Too much to unpack and they seem too dogmatic to listen. They know their line and they have picked their side. There is no single response to be made.
For one thing, amorality is not necessarily devoid of normativity. So even if they present as amoral and grounded, you have to ask what the politics are.
Justifying genocide is necessary if you support the settler state, regardless of socialists intentions. In this case they are loyal to an American nation without demonstrating what America actually is - a colonial project that hinges on genocide. The key too this is to frame genlcide as an unessential moralistic concern and America merely as “the people.” These are sinister lies that will always corrode socialist construction.
In one instance they condemn intersectionality as liberal, in the next they practically approach Indigenous issues with liberal thinking, a generic “woke” take that says Indigenous people are only important because they are oppressed, or they are approached with some kind of checklist that can be achieved to wash our hands clean of it all, which is no better than intersectionality while also entirely paternalistic and accommodationist. Also this idea that we should honor the treaties and basically stop there is a great example of liberalism. I mean its what liberals call for all the time! I also guarantee they do not understand the can of worms they are opening just to make it seem like Indigenous people are not being forgotten and they can move on to their real concerns.
In Leanne Simpson’s book “As We Have Always Done” she emphasizes a kind of feminism that is foreign to liberalism. She believes that women, queer, and two spirit people are important, not because they are simply oppressed and morally we should look out for them. Hell no. She believes women, queer, and two spirit Indigenous people are instrumental parts of reproducing tribal society. Violence toward these people is an attack on Indigenous sovereignty, not just a mere crime. Women, queer, and two spirit Indigenous people must be centered because to fail to do so would be to center what Gerald Vizenor calls the manifest manners, which are (I am oversimplifying) the false representations of Tribal ways that have developed from the culture and structures of colonialism and work to erase and frustrate Tribal organization and identiry. This is because of the history of settlers working to enforce patriarchal systems through many different means throughout history, notabley the “status” laws in Canada which basically define a woman’s tribal status as her proximity to an Indigenous man (if she marries a white dude the state refuses to see her as Indigenous, which undermines tribal sovereignty).
I say this because this way of thinking is called grounded normativity. Simpson calls her grounded normativity Nishnaabeg Intelligence. It does not moralize things in some way that waters down or idealizes the world but rather it is a normativity that emerges naturally from our relations with the world and from tribal intelligence.
With a grounded normativity it is much easier to understand why tribal leadership is essential. It is not just some group that we are “allowing” to be taken with us to our new communist heaven. They are absolutely essential to creating it. If a party fails to recognize Tribal people as essential partners in building a new future, that party is nothing but a tool of the maintenance of colonialism and will only succeed in maintaining primative accumulation and thus the expansion of capital.
I would prefer to not to write an essay about how weird it is to talk about “regional nations” as a way of obfuscating and misunderstanding whiteness but it seems natural someone who doesn’t understand race, or indigenaity, would do this to muddy the water when talking about settlers or Indigenous issues.
Too much to unpack and they seem too dogmatic to listen. They know their line and they have picked their side. There is no single response to be made.
For one thing, amorality is not necessarily devoid of normativity. So even if they present as amoral and grounded, you have to ask what the politics are.
Justifying genocide is necessary if you support the settler state, regardless of socialists intentions. In this case they are loyal to an American nation without demonstrating what America actually is - a colonial project that hinges on genocide. The key too this is to frame genlcide as an unessential moralistic concern and America merely as “the people.” These are sinister lies that will always corrode socialist construction.
In one instance they condemn intersectionality as liberal, in the next they practically approach Indigenous issues with liberal thinking, a generic “woke” take that says Indigenous people are only important because they are oppressed, or they are approached with some kind of checklist that can be achieved to wash our hands clean of it all, which is no better than intersectionality while also entirely paternalistic and accommodationist. Also this idea that we should honor the treaties and basically stop there is a great example of liberalism. I mean its what liberals call for all the time! I also guarantee they do not understand the can of worms they are opening just to make it seem like Indigenous people are not being forgotten and they can move on to their real concerns.
In Leanne Simpson’s book “As We Have Always Done” she emphasizes a kind of feminism that is foreign to liberalism. She believes that women, queer, and two spirit people are important, not because they are simply oppressed and morally we should look out for them. Hell no. She believes women, queer, and two spirit Indigenous people are instrumental parts of reproducing tribal society. Violence toward these people is an attack on Indigenous sovereignty, not just a mere crime. Women, queer, and two spirit Indigenous people must be centered because to fail to do so would be to center what Gerald Vizenor calls the manifest manners, which are (I am oversimplifying) the false representations of Tribal ways that have developed from the culture and structures of colonialism and work to erase and frustrate Tribal organization and identiry. This is because of the history of settlers working to enforce patriarchal systems through many different means throughout history, notabley the “status” laws in Canada which basically define a woman’s tribal status as her proximity to an Indigenous man (if she marries a white dude the state refuses to see her as Indigenous, which undermines tribal sovereignty).
I say this because this way of thinking is called grounded normativity. Simpson calls her grounded normativity Nishnaabeg Intelligence. It does not moralize things in some way that waters down or idealizes the world but rather it is a normativity that emerges naturally from our relations with the world and from tribal intelligence.
With a grounded normativity it is much easier to understand why tribal leadership is essential. It is not just some group that we are “allowing” to be taken with us to our new communist heaven. They are absolutely essential to creating it. If a party fails to recognize Tribal people as essential partners in building a new future, that party is nothing but a tool of the maintenance of colonialism and will only succeed in maintaining primative accumulation and thus the expansion of capital.
I would prefer to not to write an essay about how weird it is to talk about “regional nations” as a way of obfuscating and misunderstanding whiteness but it seems natural someone who doesn’t understand race, or indigenaity, would do this to muddy the water when talking about settlers or Indigenous issues.