Friday Links: A Post-Doctrine of Discovery World Edition
"'America is not a blanket but a quilt'...'peace, love, unity, and having fun'"- Bakari Kitwana, quoting Jesse Jackson and KRS-One in 'Four Hundred Souls'
This is why you read different perspectives. Look: I don’t think either JFK or Nixon were good presidents, but at least one is near the same zip code as my politics. Right? We can all agree one of those assholes is at least a washed asshole. Then the “Ghost Dance Prophecy” chapter of the Dunbar-Ortiz opens with an indictment of Kennedy for re-igniting “frontier” ways of thinking in the USian consciousness (leading to the military adopting the term “Indian Country” to refer to enemy territory in Vietnam—they still do this, or say “In Country.” The raid to kill Osama bin Laden unapologetically referred to the man at the top of the FBI Most Wanted as “Geronimo”). Later, Richard Milhous Nixon was the first president to make any kind of land concessions to Indigenous people.
With respect to Four Hundred Souls and the Zinn, I’m going to focus heavily on the Dunbar-Ortiz this week. The former touch on issues I already talk about a good deal on this blog, or at least is approaching an era of politics you’re likely to know my opinion on. A major inspiration for this project was hoping to have my perspective changed and maybe see some potential strategies for living better in the future by looking to the past. Reading about the Indigenous movements of the 1970s—their resiliency, their rejection of empire, their demand that we care for the planet and each other—felt like a breath after being held underwater.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn: “The Impossible Victory: Vietnam,” “Surprises,” and “The Seventies: Under Control?”
Four Hundred Souls edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain: Part Ten (1979-2019)
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: “Ten: Ghost Dance Prophecy: A Nation Is Coming” and “Eleven: The Doctrine of Discovery”
At the end of the middle of the 20th century, three major protests announced the world that Indigenous people were still in the US, and they were—in the immortal words of Fannie Lou Hamer—sick and tired of being sick and tired. The Wounded Knee Occupation in 1973, the fish-ins of the 1960s and 70s, and the Alcatraz Occupation from 1969-71 were such common sense protests I’m a little amazed everyone else in the US didn’t stop everything they were doing and decide, as I said in Part One, that this had all been a massive mistake.
Because look: an occupation on the site of the most senseless and sadistic massacre in US history. The everyday, kitchen-table, sensible ask that Indigenous people be allowed to fish in rivers so traditional to their way of life that the rivers are literally named after them and in areas where the oldest human bones discovered in North America were found. The laughing-in-your-face language of the Proclamation of the Indians of All Tribes:
“We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for twenty-four dollars (24) in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man’s purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago…” [emphasis mine] “We will give to the inhabitants of this island a portion of the land for their own to be held in trust by the American Indians Government and by the bureau of Caucasian Affairs to hold in perpetuity—for as long as the sun shall rise and the rivers go down to the sea. We will further guide the inhabitants in the proper way of living. We will offer them our religion, our education, our life-ways, in order to help them achieve our level of civilization and thus raise them and all their white brothers up from their savage and unhappy state…Further, it would be fitting and symbolic that ships from all over the world, entering the Golden Gate, would first see Indian land, and thus be reminded of the true history of this nation. This tiny island would be a symbol of the great lands once ruled by free and noble Indians.”
Don’t threaten me with a good time, Indians of All Tribes.
Because look: the 1970s were a breaking point for USian capitalism. The system collapsed under its own weight with the Vietnam War. Decolonization was happening all over the world, and Vietnam was laying bare the hollowness of endless USian expansion and land exploitation. The country regrouped and retrenched with Reagan in the 80s, and inequality and imperialism has only gotten worse since. Now, “futurists” (maybe a more accurate term is “dorkass sci-fi profiteers”) like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk think we need to colonize space. Terraform Mars, billboard advertising on the moon, a perpetually bombed Middle East, and an incarcerated and dried-up US—colonizing space is the wave of the future!
The Doctrine of Discovery was a way of interpreting Papal Bulls authorizing Christians to claim and conquer any land not occupied by Christians. This thinking wormed its way into being taken as a given in US law (never mind that the US was founded by Brits who were breaking away from the Anglican church which had already broken away from the Catholic church). The Doctrine of Discovery is the basis for “claiming lands for Spain” or whomever, the Doctrine of Discovery underpins the “well they wasn’t using it” attitude that underpins Manifest Destiny and “uplift and Christianize those foreigners who can’t govern themselves.” Recently, Indigenous nations have begun to get representation in the United Nations, and are challenging the Doctrine of Discovery. This is obviously good for the Land Back Movement, for reaching towards something like justice, for making the world a more livable place.
It’s beyond legalese, though. There’s a personal aspect. We USians—descendants of settlers, descendants of enslaved people who became settlers, anyone not Indigenous to this continent—need to evaluate how much of the Doctrine of Discovery we carry in our hearts. Not all Indigenous Americans are dead, not all land has to be exploited for capitalism, not every line need go up.
But I’ll save “where I think we go from here” for Wednesday. Meanwhile, here’s a stat from Zinn: “The United States government had signed more than four hundred treaties with Indians and violated every single one.” Still, beginning in the 70s and continuing today, we see organized movements of Indigenous people fighting for their lives.
