Trump tells minority Congresswomen to "go back where they came from"

[Broomstick]

The US also chose to deliberately incinerate cities, when they had other options. Which they did to Tokyo with conventional incendiaries well before the nuclear weapons, by the by, so the nukes weren't an "alternative" to that.

Yes, they were.

The firebombing of Tokyo from March 9-10, 1945 took 334 airplanes to accomplish. The atomic bombings only required one airplane each. It was much more efficient from a logistics standpoint. One plane, one bomb, no more city.

From the standpoint of someone standing on the ground during either sort of bombing the distinction was probably meaningless. Except of course for the possibility of radiation sickness from atomic bombs, which was an additional horror, but only applied if you managed to survive the initial fire.

Another option was invasion - which was being planned. That would have sucked for the Japanese involved, too, as well as the inevitable casualties among the invading US military troops.

I'm not sure what other options were, realistically, on the table in 1945.

[Highlord Laan]

Another option was invasion - which was being planned. That would have sucked for the Japanese involved, too, as well as the inevitable casualties among the invading US military troops.

Preceding invasion was planned to be an expanded Operation Starvation. Total blockade and mining of Japan's ports, deliberate firebombing of fields and storehouses, destruction of pipelines and wells, and the deliberate use of bioweapons to completely destroy any hope agriculture taking root in the next ten years, and the total destruction of all urban centers. The operation was slated to last a full year, then Operation Downfall would have launched.

Total casualties among the Japanese population was expected to be around 97%. The population and nation would then be rebuilt with settles from America's Japanese immigrant population and other "land grab" settlers to essentially rebuild Japan as a US holding.

[Effie]

The US also chose to deliberately incinerate cities, when they had other options. Which they did to Tokyo with conventional incendiaries well before the nuclear weapons, by the by, so the nukes weren't an "alternative" to that.

Yes, they were.

The firebombing of Tokyo from March 9-10, 1945 took 334 airplanes to accomplish. The atomic bombings only required one airplane each. It was much more efficient from a logistics standpoint. One plane, one bomb, no more city.

From the standpoint of someone standing on the ground during either sort of bombing the distinction was probably meaningless. Except of course for the possibility of radiation sickness from atomic bombs, which was an additional horror, but only applied if you managed to survive the initial fire.

Another option was invasion - which was being planned. That would have sucked for the Japanese involved, too, as well as the inevitable casualties among the invading US military troops.

I'm not sure what other options were, realistically, on the table in 1945.

Just like Dessalines could have chosen not to kill the French, the US could have chosen not to firebomb and nuke. I am not sure why the self-justifications of the killers are allowed as evidence for the one but not the other.

Another option was invasion - which was being planned. That would have sucked for the Japanese involved, too, as well as the inevitable casualties among the invading US military troops.

Preceding invasion was planned to be an expanded Operation Starvation. Total blockade and mining of Japan's ports, deliberate firebombing of fields and storehouses, destruction of pipelines and wells, and the deliberate use of bioweapons to completely destroy any hope agriculture taking root in the next ten years, and the total destruction of all urban centers. The operation was slated to last a full year, then Operation Downfall would have launched.

Total casualties among the Japanese population was expected to be around 97%. The population and nation would then be rebuilt with settles from America's Japanese immigrant population and other "land grab" settlers to essentially rebuild Japan as a US holding.

Operation Downfall would have kicked off with Operation OLYMPIC on the 1st of November, 1945, with Operation CORONET planned to launch on the 1st of March, 1946. Everything in this post is a total fabrication derived, generously, from a broad misunderstanding of the US Navy's proposed blockade alternative to Downfall. Where did you get this nonsense from?

[Highlord Laan]

Operation Downfall would have kicked off with Operation OLYMPIC on the 1st of November, 1945, with Operation CORONET planned to launch on the 1st of March, 1946. Everything in this post is a total fabrication derived, generously, from a broad misunderstanding of the US Navy's proposed blockade alternative to Downfall. Where did you get this nonsense from?

One of the politics forums I frequent. Been a while since I read the post, though. Was commenting mainly from memory.

[Straha]

The Dehousing Paper made clear that this was deliberate well thought out policy. The Americans may have protested that they were only engaging in precision bombing, but nobody took that claim seriously once they began serious bombing efforts. And by the 44/45 they were deliberately firebombing cities in both Germany and Japan, which had the effect of burning everything down. When your target is everything you can't claim that there is 'targeted damage' and 'collateral damage'. There's just targeted damage.

Part of the rationale is that the US (and probably the other Allies, but I'm not sure) would drop pamphlets beforehand telling people to leave the area because it was going to be bombed in the near future. At least some of the time. Which was pretty useless, admittedly, because where was the population of a city supposed to go? Some people did leave, or send their children out of the cities, but realistically the cities weren't going to be evacuated.

I'm not saying any of this was good in any send of the word.

The Germans actually did take some children from the people they oppressed and murdered and raised them a "Aryans" and Germans. It was NOT a good thing they did, but arguably better than throwing those kids in the gas chambers. It's a complicated issue and some of the children taken in that manner have written about the topic. I would say that those people have had a wrong committed against them, but I don't think you can argue they'd be better off dead.

So, to be clear, in the matter of a couple dozen posts we've gone from "Haitian revolutionaries can be directly understood as acting like Nazis" to "They should have taken tips from the Nazis." The mind fucking boggles.

You've got the timeline backwards there. And, again, I never said any of this was good. Stealing children is bad. Dealing with the orphans of war is often problematic.

Are you arguing that the children of white French Haitans were better off dead with their parents than being orphaned but still getting a chance to grow up? Still a sucky fate (orphans have not often fared well in history) but is it better or worse than being dead?

Again, the point was that the distinction you're trying to create between carpet bombing/terror bombing/area bombing/fire bombing and the mass murder of civilians at gun-point is pretty fucking weak.

Again, I'm not arguing that any of this is good. At best, one is a little less bad than the other. I don't know why you're having a problem wrapping your brain around that concept

So, if none of this is good and this is at best 'a little less bad' then what's your argument viz-a-viz Haiti?

Effie's broader point was that the violence committed in Haiti fits into similar frameworks that the US views as being legitimate in war. After mass protestations before, the response now is to say they're different in degree, maybe, but not in kind? In which case, sure. Then Effie is right.

And, to loop back to what started this, the question then becomes why is everyone ready to denounce in no uncertain terms one instance of racialized mass violence to achieve political goals while being offering kneejerk defenses of other, larger, acts of racialized mass violence? I wonder if it has anything to do with how American culture and politics views race and violence? (Spoiler: It absolutely does.)

[Effie]

Honestly, the bringing of the Haitian revolution into a conversation on decolonization is, well, extremely revealing in and of itself, because it presumes that any decolonization efforts would necessarily be similar in nature to the Haitian revolution and involve the vast majority of the settler population refusing any concessions until things turned into broad-scale violence. Which is a very bleak picture indeed.

And then you have the understanding that the goal of decolonization activists is to balkanize this continent into a tissue of small nations with ironclad borders, which is, well, I have had my own frustrations with the extent to which nationalism and anti-universalism creep into discussions of decolonization but the idea that this is an active goal rather than a possible long-term negative outcome requires a total lack of familiarity with the discourse. I don't even mean immersing yourself into it, as I surely have not done more than dip my toes into it personally. I mean that if you have even casually picked up a single book on the subject, you will likely gain enough familiarity to understand that it's like asking "what if the NASA Mars project finds the Martians from My Favorite Martian?"

[loomer]

It is really naive to think you can get a significant percentage of people to go along with it by simply educating them. To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get people to understand something when their entire livelihood is based on them not understanding what you are trying to teach them.

It may be naive, but it worked on me, on Straha, and on many others. I also dispute that most people's 'entire livelihood' is based on a willing complicity in ongoing displacement, especially given that most decolonization proposals deliberately make efforts to avoid unnecessary disruption to people's domestic and employment situations. The chap working in IT at a local office's 'entire livelihood' in no way depends on the continued theft of Indigenous land - it makes no difference to him whether the company he works for rents the land from a whitefella or a blackfella, employment wise, housing wise, or even socially. There are, of course, fringe cases where you're right - but these are fringe cases, people living in marginal areas or exploiting locations that will have to be ceded due to their sacred dimension, practical requirement, or to make right a wrong.

Any major social upheaval, especially one that comes with forced relocation of massive amounts of people, is going to come with a hefty dose of violence, regardless of whether you make sure to compensate the people being relocated. That is simply the nature of the beast. Generally speaking, if violence in some form is not required to implement the change, then it probably would have already happened by now. It's not a uniquely American thing, or even a uniquely Western thing, but is something that manifests across humanity. The violence can take many forms, on the part of the state, the resistant population, or both. Even famous "nonviolent" movements like civil rights in the US or Quit India/Swaraj both a) had violent subgroups, and b) built support locally and overseas by using civil disobedience with the express purpose of provoking violence on the part of the state.

I find it interesting that anti-decolonization posters like yourself routinely return to the idea that the process must involve the 'forced relocation of massive amounts of people' when it is, again, not something being sought except where unavoidable by all but the extreme fringe of decolonization proposals. No such forced relocation is suggested except in the marginal areas, in which case the ordinary legal system can be employed, with its well-established tradition of the employment of coercive sanctions up to and including violence to obtain its ends. In this regard, such relocations are no different to eminent domain seizures.

It is in fact a notable feature of most decolonization proposals and advocates I've seen that they don't want to forcibly displace large populations wherever possible. Perhaps, having experienced the pain and trauma of such displacement, the Indigenous peoples seeking to right the wrong of their colonization do not in fact wish to inflict this suffering on others.

There is no solution to this problem that doesn't come with its own host of moral, legal, and/or ethical issues. Anyone who claims that there is an easy problem-free solution is either wrong, lying, or trying to sell something.

And no one here is pretending this does not create new legal, ethical, and moral issues. This is also a common response - an imputation that decolonization advocates are somehow naive and haven't really thought about what's being proposed. We aren't - usually, we arrive at our positions precisely because we've thought about what's going on, weighed whether it would be better or worse morally and ethically, and decided that the complications created are outweighed by the good. We also don't think it's an easy solution - it is a struggle, and part of an ongoing struggle that has been fought since colonization first began.

Even in a hypothetical fantasy world where the whole thing goes through without any violence or resistance, there are question that are not necessarily easy to answer, like how you qualify someone as sufficiently native to be eligible to live in the repatriated areas. Do you go by the tribal blood quantum laws, for instance? Different tribes have different rules for qualifying members. Some only require documented descent of a single original tribe member, even if the person is otherwise entirely of white European descent, often because, to be blunt, the genocide was that effective.

Again, you make the curious assumption that decolonization necessarily involves ethnic cleansing. It does not, and many decolonization proposals do not in fact call for the creation of Indigenous-only ethnostates. Now, as to who gets to live on land owned by the reinstated traditional custodian states, that would be a matter for them to decide, in the same way that it is a matter for the existing settler-state to decide who may be a citizen, a permanent resident, etcetera. These are issues that would necessarily need to be decided on an individual state-based level through treaties and whatever new constitutions emerge.

Are tribal members limited to moving into the territories that used to belong to their tribes? For example, if someone of Seminole descent currently lives in New York on land that used to belong to the Mohawk, can they continue living there, or would they be required to relocate to Florida? What if they want to live there, but the returning Mohawks only want members of their tribe to be able to resettle there? How about someone who is descended from multiple tribes?

Again, the proposals rarely call for ethnostates. But this is again a matter for the new governments to establish, as is a customary right of all nations - the British government may decide who can reside in the UK, for instance, as part of its territorial sovereignty. In the case of your Seminole living on Mohawk land, they'd simply have to go through the standard process of naturalizing or applying for resident status, unless a suitable treaty or constitution common to both states emerges that provides for such outcomes, perhaps analogous to the EU's policies around internal migration. This is in fact fairly likely, as decolonization efforts necessarily involve political discussions between many different Indigenous states and polities, many of whom recognize that their populations live on each other's customary lands due to the ongoing process of theft and dispossesion.

There is also an idea contained here that the land to be returned must always be the same land they once held. This is incorrect. While it is a common starting point, in the event of long-term displacement it is entirely reasonable for the displaced to negotiate with the traditional custodians of the land they now inhabit for sovereignty there.

What if someone is ethnically native, but has no way of proving which tribes they are descended from because those cultural ties have been eradicated, much in the same way that it's near impossible to trace the African lineage of many black Americans? No recognized tribe allows DNA tests to serve as qualification of tribal membership, since there is no way to tie those results to a particular tribe.

This again would be a standard matter for citizenship law within the new states. I find it curious how many of these questions are basically settled points of law within the ordinary international community, but are seen as somehow major obstacles to the recognition and restoration of Indigenous sovereignty.

How about those tribes that, as mentioned earlier, barely exist for all intents and purposes? Do we continue to allow the descendants of white settlers to live in that land, thereby teaching the descendants of other white settlers the lesson that if you don't want to be forced to relocate, you need to make sure you are thorough in your genocide?

In those cases, the matter is trickier, but the restoration of sovereignty remains possible while even a few of the citizens of a state live on. If they don't - as is the case for many groups here in Australia, so the terrible precedent you wish to avoid has, I'm afraid, already been set (in fact, our particular cruelty was specifically informed by the perceived 'failure' of the US Government to eradicate the Indigenous peoples - so it's been set a long, long time ago) - then it being impossible to restore the land to its traditional custodians, it can either be held in trust by a common treaty organization akin to the EU or a federal government, or be allowed to remain in the hands of the present occupants.

Reality, unfortunately, often prevents clean solutions. Why should this prevent us from attempting to fix problems?

What about tribal land that crosses current national borders? The western powers (including the US) are well known for drawing borders with absolutely no regard for native populations, so there is a lot of land that crosses the borders between the US and Canada or the US and Mexico.

Decolonization efforts do not stop at national borders, and the new states would be free to negotiate with their neighbours for either free access or full repatriation. This is also not a new issue - national borders are routinely disputed among the existing states, and the matter can and routinely is settled diplomatically; further there are a number of border-law exceptions in African states dealing with traditional lands that cross national boundaries so this already has legal precedents addressing it. It may of course have to occur over time - perhaps first Canada, then the US, then Mexico - but the end goal is to in fact decolonize all three states, at which point these national borders cease to be an obstacle entirely.

Here in the US eminent domain takings/movings have on occasion been tied up in the courts for years or turned violent, and those have all been small-scale situations. Trying to do this on a large scale, given US culture, is not going to end well.

There have been problems with eminent domain for national parks, for example, that has been resolved by allowing current inhabitants to live out their lives on a site but not being able to pass it on to their heirs which seems to work OK (most of the time), but that represents a multi-generational approach as it can take decades for the occupants to either expire or decide to move. Multi-generational projects for the benefit of others can be a very hard sell.

I'm aware that the proceedings are often slow and disputed. They are in every nation. I do not raise them to say 'so, that fixes that', but rather to remind people that there are in fact existing principles of law, routinely employed, that address the issue of 'but how!'. As you can see above, many of the objections to decolonization are in fact already addressed by existing well-recognized principles of international law and the law of states, and land seizure is just one of them.

I again urge the question: If it becomes violent, those violently resisting are either in violation of the law or, if on a sufficient scale, in open rebellion against a legitimate and lawful government seeking to enforce legitimately created laws and treaties, for which the state has the right to employ coercive sanctions as created under its constitutions. Why is this situation to be seen as any different from when the Bundys resisted the legitimate and lawful government in existing states, or when someone shoots at the feds trying to enforce eminent domain now? Now, we can always argue that the state shouldn't exist or have coercive sanctions - I regularly do - but that's another issue entirely.

[Broomstick]

Just like Dessalines could have chosen not to kill the French, the US could have chosen not to firebomb and nuke. I am not sure why the self-justifications of the killers are allowed as evidence for the one but not the other.

The Japanese could have chosen NOT to bomb Pearl Harbor, precipitating the US-Japan conflict and bring the US into WWII in a fighting capacity and not merely a supply one. We can keep marching backward in this game of whataboutism as long as you like.

Yes, the US chose to firebomb and nuke. The Nazis chose to make slaves and deathcamps. The Japanese choose to rape Nanking and went on to force tens of thousands of women into being sexual slaves for soldiers so-called "comfort stations". It's not whether it's better to be worked to death or raped to death. It's not about whether it's better to die of starvation from a naval blockade or during a bombing raid. It's not a pissing contest about who is worse than whom. It is about choices.

The Nazis chose to work people to death when they didn't outright kill them. While there were atrocities, the German POW's transported to the US for the duration of the war were treated much better. The Nazis didn't have to work/starve/gas people to death, they chose to do so. The Americans chose not to. Yes, at the same time Americans were putting their own citizens of Japanese descent into concentration camps - another choice, one which does not speak well of America.

Dessalines choose to massacre not only adults but children and infants. That is pretty damn vile. The fact that some other people did the same to Native groups does not excuse Dessalines, nor does Dessalines' actions excuse those other parties.

This is, of course, one of the many reasons war is hell. Atrocities happen. People chose to be more vile than necessary. We can study and understand why they did these things without condoning them. That is a definite problem you have - your assumption that anyone posting an example of a thing is somehow condoning it. We are not. Speaking of history is not condoning what happened. Speaking of an atrocity is not condoning it. Explaining how an atrocity came to happen is not condoning it. Understanding history requires that we suppress outrage long enough to examine the facts but doing so is not condoning what happened any more than a forensic investigation of a murder is condoning that murder. After that is done, however, refusing to acknowledge that atrocities were atrocities, either by denying they occurred or stating something else is worse, is dishonest.

The 1804 massacre of the French in Haiti was an atrocity. So was the whole institution of slavery in Haiti. It understandable why the massacre occurred even if it was a vile and repulsive act that should not be condoned. If the situation had played out differently, if those French people had, as an example, been deported/expelled rather than killed then there might have been less fear of Haiti/black slave uprisings which might have had knock-on effects down through the years. Maybe blacks would have been treated better because of less fear. Or maybe slavery would have endured longer as an institution due to some paradoxical thing. But we'll never know. Either way, the massacre was repulsive.

Rinse and repeat for a lot of events in history.

[Broomstick]

I find it interesting that anti-decolonization posters like yourself routinely return to the idea that the process must involve the 'forced relocation of massive amounts of people' when it is, again, not something being sought except where unavoidable by all but the extreme fringe of decolonization proposals. No such forced relocation is suggested except in the marginal areas, in which case the ordinary legal system can be employed, with its well-established tradition of the employment of coercive sanctions up to and including violence to obtain its ends. In this regard, such relocations are no different to eminent domain seizures.

