Do I Belong Here? Where Do I Belong?
For many, the story of america has been one of displacement, alienation, slavery, and social death, even when they are settlers.
![A stylized modernist painting with a sense of irony depiction mostly white people dressed up and acting like cowboys and indians A stylized modernist painting with a sense of irony depiction mostly white people dressed up and acting like cowboys and indians](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F28bfc1a5-5417-43ac-be46-c2110dbe5d9d_1799x1200.jpeg)
Hey Rowdy Ones,
The story of how I came to be born on this continent in this country is a complex one involving ancestors who were both victims and perpetrators of colonialism. Some were members of the bourgeoisie, others proletarian, others still were indentured servants brought here as part of the violent British colonization of Ireland. The truth is, I have never felt like I belonged here. For much of my life I chalked that up to being a commie growing up in Indiana. But, the more I understand settler-colonialism, the more I see my feeling of alienation from the United States as the result of a historical displacement and dislocation from my land, culture, and people.
Some might say, why not go back to where your ancestors came from? Reconnect to your roots? It’s not that simple, though. For one, I don’t want to, I wasn’t born here by choice, but I was born here. What’s more, I have lived in England, and the English did not see me as one of them, they saw me as American, and frankly I didn’t feel like I belonged there either. I love Ireland, but the Irish do not see me as Irish. The dislocating effects of colonialism are not easily reversed, if at all, especially in the course of one lifetime. In effect at this point, I feel like I have been severed from any connection to historical roots. This is the legacy of settler colonialism.
This is not to say that I don’t find solace in connecting with aspects of Irishness. I do. Learning about old paganism brings alive something within me, a rebelliousness that lives outside the colonial relationship to Roman Catholicism, and British Colonial Rule. But the prospect of identifying as Irish specifically feels hollow as a solution to the particular problem of settler colonialism I find myself entwined in.
Additionally, I can’t ignore that one specific line of my family came here as colonizers, and that another came here as Irish proletarians. Yes, the Irish were absolutely colonized by England, they were not considered white, and were represented as apes in British and American newspapers. Their children (including two of my great-grandparents) were routinely taken by the Catholics and the British without the mother’s consent and sent to the colonies to work as indentured servants for settlers. This practice continued until the 1970s. Still, Irish peoples’ willingness to buy into the system of white supremacy in this country by becoming cops (none of my ancestors were cops fortunately) was a pathway into legitimacy within the white supremacist settler colonial state.
Regardless of how parts of my family got here, as a white man of European descent the laws, the schools, the roads, the neighborhoods are all (generally) made and reserved for me, my safety, my comfort, and my access. The Indigenous people of this land are treated either like they are long gone, or a problem to be solved, a blight on the society. The fact that my access to white supremacist institutions is (somewhat) marred by being a race and class traitor, by not being a property owner, by having generally refused to submit to the coercion of capitalist labor, and having a lot of debt, doesn’t permit a move to innocence. I am not advocating people carry around a burden of guilt, but that we shoulder the responsibility for undoing the system many of our ancestors created. This is true not just because the settler colonial social-economic system is anti-Indigenous and anti-Black and therefore fundamentally unjust, but because in undoing that system we ourselves will be liberated from it. Having nice shit in America doesn’t mean much if it comes at the result of your humanity. And given how easy it is for people to overlook the ongoing genocide of Indigenous people on this land, it has definitely come at the expense of settlers’ humanity.
Ultimately, for me, the question is: what is my place in decolonizing this land? What, as a settler, does it mean for me to be anti-colonial and to move in the direction of a decolonized future? What I want to do is to liberate the land and all people and living things from a predatory ruling class who exploit us, and keep us pitted against each other so they can continue to wage war, and steal resources in the name of “progress.” Their progress is destroying us. Their laws are only here to oppress us, and the . I see no benefit in maintaining allegiance to a white supremacist system that keeps people I know and love in a perpetual subjugation and oppression.
