Whose land is it – another legacy of colonialism missed by the Left
JVL Introduction
A colleague from Canada shared this article with us recently. It raises concerns about the Left doing too little to recognise and campaign in relation to Indigenous peoples of the Americas, including a focus on Woody Guthrie’s protest song “This Land Is Your Land”. Here is information about different aspects of the horrendous treatment of the indigenous communities and their ongoing marginalisation as well as the failure to observe legal agreements so that American capitalism can continue without restriction. The parallels with what is happening in Palestine are also telling, not only in terms of land loss but also environmentally.
Ms Obomsawin writes: “In the context of America, a nation-state built by settler colonialism, Woody Guthrie’s protest anthem exemplifies the particular blind spot that Americans have in regard to Natives: American patriotism erases us, even if it comes in the form of a leftist protest song. Why? Because this land “was” our land. Through genocide, broken treaties, and a legal system created by and for the colonial interest, this land “became” American land. But to question the legitimacy of American land control today instantly makes one the most radical person in the room–even in leftist circles. And because Indigenous critiques of this country are so fundamental, our voices are often marginalized to the point of invisibility.”
It is unlikely that Guthrie ever expected the song to become an American Classic but, since it has, it is worth those of us on the Left, in the UK as well as in the US, considering the points made here and remembering the legacy of British colonialism in so many countries.
This article was originally published by FolkLife on Fri 14 Jun 2019. Read the original here.
This Land Is Whose Land? Indian Country and the Shortcomings of Settler Protest
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“the mere passage of time can overturn a Native nation’s right to exist”
Zionists have looked and learnt from this. They hope that 1948 will eventually recede into the distant past together with any hope of Palestinian human rights.
Because white Europeans are now the overwhelming majority in the United States, Australia and Canada, I think these three countries are a much better example of what might happen to the Palestinians. Apartheid South Africa has a much better ring to it but White Europeans were always a tiny minority in South Africa and that’s why the indigenous population were always going to triumph in the long run. Unfortunately a one state solution is nothing like as inevitable in Israel/Palestine.
It is difficult to overstate how cataclysmic the European colonisation of the Americas was for the native peoples – and nowhere more so than the United States.
In what is now the United States, the native population was ‘reduced’ from c. 10 million in 1492 to 285,000 in 1880. Even now, there are only 2.9 million native Americans (less than 1% of the population). By comparison, in Canada First Peoples are now 5% of the population, and even in Australia, where there was a genocide in many areas on a par with that in the United States, the Aboriginal Australians are 3% of the population.
I’m so happy you have published this important article. I have been banging on about it for years and about the comparison with Israel/Palestine. The Indigenous population of America fed and welcomed these white strangers, then taught them how to cultivate the land to feed themselves. Their reward? The colonialists built their homesteads and farms on the richest Native American land, kettling them into reservations (concentration camps) on the poorest land, then wondering why they rose up against them. A similar thing happened to the Aboriginal people of Australia where white settlers stole any aboriginal child who looked slightly lighter in colour due to mixed relationships with the white men building the fence with which to kettle them. They were put into Christian schools set up to turn them into ‘good’ English speaking, and behaving, Christians. (See the film Rabbit-Proof Fence). With the Americans wanting to buy our NHS how long before they set their eyes on Britain and we become the minority? FREE PALESTINE.
Disclosure: I thought I knew the song by heart and admired it- still do – and did understand it only as a defence of the Tom Joad-style Okies, Arkies and other immigrant-heritage -‘white’- settlers and their descendants. Didn’t think further who it was that Guthrie addressed as “you”. 160 acres to each settler – the federal government treated Indians’ land as terra nullius (see Locke, well re-cited by Norman Finkelstein, who also approprriately reminds us of Hitler’s application of the same theories – Karl Mai’s ‘cowboy’ novels were as great a favourite of the Fu”hrer as Lives of a Bengal Lancer – The British response to what we do well to call a war of Indian independence 1857-8 was, for example, to populate the way from Lucknow to Calcutta with hanged corpses – much as Goering and Hitler proposed to shoot any soviet who looks sideways…btw, genocide of the Tasmanians was we gather, 100% successful (and later apologists claim that native Tasmanian isolation from other tribes rendered them incapable of survival anyway! does the name Windshuttle ring a bell?)
I feel humbled by this article, as I have always been an admirer of Guthrie and of this song, and am now confronted with an uncomfortable truth. I have an anecdote about an incident which might have made me more thoughtful about the song had I not been so young and ignorant of so many issues. At a folk-club sometime in the 60s, there was a white South African singer who chose to sing his own version of This Land Is Your Land, rewriting the text to include South African locations and clearly intended to promote the white South Africans’ general view of themselves. It is the one and only time I ever heard a performance greeted with total silence, and after an embarrassing fifteen seconds or so, he packed his guitar and left. The question I might have asked if I knew then what I know now, is how is it possible to take such an affirmative song, and with a few changes of wording, make it so bitterly negative? I can’t believe that Guthrie himself was aware of the implications of this if only because, let’s face it, the majority of non-native Americans have been unaware of this side of American history; but this singer knew, and I can’t help but wonder what kind of song would we have if an Israeli settler decided to do his or her own version of it. For all I know, maybe the have.
In his book American Holocaust (1993) Professor David Stannard put the loss of life from the conquest of the Americas at 100 million.
Last time I checked in the US, the Native American population was not even as big as the western Jewish one – and the former are of course largely ghettoised in the ‘Reservation’ system.
Probably more telling in terms of decline and marginalisation, is the fact that given the enormous presence of US film and tv material in UK culture and schedules, how often to you actually see an image of a Native American in a US social space?
The main thing Africa had in its favour in fighting colonialism and apartheid was a colossal population. The frighening question for Palestinians, is will they find – like Native Americans – that they’ll ultimately lack the numbers?