It is in fact a notable feature of most decolonization proposals and advocates I've seen that they don't want to forcibly displace large populations wherever possible. Perhaps, having experienced the pain and trauma of such displacement, the Indigenous peoples seeking to right the wrong of their colonization do not in fact wish to inflict this suffering on others.

There are a couple of reasons these things come up again and again.

First, there is the fear that new (or if your prefer, the restored owners) will become the New Oppressors. Basically, the fear that Natives will treat the Invaders as badly as the Invaders treated the Natives. While that sort of reversal does not always happen it certainly can: case in point, the former Rhodesia now known as Zimbabwe which got really shitty for everyone but Mugabe's buddies. It doesn't have to happen that way - South Africa certainly has its share of problems but is far better off than Zimbabwe. India had its share of riots and rebellions but has had its sovereignty restored while maintaining a continuity of order. Post WWII Japan's treatment by the US was a lot more mild than many feared.

Second, there are people who will, indeed, want to become the New Oppressors. Post-WWII treatment of Japan is still considered to have been too lenient by some Americans, who would have been happy to strip Japan of every remaining resource and kept the Japanese as a cheap, controlled labor pool. It's all very well to say "This group doesn't want that", human nature being what it is you can always find someone willing to exploit other people and god help people when such people find a way to the top - you'll get more exploitation, anger, and atrocities. Martin Luther King, Jr. became as prominent as he did in the 1960's Civil Rights campaigns in the US because there was a fear that if society didn't work with him then you'd get folks advocating open rebellion, violence, and killing leading mobs through the streets. While Gandhi was leading a campaign of non-violent protest and civil disobedience in India there was a real fear of other people wanting change who weren't opposed to a little violence to achieve their ends.

Neither of those two fears are irrational - they are rooted in a knowledge of history. An understanding of history makes it clear they are not inevitable outcomes... but they really can happen even when the change is started with the best of intentions.

Third, there have been instances where, once ownership is restored to Natives, non-Natives HAVE been forced from their homes. I linked to a wiki about the Seneca nation - in 1990 they were resorted possession of land in and around the city of Salamanca and 15 non-native households were, in fact, expelled from that area. Others stayed - the situation is too complicated to reduce to a mere sentence or two. There is also resentment that the Seneca then built a casino complex on the land and has made a lot of money from the project. Again, this is too complex to reduce to a sentence or two but it's illustrative that even when restoration of land rights is done in an orderly, lawful, and peaceful manner there are problems.

Which is not to say these things should not be done. There seems to be an assumption in this thread that anyone raising the specter of problems is somehow opposed to justice and restoration of rights. That is an erroneous conclusion. Saying "hey, there are going to be problems" is not the same as being in favor of those problems, or saying that something could not be done.

There is no solution to this problem that doesn't come with its own host of moral, legal, and/or ethical issues. Anyone who claims that there is an easy problem-free solution is either wrong, lying, or trying to sell something.

Reality, unfortunately, often prevents clean solutions. Why should this prevent us from attempting to fix problems?

It doesn't. But some other party saying "Hey, what about this issue?" does not mean that they are someone on the opposite side of the fence forevermore, or reject the moral justice of your argument. Questioning how well this is going to play out, or how peacefully, does not make someone "anti-decolonization".

Decolonization efforts do not stop at national borders, and the new states would be free to negotiate with their neighbours for either free access or full repatriation. This is also not a new issue - national borders are routinely disputed among the existing states, and the matter can and routinely is settled diplomatically; further there are a number of border-law exceptions in African states dealing with traditional lands that cross national boundaries so this already has legal precedents addressing it. It may of course have to occur over time - perhaps first Canada, then the US, then Mexico - but the end goal is to in fact decolonize all three states, at which point these national borders cease to be an obstacle entirely.

The sad thing is that the national borders in North America were being eased long before they were in Europe, but then 9/11 happened and suddenly we all need passports to cross lines that before we could cross easily and routinely.

There are Native lands that straddle international borders already. Guess how well that is going with the Trump administration in power.

There the problem of negotiating with a vastly stronger and wealthier entity. One of the long standing problems with Natives in the US is that even the most organized of them (and some of them, like the Iroquois, had longstanding multi-tribal alliances that pre-dated the colonial era) were and still are at a constant disadvantage vs. both the many States and the over-arching Federal Government (back to the Seneca again - they've been fighting the State of New York for centuries in the Federal Courts because New York keeps trying to assert sovereignty over the Seneca nation. Most recently, a 2007 dispute when New York kept trying to collect state sales tax on a group that legally isn't part of New York State - rather as if New York attempted to collect state tax on towns in the province of Ontario, Canada or regulate the tourist industry on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls).

If you de-construct the USA then what is to stop Mexico from trying to reclaim the southwestern US? It did, after all, belong to them before it belonged to the USA (and Spain before Mexico, and the Natives before that but as they say, possession is 9/10's of the law). Fracturing the US into an alliance of hundreds of Native tribes - some of which might decide to NOT be part of the alliance - is going to have international repercussions. One could propose all sorts of extreme responses, the most extreme of which are unlikely to happen, but this sort of restructuring is not going to take place in a vacuum.

I'm aware that the proceedings are often slow and disputed. They are in every nation. I do not raise them to say 'so, that fixes that', but rather to remind people that there are in fact existing principles of law, routinely employed, that address the issue of 'but how!'. As you can see above, many of the objections to decolonization are in fact already addressed by existing well-recognized principles of international law and the law of states, and land seizure is just one of them.

International law - such as it is, because such law is largely wishful thinking - has not, historically, favored the minorities and those with less wealth and power. It's how the Natives wound up in such a diminished situation in the first place. Ask the Seneca how well things have played out "negotiating" with the state of New York (I keep mentioning it because it's one I'm personally familiar with - I pass through the Seneca Nation on my way to and from my sister's house in Buffalo, NY, at least I will so long as they Seneca don't revoke travel rights on the piece of tollway that goes through their land. In 2007, when New York withheld the Seneca's portion of tollway revenue in "retaliation" for not paying state taxes they legally were under no obligation to pay the Seneca set up their own toll stations on the road. For a short period of time, after local police refused to "enforce" the State's orders to take down the Seneca barriers on the road there was rumblings about calling out the National Guard to open the road and.... it was an uncomfortable situation. And thankfully brief. New York was scolded (again!), the Seneca got their portion of tollway money, and they took down their barriers. ) That "law" argument is flimsy, even if here in the start of the 21st Century treaties are being upheld more reliably and the law applied more evenly than it has been since the Europeans arrived in North America.

It's not that the existence of eminent domain and laws regarding land rights are disputed - the problem is that those things have existed for centuries and it hasn't always helped. The Cherokee had a generation of Harvard-education lawyers, took their case for their land to the US Supreme Court which ruled in their favor... and the Trail of Tears still happened anyway. Illegally, but it happened anyway.

Given the track record in history, saying "but there are laws!" is a weak argument.

I again urge the question: If it becomes violent, those violently resisting are either in violation of the law or, if on a sufficient scale, in open rebellion against a legitimate and lawful government seeking to enforce legitimately created laws and treaties, for which the state has the right to employ coercive sanctions as created under its constitutions.

What if the people "violently resisting" are the government of a nation? What do you do when the PotUS, such as Andrew Jackson, wipes his ass with a Supreme Court decision and goes ahead and does what he wants to do anyway? What do you do when the "legitimate and lawful government" breaks the law AND has overwhelming numbers and firepower?

Right now, over the past half century, the US government has done better than in proceeding centuries in regards to respecting Native rights and treaties... but still have overwhelming numbers and firepower. Also currently has a PotUS that doesn't have a firm grasp of "respecting the law and the courts" when they decide against what he wants to do.

[Effie]

Just like Dessalines could have chosen not to kill the French, the US could have chosen not to firebomb and nuke. I am not sure why the self-justifications of the killers are allowed as evidence for the one but not the other.

The Japanese could have chosen NOT to bomb Pearl Harbor, precipitating the US-Japan conflict and bring the US into WWII in a fighting capacity and not merely a supply one. We can keep marching backward in this game of whataboutism as long as you like.

Yes, the US chose to firebomb and nuke. The Nazis chose to make slaves and deathcamps. The Japanese choose to rape Nanking and went on to force tens of thousands of women into being sexual slaves for soldiers so-called "comfort stations". It's not whether it's better to be worked to death or raped to death. It's not about whether it's better to die of starvation from a naval blockade or during a bombing raid. It's not a pissing contest about who is worse than whom. It is about choices.

The Nazis chose to work people to death when they didn't outright kill them. While there were atrocities, the German POW's transported to the US for the duration of the war were treated much better. The Nazis didn't have to work/starve/gas people to death, they chose to do so. The Americans chose not to. Yes, at the same time Americans were putting their own citizens of Japanese descent into concentration camps - another choice, one which does not speak well of America.

Dessalines choose to massacre not only adults but children and infants. That is pretty damn vile. The fact that some other people did the same to Native groups does not excuse Dessalines, nor does Dessalines' actions excuse those other parties.

This is, of course, one of the many reasons war is hell. Atrocities happen. People chose to be more vile than necessary. We can study and understand why they did these things without condoning them. That is a definite problem you have - your assumption that anyone posting an example of a thing is somehow condoning it. We are not. Speaking of history is not condoning what happened. Speaking of an atrocity is not condoning it. Explaining how an atrocity came to happen is not condoning it. Understanding history requires that we suppress outrage long enough to examine the facts but doing so is not condoning what happened any more than a forensic investigation of a murder is condoning that murder. After that is done, however, refusing to acknowledge that atrocities were atrocities, either by denying they occurred or stating something else is worse, is dishonest.

The 1804 massacre of the French in Haiti was an atrocity. So was the whole institution of slavery in Haiti. It understandable why the massacre occurred even if it was a vile and repulsive act that should not be condoned. If the situation had played out differently, if those French people had, as an example, been deported/expelled rather than killed then there might have been less fear of Haiti/black slave uprisings which might have had knock-on effects down through the years. Maybe blacks would have been treated better because of less fear. Or maybe slavery would have endured longer as an institution due to some paradoxical thing. But we'll never know. Either way, the massacre was repulsive.

Rinse and repeat for a lot of events in history.

...

So, my entire position is that the emphasis on Dessalines' massacre is similar to emphasizing Allied crimes over Axis ones.

Your response appears to be to first emphasize that Axis crimes were worse (albeit in a way that suggests that Japanese civilians in Hiroshima were more responsible for Pearl Harbor than French colonists were for slavery on Haiti, curiously enough) and then to say it's not about what's worse. An intriguing rhetorical approach.

I do want to highlight this, though:

"If the situation had played out differently, if those French people had, as an example, been deported/expelled rather than killed then there might have been less fear of Haiti/black slave uprisings which might have had knock-on effects down through the years. Maybe blacks would have been treated better because of less fear. Or maybe slavery would have endured longer as an institution due to some paradoxical thing."

This is an utterly bizarre statement. I really don't know where to begin with it, beyond simply noting the utter absurdity of the notion that the monstrous brutality of slavery wasn't systemic in origin.

[loomer]

I find it interesting that anti-decolonization posters like yourself routinely return to the idea that the process must involve the 'forced relocation of massive amounts of people' when it is, again, not something being sought except where unavoidable by all but the extreme fringe of decolonization proposals. No such forced relocation is suggested except in the marginal areas, in which case the ordinary legal system can be employed, with its well-established tradition of the employment of coercive sanctions up to and including violence to obtain its ends. In this regard, such relocations are no different to eminent domain seizures.

It is in fact a notable feature of most decolonization proposals and advocates I've seen that they don't want to forcibly displace large populations wherever possible. Perhaps, having experienced the pain and trauma of such displacement, the Indigenous peoples seeking to right the wrong of their colonization do not in fact wish to inflict this suffering on others.

There are a couple of reasons these things come up again and again.

First, there is the fear that new (or if your prefer, the restored owners) will become the New Oppressors. Basically, the fear that Natives will treat the Invaders as badly as the Invaders treated the Natives. While that sort of reversal does not always happen it certainly can: case in point, the former Rhodesia now known as Zimbabwe which got really shitty for everyone but Mugabe's buddies. It doesn't have to happen that way - South Africa certainly has its share of problems but is far better off than Zimbabwe. India had its share of riots and rebellions but has had its sovereignty restored while maintaining a continuity of order. Post WWII Japan's treatment by the US was a lot more mild than many feared.

It certainly can happen, and it is of course a risk - but it's a risk that is worth taking in the furtherance of justice and humanity.

Second, there are people who will, indeed, want to become the New Oppressors. Post-WWII treatment of Japan is still considered to have been too lenient by some Americans, who would have been happy to strip Japan of every remaining resource and kept the Japanese as a cheap, controlled labor pool. It's all very well to say "This group doesn't want that", human nature being what it is you can always find someone willing to exploit other people and god help people when such people find a way to the top - you'll get more exploitation, anger, and atrocities. Martin Luther King, Jr. became as prominent as he did in the 1960's Civil Rights campaigns in the US because there was a fear that if society didn't work with him then you'd get folks advocating open rebellion, violence, and killing leading mobs through the streets. While Gandhi was leading a campaign of non-violent protest and civil disobedience in India there was a real fear of other people wanting change who weren't opposed to a little violence to achieve their ends.

Very few Indigenous people wish to become oppressors, from my experience and from my exposure to the groups advocating for restoration of sovereignty. Some, certainly, do - but they are a fringe minority, and so I don't consider it an especially significant risk or motivating factor. Nor do I consider it to be a valid reason not to pursue justice - if the fear of a future revenge is a sufficient reason to continue with genocidal policies, oppression, and the theft of land, then those who are afraid of it might as well go all out and finish it once and for all.

Third, there have been instances where, once ownership is restored to Natives, non-Natives HAVE been forced from their homes. I linked to a wiki about the Seneca nation - in 1990 they were resorted possession of land in and around the city of Salamanca and 15 non-native households were, in fact, expelled from that area. Others stayed - the situation is too complicated to reduce to a mere sentence or two. There is also resentment that the Seneca then built a casino complex on the land and has made a lot of money from the project. Again, this is too complex to reduce to a sentence or two but it's illustrative that even when restoration of land rights is done in an orderly, lawful, and peaceful manner there are problems.

Yes, and? Those people refused to comply with the directives of land owners and to sign valid, lawful leases. Why is it especially noteworthy when tenants who refuse to sign a renewed lease are evicted? It happens every day across the world.

Which is not to say these things should not be done. There seems to be an assumption in this thread that anyone raising the specter of problems is somehow opposed to justice and restoration of rights. That is an erroneous conclusion. Saying "hey, there are going to be problems" is not the same as being in favor of those problems, or saying that something could not be done.

And yet it so often seems to be raised as precisely that action should not be taken, because it is naive, impossible, and so forth. So while I appreciate that it may not be intended to refute the proposals, it unfortunately often either is intended to, or inadvertantly has the effect of advancing that argument.

Decolonization efforts do not stop at national borders, and the new states would be free to negotiate with their neighbours for either free access or full repatriation. This is also not a new issue - national borders are routinely disputed among the existing states, and the matter can and routinely is settled diplomatically; further there are a number of border-law exceptions in African states dealing with traditional lands that cross national boundaries so this already has legal precedents addressing it. It may of course have to occur over time - perhaps first Canada, then the US, then Mexico - but the end goal is to in fact decolonize all three states, at which point these national borders cease to be an obstacle entirely.

The sad thing is that the national borders in North America were being eased long before they were in Europe, but then 9/11 happened and suddenly we all need passports to cross lines that before we could cross easily and routinely.

There are Native lands that straddle international borders already. Guess how well that is going with the Trump administration in power.

Yes. Individual administrations can cause difficulty - this is the ordinary nature of international relations, and not something unique to proposed Indigenous sovereignty and the restoration of Indigenous statehood.

There the problem of negotiating with a vastly stronger and wealthier entity. One of the long standing problems with Natives in the US is that even the most organized of them (and some of them, like the Iroquois, had longstanding multi-tribal alliances that pre-dated the colonial era) were and still are at a constant disadvantage vs. both the many States and the over-arching Federal Government (back to the Seneca again - they've been fighting the State of New York for centuries in the Federal Courts because New York keeps trying to assert sovereignty over the Seneca nation. Most recently, a 2007 dispute when New York kept trying to collect state sales tax on a group that legally isn't part of New York State - rather as if New York attempted to collect state tax on towns in the province of Ontario, Canada or regulate the tourist industry on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls).

Certainly, but this again is not a unique issue to the proposed restored Indigenous states. Many nations have to negotiate with stronger and wealthier entities - many nations do it successfully, some do not.

If you de-construct the USA then what is to stop Mexico from trying to reclaim the southwestern US? It did, after all, belong to them before it belonged to the USA (and Spain before Mexico, and the Natives before that but as they say, possession is 9/10's of the law). Fracturing the US into an alliance of hundreds of Native tribes - some of which might decide to NOT be part of the alliance - is going to have international repercussions. One could propose all sorts of extreme responses, the most extreme of which are unlikely to happen, but this sort of restructuring is not going to take place in a vacuum.

Again, certainly. But just as there is a risk that not all restored Indigenous states may wish to join the defence pacts, there is a possibility - a fairly good one, in fact - that they will. Again, this is not a risk unique to the idea of restoring Indigenous statehood and sovereignty, and the usual recourses to prevent wars of aggression remain available - whether they be defensive pacts or international law. In the case of the dissolved America, whatever common federations arise will likely also be nuclear capable, which is a fairly reliable tool for telling others to fuck right off - afterall, as you yourself point out, this restructuring doesn't take place in a vacuum, and nuclear weapons infrastructure is one of many assets to be considered and divided between the emergent states unless total disarmament is part of the process.

I also question the assumption that the new states will emerge without treaties with other, older states for mutual aid and defence or heavy involvement of peacekeeping forces during the initial transition to prevent the scenario you describe. It is not merely flicking a switch and going 'okay, now the US is gone' - it is a negotiated, gradual process in which there is ample time for the emerging states to form the appropriate international networks, arrange for security against attack during the turnover period, and hand over military assets. The US's powerful army is, afterall, to be dispersed among the new states in most proposals, unless a neo-US or EU like conglomeration emerges with authority over mutual defence - it does not vanish. So if Mexico does decide it wants a slice of California, good luck to them - they'll have quite a fight on their hands.

I'm aware that the proceedings are often slow and disputed. They are in every nation. I do not raise them to say 'so, that fixes that', but rather to remind people that there are in fact existing principles of law, routinely employed, that address the issue of 'but how!'. As you can see above, many of the objections to decolonization are in fact already addressed by existing well-recognized principles of international law and the law of states, and land seizure is just one of them.

International law - such as it is, because such law is largely wishful thinking - has not, historically, favored the minorities and those with less wealth and power. It's how the Natives wound up in such a diminished situation in the first place. Ask the Seneca how well things have played out "negotiating" with the state of New York (I keep mentioning it because it's one I'm personally familiar with - I pass through the Seneca Nation on my way to and from my sister's house in Buffalo, NY, at least I will so long as they Seneca don't revoke travel rights on the piece of tollway that goes through their land. In 2007, when New York withheld the Seneca's portion of tollway revenue in "retaliation" for not paying state taxes they legally were under no obligation to pay the Seneca set up their own toll stations on the road. For a short period of time, after local police refused to "enforce" the State's orders to take down the Seneca barriers on the road there was rumblings about calling out the National Guard to open the road and.... it was an uncomfortable situation. And thankfully brief. New York was scolded (again!), the Seneca got their portion of tollway money, and they took down their barriers. ) That "law" argument is flimsy, even if here in the start of the 21st Century treaties are being upheld more reliably and the law applied more evenly than it has been since the Europeans arrived in North America.

It's not that the existence of eminent domain and laws regarding land rights are disputed - the problem is that those things have existed for centuries and it hasn't always helped. The Cherokee had a generation of Harvard-education lawyers, took their case for their land to the US Supreme Court which ruled in their favor... and the Trail of Tears still happened anyway. Illegally, but it happened anyway.

Given the track record in history, saying "but there are laws!" is a weak argument.

International law is distinct from the law of states, of which land seizure is a well-recognized principle - hence, the weakness of international law has no bearing on the availability of land seizure as a legal remedy for treaty obligation. As you acknowledge, it's well recognized - and when I refer to it, I refer to it in the context of a nation's internal laws. The history of illegal actions by the US government towards the Indigenous peoples is irrelevant to the capacity for the newly formed Indigenous states to utilize legal remedies to seize land as and when necessary to fulfill treaty obligations and constitutional requirements, in the same way that people breaking the law around homicide does not render those laws flimsy or helpless.

Now, as to international law not historically favouring minorities - sure. But the reforms proposed create states that are not solely Indigenous or minority populated but consist of cosmopolitan populations, that are privileged due to their wealth, closely interlinked politically socially and economically, potentially nuclear-armed, and so on. They would necessarily be a situation so distinct from anything that has come before them that the historical failings of international law are, shall we way, not quite applicable.

I again urge the question: If it becomes violent, those violently resisting are either in violation of the law or, if on a sufficient scale, in open rebellion against a legitimate and lawful government seeking to enforce legitimately created laws and treaties, for which the state has the right to employ coercive sanctions as created under its constitutions.

What if the people "violently resisting" are the government of a nation? What do you do when the PotUS, such as Andrew Jackson, wipes his ass with a Supreme Court decision and goes ahead and does what he wants to do anyway? What do you do when the "legitimate and lawful government" breaks the law AND has overwhelming numbers and firepower?

Right now, over the past half century, the US government has done better than in proceeding centuries in regards to respecting Native rights and treaties... but still have overwhelming numbers and firepower. Also currently has a PotUS that doesn't have a firm grasp of "respecting the law and the courts" when they decide against what he wants to do.

And this is why the proposal is not to dismantle immediately, this second - as convenient a rhetorical device is, all serious proposals for decolonization call for continuing the campaign for public education and awareness first and a step-by-step approach that works to ensure a smooth, peaceful transition of power from one government to another. These proposals are such that to speak of the US government having overwhelming numbers is an absurdity, as at the time of transition there will cease to be a US government as currently constituted. Whatever comes next - even a neo-US, if one forms out of the restored states - will necessarily be so different as a product of the process of reform that it is incorrect to think of it as a continuation of what currently is.

Hence when I speak of violent resistors to the law, I speak only of internal insurrections, not a state of open warfare with the US government, which is validly - if immorally - constituted and thus the present legitimate and lawful government. The threat you speak of - the current US as a legitimate and lawful government - would, as a precondition for the circumstances we discuss, have ceased to exist as a possibility. Wars between the new states are possible, of course, as are violent insurrections - but violent insurrections against a lawful and legitimate government fall within the ambit of those governments to respond with the coercive sanctions appropriate to the situation, and there is no particular reason to believe the same disparity will exist between the new states as between Indigenous communities and the US government at present.

[Gandalf]

If the situation had played out differently, if those French people had, as an example, been deported/expelled rather than killed then there might have been less fear of Haiti/black slave uprisings which might have had knock-on effects down through the years. Maybe blacks would have been treated better because of less fear. Or maybe slavery would have endured longer as an institution due to some paradoxical thing.

I find this an interesting thought experiment. Maybe they should have been even more brutal, to make white empires think twice about the whole "enslave races" thing they seemed to enjoy so much.

This is an utterly bizarre statement. I really don't know where to begin with it, beyond simply noting the utter absurdity of the notion that the monstrous brutality of slavery wasn't systemic in origin.

I hear versions of it a lot, especially in regards to Indigenous Australians. Evidently white ruling classes are always ready to accept Indigenous people, except we just won't shut up and stop being so damn Indigenous about things. Look up Adam Goodes as an example.

[loomer]

This is an utterly bizarre statement. I really don't know where to begin with it, beyond simply noting the utter absurdity of the notion that the monstrous brutality of slavery wasn't systemic in origin.

I hear versions of it a lot, especially in regards to Indigenous Australians. Evidently white ruling classes are always ready to accept Indigenous people, except we just won't shut up and stop being so damn Indigenous about things. Look up Adam Goodes as an example.

It pairs nicely with the whole 'but what if they turn around and become oppressors because of what we did!' argument, too. I honestly don't see how that particular line can lead anywhere but full genocide - if the fear is a valid reason to continue an unjust situation, then it must be sufficiently severe that pre-emptive self defence is justifiable as well - and so we slide right back into 'and now, we must kill their children' territory as a logical consequence, bringing us full circle to the deplorable massacres.

[Straha]

What's different is that the US mode of ethnic cleansing was of its own devising, and then modeled to a greater or lesser extent in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. Most of the other countries in the Americas have either had active decolonial projects, or had brutal revolutions that helped to force the decolonial project forward. To deal with them in a wide swath is unfair to them, and not useful to exploring the more basic question poised here: "Is the US fundamentally racist?"

It takes a breathtaking amount of historical myopia to look at the genocides committed by the US, a former British colony, along with similar native genocides committed by Canada, Australia, and South Africa, also former British colonies, and declare that the US's methods must have sprung fully formed from Zeus's head and was then later adopted by the others. All of them continued the very British practice of destruction of native populations, either physically or culturally, that was practiced in every corner of the empire, including in places that you did not mention like India and Ireland. It is very accurate to say that the US is built on a racist foundation, but it is at best naive and at worst willfully misleading to try to pretend that foundation was built in a vacuum.

Yeah, lot to unpack here:

1. No one is saying that America came up with its processes ex nihilio. What is being said is that it represented a significant departure from pre-existing strategies. If you read early colonial documentation (including the Declaration of Independence) one of the on-going grievances between the American Colonies and Britain was that Britain was, in their eyes, too respectful of Native Tribes to the West and unwilling to engage in the systemic containment and control that the colonists thought necessary to ensure their ability to expand their land takings. It's not the United States invented the process, it's that it 'mastered' the process.

2. Of the places you name, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, the latter two were colonized after the United States and were self-consciously modeled on the US. Loomer discusses this a little in the Australian context. Canada only began its fervent westward expansion well after the U.S. had developed a model that was then used, and (again) was actively referenced in Canadian planning. Chronology matters here.

3. Notably the two other places you mention, India and Ireland, did not use the model of large land grabs, development of reservations, and a claim of terra nullis coupled with the doctrine of discovery. The reason behind those differences boil down to racial ideology. And, again, no one is saying that Racial Ideology was suddenly mastered in 1776/1783/1789. That would be, on face, ludicrous. What is being said is that the founding of the colonies and then the US were absolutely based on racial ideology, and which was then further developed and deployed across the continent.

And even then the British likely had some inspiration from civilizations that came before. It's not a coincidence that several common languages in Europe (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) are derivations of Latin. Here's a hint: it's because the original languages of the tribes that lived there were eradicated when the Romans moved in and either assimilated them into the empire or exterminated the ones that refused to bend the knee.

1. Peer Pressure is not an excuse for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

2. You are simply wrong about the linguistic history of Europe (and, well, the world). The Roman Empire had massive linguistic diversity and didn't seek to lessen it. Local languages survived, and thrived, as languages of every day life, commerce, and even of government (e.g. Palmyerese in the Levant, to pull out the one that leaps to mind). Just, as a gut-check, Brittonic survived throughout the entirety of the Roman conquest of Britain and arguably its major linguistic descendant is still alive and kicking in Welsh. Europe until very recently was a hot-bed of different languages. In France, for instance, as late as World War I there were reported issues in the French Army of French Recruits not being able to speak French despite coming from the homeland. It was only with the rise of national education in the 19th Century that local languages across Europe (e.g. Basque, Breton, Zarpathic, Occitan, etc.) were targeted for annihilation by preventing children from learning them and preventing their passing down to future generations.

