The Future Is Our Relative: Klee Benally

From Silver Threads Podcast

"Colonization is and always has been war"

What better time than the week of so-called Thanksgiving to highlight Indigenous power and culture - to look to the future through a decolonizing lens that demands nothing less than the abolition of all oppressive systems?

Klee Benally is an Indigenous anarchist, artist and agitator. He joins carla and Eleanor to talk about abolishing colonialism, the soundtrack of mutual aid, cyclical organizing and critical hope.

 

indigenousaction.org

indigenousmutualaid.org

There are 18 Comments

"All oppressive systems..." this is a bit a-historical and un-specific: "paging Doctor Chomsky -- paging Doctor Chomsky.

End colonialism? Which century are we in, anyway? Someone remind me, I forgot.

Why do you think colonialism doesn't apply in 2020? From a first nation's perspective colonialism is alive and well... maybe consider other perspectives of resistance rather than being smug.

"End colonialism? Which century are we in, anyway?"

At what moment in history has colonialism ended, then?

Go ahead, dumbass... try your best shot! But you only got one shot, so be careful.

...and just before you say "since the day we became a Great American Republic!!!", well no, fuck off. 1776 only skyrocketed colonialism in America. Same for the Reconstruction.

I'm considering the flat earth one as well. Also, the one about how cavepersons walked the earth at the same time as dinosaurs.

Abolish "colonialism" and presumably you've still got capitalist social relations, unchallenged by your Maoist white guilt formulations.

Yeah dude did you actually listen to the interview? Klee isn't a maoist, or white, and is anti capitalist... also posting snarky shit on a news is getting rid of neither colonialism or capitalism on your part

Technically if you got rid of Colonialism that would include Capitalism, Decolonization being destroying everything pre-colonization, or a return to pre-colonization, which includes the economic systems, civilization, industrial and so on

Yes yes yes, and also "technically" in this case is a euphemism for impossible ;)

yes, I have no hope for decolonization in my life, if ever

Sez the guy who keeps supporting privately-owned land projects as the one possible relation with the land there can ever be.

So much for "anti-State"!

Sez me that animal ownership of wilderness reserves transcends your identity tainted anthropocentric politics!

what the fuck are you even talking about

I'm not obligated to make the case for someone's else's politics -- they are obligated to make the case for themselves. The "colonial" "anti-colonial" schtick is a-historical counter-subversive dreck, derived from Stalinism. Maybe this doesn't reflect poorly on this person's politics -- maybe it reflects poorly on yours.

I don't know what this guy is about. All I see is what some lame-o posted here.

The only thing you're proving is that you made a knee jerk assumption to sound relevant. Did you even listen to the interview,?

There is an evolution of the anti- imperialism into the anti-colonialism critique, but then, you know, most Marxism got its inspiration from a 'nobel savage' ideal, and how the ideal tribe was not nomadic but sedentary within one utopianist valley. The boogyman tribes were the ones who invaded and had imperialist plans for expansion and extraction of wealth.
The alternative paradigm does not involve borders or nationalism/tribalism, and assumes that all people are commonly linked, therefore dissolving the whole concept of colonialism and anticolonial.
There is either good assimilation or bad assimilation, and the term anti-colonialism is often mistakenly used to just describe bad assimilation. Let's face it, the whole planet has been bad-assimilated, using anti-colonialism diminishes the critique against the capitalist/corporate global hegemony.

Colonialism is entrenched, for instance, the late high priestess of neoliberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-signed the construction of a 600 mile pipeline for natural gas under the Appalachian trail. Pipelines are a threat to Indigenous women because they bring sexual violence and exposure to toxic alien cultures.
By prohibiting the encroachment onto wilderness land would be the first stage to de-colonialisation.

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