In the early centuries of colonization, prior to the American War for Independence, there were a historical group that included mostly North American Indigenous tribes, and Africans escaping from slavery who managed to escape the colonial nightmare that was unleashed upon them by taking up home in the swamps of North Carolina, and later the interior of Florida in the everglades. These groups have often been referred to as Maroon societies. In the everglades the group became known as the Seminole Indians. There were Maroon societies in Suriname, in Jamaica, Haiti, and other parts of Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. In Jamaica in particular Maroon communities still exist in relative if not total autonomy. This is the subject of Modibo Kadalie’s Intimate Direct Democracy and Russell Maroon Shoatz’s essay The Dragon and the Hydra.
Among these American Maroon communities there were a minority of poor and indentured white folks that were often referred to pejoratively as crackers. Today cracker has a meaning of poor racist good-for-nothing white person. Historically, though, crackers were the people teaming up with North American Indigenous folks and Africans escaping slavery. They understood instinctively that their liberation was tied with escaping the constant violence and oppression of colonialism.
It is these people I relate to most in the history of this land. The poor Europeans who recognized they were better off fighting alongside the Afro-Indigenous and North American Indigenous people who sought to live outside colonial power relations, because they refused to accept their oppression.
In the modern context, to me, this means aligning with and fighting alongside poor and Indigenous folks, black and brown folks, formerly incarcerated folks, and anyone else who is dispossessed and oppressed in this country. I will align with anyone fighting for total liberation from the death cult that is white supremacist settler colonial capitalism.
The late agit-prop artist and Indigenous anarchist Klee Benally in his widely known essay Accomplices not Allies, calls this being an accomplice. Accomplices take radical action in concert with Indigenous resistance, and center the Indigenous struggle.
This is often difficult for white settlers, because accepting the lead of Indigenous or black folks, putting their liberation as a priority raises a series of ontological questions: who are we? To subvert the role of settler from historical protagonist to historical antagonist, from the natural center of social life, to the alien outsider is a position settlers are not used to. It means giving up power. This is at the root at the incredible resistance settlers have to the very idea that the united states is a settler colonial nation.
As is explored in Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Wang’s Decolonization is not a Metaphor, the common response that settlers have to their history are various moves to innocence - “we are part indigenous,” “they are all gone,” “truth and reconciliation” “playing indigenous” and other conscious or subconscious strategies that are used to alleviate and sense of guilt or responsibility for the genocide of Indigenous Americans.
The underlying emotional reality is one of guilt, fear and shame. If it doesn’t matter that you are part Indigenous (or if that is an outright lie), if they are still here, if truth and reconciliation is not enough, and playing indigenous is deeply offensive (dressing up and appropriating Indigenous culture), then the reality is that we don’t have a place here. We shouldn’t be here. We should be back in Europe, or if we are here, we should be here as people who have decided to immigrate to this continent to live in the ways various Indigenous peoples have lived. Settlers came here to obliterate the Indigenous people and take their land, these moves to innocence represent an attempt to alleviate that guilt.
The goal, then, must be to convince settlers that their position has corrupted them. This is not easy when your entire worldview has normalized your position, but that is no excuse. To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, when you live with your boot on someone’s neck, it fundamentally corrupts you. American settlers have had their boots on Indigenous americans’ necks since 1492, and unless we wake the fuck up, our continued stranglehold will lead to extinction of human life and much of the rest of the life on earth.
We NEED to decolonize. We NEED to decolonize now. We NEED to uplift the lifeways of Indigenous people all over the world. We NEED to orient ourselves to an ethic of liberation and freedom for all land and life. What that looks like in practice is not always clear, but as Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos said, “Walking, we ask.” The answers come in collective action.
Here in Los Angeles there are landback and reparations movements, like Buried Under the Blue, and the Reclaimers. What are the movements in your area? How can you get connected to them to shake the foundations of the current world order?
We need to send these psychopaths who are clinging to the levers of power that their laws, their cops, their private property are irrelevant. We need to become fundamentally ungovernable.
Only then will we stop the endless death march of capitalism.
Stay Rowdy Y’all!
Neil
Waziyatawin has some good words. https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/understanding-colonizer-status/
(our friend in the twin cities works with her)