How lucky are we that Indigenous people resisted assimilation so strongly in the 20th century. Zinn quotes from Vine Deloria, Jr., who tells the story of a white man in Cleveland who said he was sorry about colonization, but it had to happen because “after all…what did you do with the land when you had it?” Deloria then notes that the Cuyahoga River running through Cleveland was extremely flammable, and concludes “Whites had made better use of the land. How many Indians could have thought of creating an inflammable river?” Zinn quotes extensively from Chief Luther Standing Bear’s 1933 autobiography, and I’d like to as well:
“True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though highly colored and inviting, are sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to main, rob, and thwart, then what is progress?
“I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization…”
Glossed over but worth mentioning: Vietnam, which was even worse than Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket made it look, USians underrate how popular communism was amongst people who were trying to self-govern for the first time in a century, and Bourdain is right about Kissinger … Zinn, from “The Intimately Oppressed” and again in “Surprises,” frames the women’s condition in the US as one of tacit indentured servitude at home and 60s-70s feminist liberation on the level with Black Power, Indigenous movements, worker’s struggles, and prisoner organizing. I think sometimes it’s easy (for me, a himbo who knows about Foucault, anyway) to underestimate exactly how trapped middle-class women were in the very recent past, and am grateful to be embracing haushusbndry in the era that I am … glad Zinn gave some space to prisoner organizing in the 1970s, and I wish I knew earlier the story of George Jackson, a man who got an indeterminate sentence for a $70 robbery and become a revolutionary and writer who raised public awareness of the deplorable conditions of prisons … 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Robinette Biden shows up in back-to-back Four Hundred Souls chapters (“Anita Hill” and “The Crime Bill”) and not positively, maybe we should rethink the 2020 primary … glad to see Amadou Diallo’s murder covered in Four Hundred Souls, it feels so relevant to the movement for Black Lives, but I know I at least was too young when it happened to connect the dots in 2013-2020 … loved how Bakari Kitwana connects the emergence of hip-hop with Jesse Jackson’s presidential candidacy and its awakening of a generation of Black political consciousness, shoutout to KRS-One for “peace, love, unity, and having fun,” as close to a mission statement as this blog comes …
LINKS!
Something to listen to? YouTube’s home page is pretty great for music recommendations, and also reminding you that you never got around to watching Noname’s Tiny Desk. So how about Chicago’s great book club leader?
Cruise ships are climate liabilities, literally anyone could have told you, but it’s stark to see just how bad they are in this report from Kendra Pierre-Louis at Bloomberg.
Elsewhere in “no shit,” Tom Perkins at The Guardian reports that recent US inflation is due to companies saying “oh, you’ll pay that? Rad.” It’s a sign that your government is out of touch when no one seems to have heard of the term “price gouging.”
Really enjoyed this from
on about juggling multiple projects. Working on multiple things comes naturally to me, FINISHING SOMETHING is pretty difficult. I suspect this is not unique to writers. But as we say at the Shipwrecked Sailor blog: an idea is nothing, execution is everything. Jami’s column is a nice pep talk.I’m on record as thinking spending real time actually reading a book is a good thing to do on its own merit, and that doing so can introduce knowledge or unlock thoughts or otherwise be positive. But come on: who has time to read books? Not to mention reading is a solitary, quiet, usually unmoving activity (sometimes I read on my exercise bike, brag). More seriously: just what the hell do you do with that knowledge you get from reading? I loved Nicholas Russell in Defector asking “What Comes After The Post-Crisis Reading List?” In my old used bookstore job, I didn’t do as much bookselling—I worked inventory & shipping—but the holes he pokes in Romanticized bookstores (and their customers) as radical spaces (and people) in and of themselves is absolutely right. Of course, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of Women & Children First in that Romantic way. Of course, I do advocate reading books. But still: not an end. A pull quote, since Defector is subscription-based (but worth it!): “…the fetishization of reading as a means toward easy empathy, and of bookstores as hallowed temples of freedom and knowledge, obscures…that there is no real way of knowing if the book that gets sold is a book that gets read.”
From 2017, but I was recommended this after listening to that Curious City on Indian Boundary Park. Jesse Dukes at WBEZ asks, Without Native Americans, Would We Have Chicago As We Know It?
BONUS SIXTH LINK for the Chicago homies: Alder Maria Hadden—the cool-as-hell Rogers Park alder—is sponsoring an ordinance that would effectively ban natural gas from new home construction. You can read about the ordinance here, tell your Aldergoon to support it here, and read Derek Eder’s blog on how he has been replacing gas with electricity in his home in Oak Park. Look, I love my gas stove too. But it’s past time.
What are you still doing here? Go ponder what creature comforts from your life you actually need, what you can give up, and ways in which you can be more selfless and caring to others! But also it’s the weekend, so don’t forget to do (safe) drugs! If the Noname’s finished, wanna listen to my band?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. If not, consider a strike! In fact, if you organize a strike as a result of reading this blog, hit me up, I want to hear from you.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris