I was gonna ask “Are Mestizos settlers?” but I quickly realized that the answer to this question probably isn’t black and white. If the answer to this isn’t just “Yes” or “No” then what determines whether or not a Mestizo person is a settler?
I was gonna ask “Are Mestizos settlers?” but I quickly realized that the answer to this question probably isn’t black and white. If the answer to this isn’t just “Yes” or “No” then what determines whether or not a Mestizo person is a settler?
I think that adopting biological definitions of settler/indigenous identities is not just un-Marxist, it has disturbing echoes of race realism. Whether someone is a settler or not shouldn’t be a question of genetics, it should be defined by how they relate to the settler state and settler ideological and cultural values. Ultimately it’s a matter of how someone self-identifies, and whether they see themselves as part of the historical settler project or as outside or opposed to it. It has to do with the community they associate with and grew up in. Indigenous identity can be erased by assimilation but the reverse is also true, that people with settler ancestry can be deprogramed and learn to integrate into an indigenous culture and community (of course, as some comrades have pointed out in their replies below, this can only happen AFTER the stolen land has been returned to indigenous people).
You are wise to avoid the biological essentialism of race realism. But you do not incorporate the actual relation that determines a settler: the relation to land.
Further, a settler does not become Indigenous by integrating into culture. As if I can become Indigenous by going to the local powwow. Likewise, I am a settler regardless of my disposition towards the state because I live on stolen land and continue settler occupation. Settlers are famous for their struggles with the settler state, if that were important in determining their actual relations to Indigenous land, there would be no self identified settlers - a “settler-colonialism with no settlers.”
You make very good points, the relation to land plays a key role.
The Filipino population in Hawai’i are a great example of this. Yes, technically they are settlers if we’re painting them with a broad brush. But they were indentured in near slave-trade like conditions to work on plantations and since then the Filipino community in general has been in fierce solidarity with the Native Hawaiian population when it comes to fighting for native sovereignty and defending the land. It obviously helps that there is shared ancestry and culture, but the point still stands.
But even in other settler states, people can decolonize their consciousness and resist settler ideology. There are jews in occupied Palestine resisting the state and advocating for Palestinian land back. We can speak in general about settler class tendencies, but condemning people just because they are from a settler family background like some ultraleftists tend to do only pushes people to the right.
Im afraid this is not true. Decolonization is simply about returning land. Ideology doesn’t make you a settler. There is no “deprograming” that leads to decolonization and there can be no function for such a deprograming, outside of settler justification, without return of land.
Totally agreed. There’s so many frustrating “decolonize your mind” takes on twitter and elsewhere, as if having the correct ideas can undo the harms of colonialism.
It’s so much simpler: return stolen lands to indigenous sovereignty, period.