(The reason why Romance languages thrive across Western Europe is less because of lingustic imperialism and more because most of the languages are Indo-European in origin. And Indo-European languages don't so much borrow as outright steal from each other when in close contact.)

This also isn't world-wide. The various Caliphates, despite having a religious mandate to foster Arabic, never were able to eliminate a myriad of other local languages, and the linguistic diversity between Arabic dialects is one of the most profoundly troubling aspects for people who want to learn the language. In Iran as late as the 1960s a majority of the population didn't understand Farsi/Persian beyond a few words, despite monumental efforts to try and foster its use across the country. In China Mandarin has only become understood by the majority of the populace in the last 50 years, and that took the dedicated and concerted effort of the CCP unleashing itself. And the list goes on and on and on.

3. I realize that the last section is a long aside, but I think there are a few things that are worth pulling out of this that are relevant to this thread. A. It helps to reinforce how the notion of Settler-Colonial modernity isn't some continuation of history but really does represent a break in the human project on the Earth. B. It also begs the question of how language assimilation works. To use your example, there's a reason why Spanish developed as a blending of local languages and Latin in Spain, but English didn't merge with Unami and Munsee in New York. C. It also points out that the development of linguistic monocultures is a direct governmental project with cultural goals. Which begs the question why the US made eradication of Native Languages an early goal in the mid-19th century but didn't do the same to other groups (picking two: The French speaking natives of New England, or the German speaking population of Pennsylvania) until the 20th Century.

[Straha]

This is an utterly bizarre statement. I really don't know where to begin with it, beyond simply noting the utter absurdity of the notion that the monstrous brutality of slavery wasn't systemic in origin.

I hear versions of it a lot, especially in regards to Indigenous Australians. Evidently white ruling classes are always ready to accept Indigenous people, except we just won't shut up and stop being so damn Indigenous about things. Look up Adam Goodes as an example.

It pairs nicely with the whole 'but what if they turn around and become oppressors because of what we did!' argument, too. I honestly don't see how that particular line can lead anywhere but full genocide - if the fear is a valid reason to continue an unjust situation, then it must be sufficiently severe that pre-emptive self defence is justifiable as well - and so we slide right back into 'and now, we must kill their children' territory as a logical consequence, bringing us full circle to the deplorable massacres.

Huh. Maybe this is an argument that goes the other way. The U.S. should engage in large scale redistribution of land and justice efforts because if it doesn't then it'll only guarantee a genocaust of epic proportions when people do try to rise up. But if it engages in land and redistributive justice efforts now they can lessen, or even remove, that impulse through good will.

[Straha]

And yet, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was a French General in the French Revolution, a black man born in Haiti (in slavery, because his mother was a slave even if his father was a white master) who rose to brigadier general in the French army as a freed black man. So... um... I guess not ALL Frenchmen were unable to recognize a freed slave as a free man or relegate him to the permanent role of servant during that time period (Dumas died in 1806, two years after the 1804 massacre. True, Napoleon did shit on the man's family and deny them a military pension but as the two men had butted heads multiple times in real life that might well have been due more to personal animosity than racial prejudice.

I'm genuinely not sure what your argument is here? Like, is the example of one person who was able to partially escape social categorization supposed to somehow prove that the French weren't trying to impose systemic chattel slavery on the black population of Haiti? Or is to make some sort of claim that there was the possibility of social mobility which meant these categories were porous? This just strikes me as absurd. No one would take seriously the claim that Frederick Douglas' ability to be a writer and influence politicians would mean that the United States in the 1840s and 50s wasn't systemically and horrifically racist. No more than anyone should take seriously the assertion that Obama's election proves racism to be historical.

Haiti is a bit more complicated than simply white vs. black, master vs. slave. Not the least because it was not unusual for a financially successful free black to become a slave owner, pre-revolution the mixed race creoles held a level of society for themselves, and post-revolution dominated politically and economically those whose ancestry was mostly or exclusively African. Post-revolution, the creoles became the new oppressors, keeping the masses poor and uneducated. One oppressive group replaced by another.

I'm not sure how nuances and complexity in Haiti rise to rebut the claim that slavery, and the concept of a free Haiti, were racially coded and part of an order of white supremacy.

I'm also not sure how Haiti's failings, in the context of a prolonged and devastating struggle of 20 years coupled with a monumental effort of economic and political isolation by the European world, somehow rise to a defense of the American (or Australian, or Canadian, etc.) Status Quo.

It's not so much a sudden break as a gradual change - like treaties being enforced instead of ignored. Things are still pretty fucked up, but the trend is going in the right direction more often. You can certainly argue the change isn't fast enough, or that it's still not enough, but it would be inaccurate to say the situation is unchanged from a century ago.

1. When the US has violated the treaties to get everything they want, respecting what's left isn't much of an accomplishment. It's more a sad testament than anything else.

2. Massive treaty violation continued well into the 60s and 70s, notably through daming and water infrastructure projects. No effort has been made to undo this damage on the US government's part. Nor has any effort been made to structurally change how the US deals with Native Tribes.

3. What makes you think the trend is going in the right direction? As recently as DAPL not only were treaty rights run over roughshod and violated, but the call to ignore them was a frontispiece of the Trump campaign, and they were certainly not respected by Obama until well after he was a lame-duck and even then in only the most cursory of manners. Nobody is saying things are different now. It's more that we live in the aftermath of a highly successful campaign of ethnic cleansing. Things are different, not necessarily better.

[Darth Yan]

It is really naive to think you can get a significant percentage of people to go along with it by simply educating them. To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get people to understand something when their entire livelihood is based on them not understanding what you are trying to teach them.

It may be naive, but it worked on me, on Straha, and on many others. I also dispute that most people's 'entire livelihood' is based on a willing complicity in ongoing displacement, especially given that most decolonization proposals deliberately make efforts to avoid unnecessary disruption to people's domestic and employment situations. The chap working in IT at a local office's 'entire livelihood' in no way depends on the continued theft of Indigenous land - it makes no difference to him whether the company he works for rents the land from a whitefella or a blackfella, employment wise, housing wise, or even socially. There are, of course, fringe cases where you're right - but these are fringe cases, people living in marginal areas or exploiting locations that will have to be ceded due to their sacred dimension, practical requirement, or to make right a wrong.

Any major social upheaval, especially one that comes with forced relocation of massive amounts of people, is going to come with a hefty dose of violence, regardless of whether you make sure to compensate the people being relocated. That is simply the nature of the beast. Generally speaking, if violence in some form is not required to implement the change, then it probably would have already happened by now. It's not a uniquely American thing, or even a uniquely Western thing, but is something that manifests across humanity. The violence can take many forms, on the part of the state, the resistant population, or both. Even famous "nonviolent" movements like civil rights in the US or Quit India/Swaraj both a) had violent subgroups, and b) built support locally and overseas by using civil disobedience with the express purpose of provoking violence on the part of the state.

I find it interesting that anti-decolonization posters like yourself routinely return to the idea that the process must involve the 'forced relocation of massive amounts of people' when it is, again, not something being sought except where unavoidable by all but the extreme fringe of decolonization proposals. No such forced relocation is suggested except in the marginal areas, in which case the ordinary legal system can be employed, with its well-established tradition of the employment of coercive sanctions up to and including violence to obtain its ends. In this regard, such relocations are no different to eminent domain seizures.

It is in fact a notable feature of most decolonization proposals and advocates I've seen that they don't want to forcibly displace large populations wherever possible. Perhaps, having experienced the pain and trauma of such displacement, the Indigenous peoples seeking to right the wrong of their colonization do not in fact wish to inflict this suffering on others.

There is no solution to this problem that doesn't come with its own host of moral, legal, and/or ethical issues. Anyone who claims that there is an easy problem-free solution is either wrong, lying, or trying to sell something.

And no one here is pretending this does not create new legal, ethical, and moral issues. This is also a common response - an imputation that decolonization advocates are somehow naive and haven't really thought about what's being proposed. We aren't - usually, we arrive at our positions precisely because we've thought about what's going on, weighed whether it would be better or worse morally and ethically, and decided that the complications created are outweighed by the good. We also don't think it's an easy solution - it is a struggle, and part of an ongoing struggle that has been fought since colonization first began.

Even in a hypothetical fantasy world where the whole thing goes through without any violence or resistance, there are question that are not necessarily easy to answer, like how you qualify someone as sufficiently native to be eligible to live in the repatriated areas. Do you go by the tribal blood quantum laws, for instance? Different tribes have different rules for qualifying members. Some only require documented descent of a single original tribe member, even if the person is otherwise entirely of white European descent, often because, to be blunt, the genocide was that effective.

Again, you make the curious assumption that decolonization necessarily involves ethnic cleansing. It does not, and many decolonization proposals do not in fact call for the creation of Indigenous-only ethnostates. Now, as to who gets to live on land owned by the reinstated traditional custodian states, that would be a matter for them to decide, in the same way that it is a matter for the existing settler-state to decide who may be a citizen, a permanent resident, etcetera. These are issues that would necessarily need to be decided on an individual state-based level through treaties and whatever new constitutions emerge.

