s development towards socialism? That lack of a centralized Washington-style socialist government would enable the bourgeoisie to hold onto power within the tribal nations? To see why this worry is absurd, just look at the anti-capitalist intentions of the Land Back polemicists that I’ve already quoted. Look at how they’ve clarified that corporate exploitation of the land fundamentally goes against the goals of Land Back, how capitalism is synonymous with America and alien to indigenous culture, how liberation for the colonized can’t be achieved until capitalism has been defeated along with colonialism.
These are the signs that the people who will be leading the movement to return full tribal sovereignty — in other words the class conscious colonized people — understand how neo-colonialism works. That they know how imperialism and colonialism can be continued even after the indigenous peoples gain leadership over their land, as has been the case in Latin America and Africa after these places have been technically freed from colonial rule. The only places in these regions which have become truly freed from colonialism are socialist-led countries, like Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Gaddafi’s Libya before the imperialists destabilized Libya ten years ago. The most well-informed of these anti-colonial socialists also see that the DPRK is the only part of Korea that’s truly broken free from colonialism, because unlike south Korea the DPRK is socialist.
The colonial chauvinist implication that these Land Back leaders can’t be trusted to carry forth socialist revolution is totally backwards; colonized peoples are the most qualified to lead a socialist revolution on this continent, because their lived experience has made them the most class conscious.
The steps towards anti-colonial socialist revolution on this continent parallel the steps that China had to take to become socialist. Mao described these steps in On Contradiction:
In studying the particularities of the contradictions at each stage in the process of development of a thing, we must not only observe them in their interconnections or their totality, we must also examine the two aspects of each contradiction. For instance, consider the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Take one aspect, the Kuomintang. In the period of the first united front, the Kuomintang carried out Sun Yat-sen’s Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party, and assistance to the peasants and workers; hence it was revolutionary and vigorous, it was an alliance of various classes for the democratic revolution. After 1927, however, the Kuomintang changed into its opposite and became a reactionary bloc of the landlords and big bourgeoisie.
In the liberated half of Oklahoma, the primary contradiction over the last year or so has been the illegitimate settler-colonial occupation of indigenous territories. This has forced a change. The tribal governments that have facilitated this change are revolutionary in this context, despite them not being socialist. But when these and the other tribal governments that gain back their land in the coming decades start clashing with the continent’s proletarian movement, they’ll become a reactionary force which must be overcome with socialist revolutions inside the respective First Nations. Then these nations will be able to build socialism.
This doesn’t mean that socialists shouldn’t ally with these tribal institutions in their fight to gain back all their stolen land. It simply means that we should be tactical in who we support at any given moment. When these neo-colonial governments have gained the power to be the primary opponents of socialist development, as opposed to the settler-colonial government that currently fills this reactionary role, we’ll be obligated to address this contradiction. And it’s not like Land Back will delay the arrival of this socialist revolution in any capacity; when a class revolt begins, the masses living under the tribal governments will be just as inclined to advance the proletarian movement as would be the case if the U.S. still held jurisdiction where they live.
Understanding how contradictions work is what can make us understand how to maneuver tactically. The colonial chauvinists who look at these contradictions in front of them, and conclude that we shouldn’t even try to properly address the colonial contradiction, are doomed to failure because of this error in thinking; if you refuse to address the primary contradiction at the moment (in this case colonialism), you won’t be able to address the other contradictions. You’ll be stuck with your backwards ideas and your stubborn allegiance to a colonial identity which undermines your own class interests.
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