Part One<\/a> | Part Two<\/a> | Part Three<\/a> | Part Four<\/a> | Part Five<\/a><\/p> What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week:<\/strong><\/p> A People\u2019s History of the United States <\/em>by Howard Zinn: \u201cThe Impossible Victory: Vietnam,\u201d \u201cSurprises,\u201d and \u201cThe Seventies: Under Control?\u201d<\/p> Four Hundred Souls<\/em> edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain: Part Ten (1979-2019)<\/p> An Indigenous People\u2019s History of the United States<\/em> by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: \u201cTen: Ghost Dance Prophecy: A Nation Is Coming\u201d and \u201cEleven: The Doctrine of Discovery\u201d<\/p> 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\u2014in the immortal words of Fannie Lou Hamer\u2014sick 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\u2019m a little amazed everyone else in the US didn\u2019t stop everything they were doing and decide, as I said in Part One<\/a>, that this had all been a massive mistake. <\/p> 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<\/em> and in areas where the oldest human bones discovered in North America were found<\/em>. The laughing-in-your-face language of the Proclamation of the Indians of All Tribes: <\/p> \u201cWe will purchase said Alcatraz Island for twenty-four dollars (24) in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent<\/em> set by the white man\u2019s purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago\u2026\u201d [emphasis mine]<\/em> \u201cWe 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\u2014for 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\u2026Further, 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.\u201d<\/p><\/div> Don\u2019t threaten me with a good time, Indians of All Tribes. <\/p> 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, \u201cfuturists\u201d (maybe a more accurate term is \u201cdorkass sci-fi profiteers\u201d) 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\u2014colonizing space is the wave of the future!<\/p> The Doctrine of Discovery<\/a> 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 \u201cclaiming lands for Spain\u201d or whomever, the Doctrine of Discovery underpins the \u201cwell they wasn\u2019t using it\u201d attitude that underpins Manifest Destiny and \u201cuplift and Christianize those foreigners who can\u2019t govern themselves.\u201d 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.<\/p> It\u2019s beyond legalese, though. There\u2019s a personal aspect. We USians\u2014descendants of settlers, descendants of enslaved people who became settlers, anyone not Indigenous to this continent\u2014need 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<\/a>. <\/p> But I\u2019ll save \u201cwhere I think we go from here\u201d for Wednesday. Meanwhile, here\u2019s a stat from Zinn: \u201cThe United States government had signed more than four hundred treaties with Indians and violated every single one.\u201d Still, beginning in the 70s and continuing today, we see organized movements of Indigenous people fighting for their lives. <\/p> 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 \u201cafter all\u2026what did you do with the land when you had it?\u201d Deloria then notes that the Cuyahoga River running through Cleveland was extremely flammable, and concludes \u201cWhites had made better use of the land. How many Indians could have thought of creating an inflammable river?\u201d Zinn quotes extensively from Chief Luther Standing Bear\u2019s 1933 autobiography, and I\u2019d like to as well: <\/p> \u201cTrue, 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? <\/p> \u201cI 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\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/div> Glossed over but worth mentioning: Vietnam, which was even worse than Apocalypse Now<\/em> and Full Metal Jacket<\/em> 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<\/a> \u2026 Zinn, from \u201cThe Intimately Oppressed\u201d and again in \u201cSurprises,\u201d frames the women\u2019s 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\u2019s struggles, and prisoner organizing. I think sometimes it\u2019s easy (for me, a himbo who knows about Foucault<\/a>, 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 \u2026 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 \u2026 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Robinette Biden shows up in back-to-back Four Hundred Souls chapters (\u201cAnita Hill\u201d and \u201cThe Crime Bill\u201d) and not<\/em> positively, maybe we should rethink the 2020 primary \u2026 glad to see Amadou Diallo\u2019s murder covered in Four Hundred Souls<\/em>, it feels so relevant to the movement for Black Lives, but I know I <\/em>at least was too young when it happened to connect the dots in 2013-2020 \u2026 loved how Bakari Kitwana connects the emergence of hip-hop with Jesse Jackson\u2019s presidential candidacy and its awakening of a generation of Black political consciousness, shoutout to KRS-One for \u201cpeace, love, unity, and having fun,\u201d as close to a mission statement as this blog comes \u2026<\/p> LINKS!<\/strong><\/p> Something to listen to? YouTube\u2019s home page is pretty great for music recommendations, and also reminding you that you never got around to watching Noname\u2019s Tiny Desk. So how about Chicago\u2019s great book club leader? <\/p>![\"A](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/62fd823b-b960-4cbc-a63e-9db4e06db1dc.heic\")
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