Are tribal members limited to moving into the territories that used to belong to their tribes? For example, if someone of Seminole descent currently lives in New York on land that used to belong to the Mohawk, can they continue living there, or would they be required to relocate to Florida? What if they want to live there, but the returning Mohawks only want members of their tribe to be able to resettle there? How about someone who is descended from multiple tribes?

Again, the proposals rarely call for ethnostates. But this is again a matter for the new governments to establish, as is a customary right of all nations - the British government may decide who can reside in the UK, for instance, as part of its territorial sovereignty. In the case of your Seminole living on Mohawk land, they'd simply have to go through the standard process of naturalizing or applying for resident status, unless a suitable treaty or constitution common to both states emerges that provides for such outcomes, perhaps analogous to the EU's policies around internal migration. This is in fact fairly likely, as decolonization efforts necessarily involve political discussions between many different Indigenous states and polities, many of whom recognize that their populations live on each other's customary lands due to the ongoing process of theft and dispossesion.

There is also an idea contained here that the land to be returned must always be the same land they once held. This is incorrect. While it is a common starting point, in the event of long-term displacement it is entirely reasonable for the displaced to negotiate with the traditional custodians of the land they now inhabit for sovereignty there.

What if someone is ethnically native, but has no way of proving which tribes they are descended from because those cultural ties have been eradicated, much in the same way that it's near impossible to trace the African lineage of many black Americans? No recognized tribe allows DNA tests to serve as qualification of tribal membership, since there is no way to tie those results to a particular tribe.

This again would be a standard matter for citizenship law within the new states. I find it curious how many of these questions are basically settled points of law within the ordinary international community, but are seen as somehow major obstacles to the recognition and restoration of Indigenous sovereignty.

How about those tribes that, as mentioned earlier, barely exist for all intents and purposes? Do we continue to allow the descendants of white settlers to live in that land, thereby teaching the descendants of other white settlers the lesson that if you don't want to be forced to relocate, you need to make sure you are thorough in your genocide?

In those cases, the matter is trickier, but the restoration of sovereignty remains possible while even a few of the citizens of a state live on. If they don't - as is the case for many groups here in Australia, so the terrible precedent you wish to avoid has, I'm afraid, already been set (in fact, our particular cruelty was specifically informed by the perceived 'failure' of the US Government to eradicate the Indigenous peoples - so it's been set a long, long time ago) - then it being impossible to restore the land to its traditional custodians, it can either be held in trust by a common treaty organization akin to the EU or a federal government, or be allowed to remain in the hands of the present occupants.

Reality, unfortunately, often prevents clean solutions. Why should this prevent us from attempting to fix problems?

What about tribal land that crosses current national borders? The western powers (including the US) are well known for drawing borders with absolutely no regard for native populations, so there is a lot of land that crosses the borders between the US and Canada or the US and Mexico.

Decolonization efforts do not stop at national borders, and the new states would be free to negotiate with their neighbours for either free access or full repatriation. This is also not a new issue - national borders are routinely disputed among the existing states, and the matter can and routinely is settled diplomatically; further there are a number of border-law exceptions in African states dealing with traditional lands that cross national boundaries so this already has legal precedents addressing it. It may of course have to occur over time - perhaps first Canada, then the US, then Mexico - but the end goal is to in fact decolonize all three states, at which point these national borders cease to be an obstacle entirely.

Here in the US eminent domain takings/movings have on occasion been tied up in the courts for years or turned violent, and those have all been small-scale situations. Trying to do this on a large scale, given US culture, is not going to end well.

There have been problems with eminent domain for national parks, for example, that has been resolved by allowing current inhabitants to live out their lives on a site but not being able to pass it on to their heirs which seems to work OK (most of the time), but that represents a multi-generational approach as it can take decades for the occupants to either expire or decide to move. Multi-generational projects for the benefit of others can be a very hard sell.

I'm aware that the proceedings are often slow and disputed. They are in every nation. I do not raise them to say 'so, that fixes that', but rather to remind people that there are in fact existing principles of law, routinely employed, that address the issue of 'but how!'. As you can see above, many of the objections to decolonization are in fact already addressed by existing well-recognized principles of international law and the law of states, and land seizure is just one of them.

I again urge the question: If it becomes violent, those violently resisting are either in violation of the law or, if on a sufficient scale, in open rebellion against a legitimate and lawful government seeking to enforce legitimately created laws and treaties, for which the state has the right to employ coercive sanctions as created under its constitutions. Why is this situation to be seen as any different from when the Bundys resisted the legitimate and lawful government in existing states, or when someone shoots at the feds trying to enforce eminent domain now? Now, we can always argue that the state shouldn't exist or have coercive sanctions - I regularly do - but that's another issue entirely.

Whole US states are built on stolen land. To really do it fully you'd have to divide entire states up. So no a LOT of people would be effected and guess what they're not going to care that 100 years ago another tribe lived there and were expelled. They're just going to see it as people kicking them out of a place they've lived for years to address something done a long time ago. You really seem to think most people will be persuaded. Guess what; they're not. It's why Mandela didn't break up large white farms in south africa even though those farms WERE built on stolen land.

You talk about how you understand the implications but you really think decolonization will only effect a few people. Guess what. It won't. It will upend a LOT and you can't seem to acknowledge it. As Civil War Man pointed out

"Any major social upheaval, especially one that comes with forced relocation of massive amounts of people, is going to come with a hefty dose of violence, regardless of whether you make sure to compensate the people being relocated. That is simply the nature of the beast. Generally speaking, if violence in some form is not required to implement the change, then it probably would have already happened by now. It's not a uniquely American thing, or even a uniquely Western thing, but is something that manifests across humanity. The violence can take many forms, on the part of the state, the resistant population, or both. Even famous "nonviolent" movements like civil rights in the US or Quit India/Swaraj both a) had violent subgroups, and b) built support locally and overseas by using civil disobedience with the express purpose of provoking violence on the part of the state."

Any decolonization process in the US is going to be thorny and you naively think it will be easy

[MarxII]

While I myself remain skeptical as to how much of the US electorate could be persuaded to go along with various of the schemes floated in this thread, I do think we've seen a variety of degrees as to how much land and population transfer should take place.

Limited transfers of title under the framework of eminent domain with very little in the way of displacement is one thing, and sounds fairly low-impact, but this strikes me as a far cry from the dissolution of the US, or even an extra-constitutional reconfiguration of the same, particularly to the degree that would satisfy those who consider its existence in the present form not distinct from the genocidal acts which helped to fill out its borders. By this point I'm not altogether certain who is advocating what along this axis, but the room for degree seems worth noting to me.

[Straha]

Whole US states are built on stolen land. To really do it fully you'd have to divide entire states up. So no a LOT of people would be effected and guess what they're not going to care that 100 years ago another tribe lived there and were expelled. They're just going to see it as people kicking them out of a place they've lived for years to address something done a long time ago. You really seem to think most people will be persuaded. Guess what; they're not. It's why Mandela didn't break up large white farms in south africa even though those farms WERE built on stolen land.

This is answered, in its entirety, in Loomer's post.

You talk about how you understand the implications but you really think decolonization will only effect a few people. Guess what. It won't. It will upend a LOT and you can't seem to acknowledge it. As Civil War Man pointed out
>snip<

Any decolonization process in the US is going to be thorny and you naively think it will be easy

A. I'm not sure why "this is going to be thorny" is considered to be rebuttal.

B. I'm also not sure how 1,214 words of thoughtful point-by-point discussion about the nuances of decolonization and potential approaches to the process shows a naive trust in the ease of the matter.

C. I'm not sure how 169 words of response hope to show a more thoughtful take on the matter. Hubris, I suppose.

D. Given that you now admit the land is stolen and seem to accept that some act of justice is good, what's your alternative?

[Darth Yan]

He didn't. He said only a small fraction would be forcibly relocated. Maybe that is what most decolonialists want but achieving it won't be easy.


For what I'd suggest. Return land when actually possible. Find out what each tribe wants and how to achieve it (since they have differing wants and needs). Work for it when possible. If there's something like a dam that benefits people than you have a problem. If some rich asshole has his summer home evict the bastard. If it means uprooting neighborhoods try to find a middle ground instead; allow integration.

It's not going to be easy but like it or not the ink has largely dried. You can make some changes but others are irreversible.

[Tribble]

Whether its right or not, the reality is that if the First Nations were to make a serious attempt at decolonializing the US via dissolving it and/or taking back their lands, they would fail. And if they tried it via violence, they would be wiped out. The federal government, state governments and the (likely large) majority of the population simply would not let that occur, nor would any other nation make any serious attempt to help them.

The only real practical alternative is what they are doing right now: continue negotiations, continued lawsuits and standing up for their treaties, continue to draw attention to their issues (both internally and internationally), and push for more autonomy / material needs / rights in the process.

[Jub]

The only real practical alternative is what they are doing right now: continue negotiations, continued lawsuits and standing up for their treaties, continue to draw attention to their issues (both internally and internationally), and push for more autonomy / material needs / rights in the process.

Would you say that this approach has been particularly helpful thus far in light of things such as the pipeline protest, high incidence rates of drug and alcohol abuse, rampant unemployment, and shockingly low life expectancies on some reservations?

[Effie]

Whether its right or not, the reality is that if the First Nations were to make a serious attempt at decolonializing the US via dissolving it and/or taking back their lands, they would fail. And if they tried it via violence, they would be wiped out. The federal government, state governments and the (likely large) majority of the population simply would not let that occur, nor would any other nation make any serious attempt to help them.

The only real practical alternative is what they are doing right now: continue negotiations, continued lawsuits and standing up for their treaties, continue to draw attention to their issues (both internally and internationally), and push for more autonomy / material needs / rights in the process.

Doesn't this present a much bleaker picture than what Straha paints? One wherein not only is the US, to borrow theological terms, totally racist but also utterly racist?

[loomer]

Whole US states are built on stolen land. To really do it fully you'd have to divide entire states up. So no a LOT of people would be effected and guess what they're not going to care that 100 years ago another tribe lived there and were expelled. They're just going to see it as people kicking them out of a place they've lived for years to address something done a long time ago. You really seem to think most people will be persuaded. Guess what; they're not. It's why Mandela didn't break up large white farms in south africa even though those farms WERE built on stolen land.

You again return to the incorrect idea that the return of land rights and sovereignty to the displaced Indigenous nations will necessarily and automatically require everyone who isn't of appropriate Indigenous descent to leave those nations. While there are such proposals, they are the fringe minority of decolonization and sovereignty proposals, most of which call instead for deliberately minimizing the displacement of persons. Allow me to illustrate the change that will happen under these proposals for three people, living in a place we'll call the Old State ('OS'), which is to be broken into two new states, New State A and New State B ('NS-A' and 'NS-B', respectively).

Person 1 resides in the territory of NS-A, in an existing township. When the OS is dissolved, the remain living in the township because this township is not along a national border, is not in sacred ground, and is not otherwise subject to seizure for public purposes (e.g. because it's vital to place new civic infrastructure on).

Person 2 resides in a small existing township along the border of NS-A and NS-B. When the OS is dissolved, they are displaced. This is because the land is along a national border, and no treaty has been reached that would make it practicable. They are given a fair and equitable compensation package for the loss of their home, and offered citizenship in NS-A or NS-B or both, depending on what those governments feel is an appropriate citizenship policy, or are assisted to resettle in another area entirely if they wish to move to be with family/etc.

Person 3 resides in a rural area in NS-B. When the OS is dissolved, they are asked to leave their home because the land they inhabit has special sacred significance. They, like Person 2, are given citizenship in NS-B, NS-A, or both, a compensation package, and assistance to resettle in land that is not sacred.

None of these persons are being forced to leave the state they grew up in - perhaps to move a few miles down the road, which is of course traumatic but may be necessary to either right a wrong or for the pragmatic purposes that States already possess the right to dispossess and displace people in the furtherance of. In virtually all serious decolonization proposals, they are not rendered stateless, forced to leave the places they know, or made homeless.

Also, I find it somewhat peculiar that you give such weight to Mandela not breaking up farms because, to quote, "[they] WERE built on stolen land." (emphasis mine) Do you assert that the land in Australia, Canada, America, etc is not stolen, and that conquest makes legitimate possession through theft? If so, why should I then be concerned that people will be affected? It will be perfectly legitimate for NS-A and NS-B, under this notion, to simply seize the land at gunpoint, tell the residents to fuck off, and kill anyone who resists.

You talk about how you understand the implications but you really think decolonization will only effect a few people. Guess what. It won't. It will upend a LOT and you can't seem to acknowledge it. As Civil War Man pointed out

"Any major social upheaval, especially one that comes with forced relocation of massive amounts of people, is going to come with a hefty dose of violence, regardless of whether you make sure to compensate the people being relocated. That is simply the nature of the beast. Generally speaking, if violence in some form is not required to implement the change, then it probably would have already happened by now. It's not a uniquely American thing, or even a uniquely Western thing, but is something that manifests across humanity. The violence can take many forms, on the part of the state, the resistant population, or both. Even famous "nonviolent" movements like civil rights in the US or Quit India/Swaraj both a) had violent subgroups, and b) built support locally and overseas by using civil disobedience with the express purpose of provoking violence on the part of the state."

Any decolonization process in the US is going to be thorny and you naively think it will be easy

You mistake my arguments that decolonization is possible and can, in no small part, in fact utilize the existing law of nations for 'it will be easy'. It won't - as I previously stated, in the post you quote in fact, it is a struggle and part of an ongoing struggle.

You also make the error of equating the argument that 'decolonization does not equal ethnic cleansing and mass displacement' with 'decolonization will not effect many people'. It will of course do so - the US, for instance, would cease to exist and thus every US citizen would cease to be so, which is an enormous impact. But to effect everyone and require large scale change is not the same as requiring ethnic cleansing and mass displacement.

Likewise, on a day to day level rather than in the political sphere, the actual impact on most people's lives is minimal under most decolonization proposals. What difference is it to the office clerk or shop worker or professional blogger if they pay rent to an Indigenous trust or traditional land owner rather than a settler company or owner? They will still get up in their beds, go to work where they worked the day before, eat what they ate, dream what they dream, watch what they watched, and on the whole, exist as they existed - but in a country that is fairer, kinder, and not built on an act of atrocious violence and genocide and the ongoing dispossession of native peoples. There may be bigger changes over time, as culture adjusts - but culture changes regularly, and in many respects, a cultural change is to be embraced if it creates a juster, fairer, kinder society.

Those who will be most effected are large-scale landholders. These people rarely make direct use of all the land they own - often, they are corporations. They are a very slim minority of people, and all that is proposed is that they not be allowed to profit from the ongoing dispossession of native peoples unjustly. Some proposals even call for compensating them for the land they will lose like smallholders - which I, personally, reject as unnecessary. Others don't even call for the forfeiture of their lands at all, which I likewise reject as toothless.

[loomer]

While I myself remain skeptical as to how much of the US electorate could be persuaded to go along with various of the schemes floated in this thread, I do think we've seen a variety of degrees as to how much land and population transfer should take place.

Limited transfers of title under the framework of eminent domain with very little in the way of displacement is one thing, and sounds fairly low-impact, but this strikes me as a far cry from the dissolution of the US, or even an extra-constitutional reconfiguration of the same, particularly to the degree that would satisfy those who consider its existence in the present form not distinct from the genocidal acts which helped to fill out its borders. By this point I'm not altogether certain who is advocating what along this axis, but the room for degree seems worth noting to me.

In my case, I do not propose eminent domain as a solution - just as part of an existing framework of laws, akin to the right of states to decide who is a citizen. I do so because I find the arguments of 'yeah but what if people don't want to go' silly: We have laws for that. If you break the law, you can be forcibly dispossessed. So long as the law that establishes this is just, then why on earth would we view it as any more significant in the context of newly restored Indigenous states than when an existing government does it? This, I propose, constitutes a racist double standard, as it seeks to deny to Indigenous states the same legal agency and authority that existing states possess, and has overtones of the idea that the alternative to the existing order of white supremacist states founded on genocide is a breakdown of the rule of law and the idea of legitimate and lawful governance.

There's rather less difference in degree between myself and Straha, I think, than you think. I'm slightly more moderate than Straha - but only just. We simply have different emphasis of argument, which makes there appear to be a wider disparity.

Whether its right or not, the reality is that if the First Nations were to make a serious attempt at decolonializing the US via dissolving it and/or taking back their lands, they would fail. And if they tried it via violence, they would be wiped out. The federal government, state governments and the (likely large) majority of the population simply would not let that occur, nor would any other nation make any serious attempt to help them.

The only real practical alternative is what they are doing right now: continue negotiations, continued lawsuits and standing up for their treaties, continue to draw attention to their issues (both internally and internationally), and push for more autonomy / material needs / rights in the process.

This is why every serious proposal for decolonization is not 'rise up! Do it now!' but 'we must systematically engage with the settler population to try and bring about justice'. There is an assumption on the part of anti-decolonization posters that those of us in favour of it view it as something that can happen tomorrow, without any serious change in the belief of the majority. This belief, as already repeatedly stated, is incorrect. We make no such claims, we do not claim that somehow the Indigenous peoples of America, Australia, etc can take on the settlers in a civil war or that somehow it's just going to magically happen without enormous amounts of hard yakka. What we do claim is the audacious hope that actually, most people are fundamentally not evil - most people wish to see justice done, to be kind, and to live as equals. That, with this goodness, we can continue to struggle and to bring about a better world through legal and political reforms, and that in order to do so, the existing states and, most crucially, the attitudes that enable them to exist as they do will need to be dismantled.

This is why we find it unconvincing when people tell us what the 'practical alternative' is, as though what you define as the 'practical alternative' is not in fact an integral part of the decolonization effort. What you tell us to do - which, in a nutshell, is to settle for a world in which people are not desirous of justice, not kind, and not interested in equality - we are already doing. You tell us to be practical, and in doing so, you tell us to abandon the dream of a better world.

I can't speak for Straha, Effie, or the decolonization activists I know in person. I can, however, speak for myself as an Australian, as a whitefella in the Bundjalung Jugun who fervently hopes to one day be able to call himself a Bundjalung whitefella as much as an Australian, as a Freemason. And I say fuck that.