861
"They're the same picture"
(lemmy.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
861 points (100.0% liked)
Memes
51775 readers
1396 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
"Ah but you see, a long time has passed by! There's generations [of settler-colonialists] that have already lived through these times, and the people of today have nothing to do with their past!"
Motherfucker, landback means the LAND which is rightfully the Indigenous' is taken BACK, and it means you GO BACK too, no one should give a fuck about which gen. you're currently a part of.
They're going to say the exact same shit for Palestine if it's allowed to be festered long enough by settler-colonialists, as if it already hasn't been festered.
This would mean that like 99.9% of Earth's population has to move somewhere. Almost all land was fought over endlessly and changed metaphorical hands multiple times over. What we call "indigenous people" in a territory is usually just whoever was winning those wars before written history began.
What "landback" actually means is recognizing the systemic racism that was and still is perpetuated against the indigenous people by means of taking away their ancestral lands, slaughtering and enslaving their ancestors, and destroying their way of life; and addressing that racism by giving jurisdiction and sovereignty over their lands back to them. It doesn't mean that everyone but the indigenous people have to move out; descendants of colonizers born there are technically natives of that land too. The difference is that they get systemic advantages from their ancestry whereas indigenous people get systemic discrimination. This is the thing that ought to be addressed. (well, the horrifying economic and governance system that the colonizers brought and festered must be addressed too, but all three are tightly coupled together)
In the case of Israel the difference is that a lot of colonizers are first gen, they are not natives, they do have somewhere to "go back to", and they are actively perpetuating colonization and genocide rather than simply getting an advantage from their ancestors doing so. In such cases it of course makes sense for the decolonization effort to focus on direct expulsion of invaders.
In the extremely unlikely event that indigenous people got direct executive control over what happens in the continental united states, I don't think they'd even want the mass exodus of all white people. Nor do I think they'd want full cultural assimilation. My entire life, the prevailing narrative has always just been the end of systemic oppression. Very frequently I've heard indigenous rights activists demand the free use of/free travel across land for things like hunting, which is a pretty small ask. Just because this or that action would be justified, doesn't mean it's the action people want. IMO the second minority ethnic groups feel safe and represented these kinds of mass exodus narratives will fade away. Doubly so if there was a transition to socialism that went with it, and some thought went into identifying the different national identities (so something akin to a soviet of nationalities could be formed).
Yes, this is exactly my point.
The last will be first. Landback and decolonization means putting the reigns into the hands of the indigenous people's hands, and letting go of the reigns, not just holding onto the reigns but giving the colonized people some of the reigns. The best settlers can hope for is to be treated kinder than they have treated the people whose land they stole. I myself was born in the US, and am still a settler here, just because I was born here does not absolve my role. It means I have a historic duty to help carry out decolonization and land back, from the back, not as a leading role.
Read Fanon.
This is an extremely white washed version of land back. Pretty sure land back means full control over what happens on that land, including what kind of people can live on it, something that is currently controlled exclusively by the colonial government.
If they're feeling generous they might give you the option to stay on the condition that you assimilate into their culture.
You know, the thing Europeans forced Indigenous peoples to do. Not saying settlers should be forced through violence to do so, but I think it's more than fair that if you're going to stay, you have to assimilate.
But you're not entitled to even assimilation if they just don't want you here. And they have plenty of reason not to want you here.
I know that as a 1st gen Chinese immigrant to Canada (I came here as a kid so wasn't my choice), if all the Indigenous groups where I live unambiguously told me to GTFO. I would in good conscience have to do so and hope I can use my birth certificate to reclaim Chinese citizenship. I'm by every definition a settler so it's only fair. Whatever struggles I have in China (namely language barrier since I can barely read Chinese) I will have to deal with and it's not on the Indigenous people to let me stay just because I can't survive anywhere else.
Where you go back to and what happens to you isn't the problem of the people you colonized. And by transferring that problem on to them, you are in fact perpetuating colonialism.
Spot on comrade.
Pretty much this, you read my mind here.
I couldn't name a single ancestor of mine that wasn't born in America, so where would I get shipped off to?
Funny, when indigenous peoples from the americas asked that question, the US settlers just killed them.
Are you really doing a "reverse ethnic cleansing" rn? Lord free me from redditors.
As far as I can tell, I'm being told that in this hypothetical scenario, it's okay for me to be jailed or removed from my home because I'm not indigenous. Am I misreading it?
If you're so concerned about it, maybe go talk to some of the Indigenous people in your area and work with them then. Give them a reason to let you stay. You complaining to two other settlers on Lemmy certainly won't help your case.
Step 1: Steal something.
Step 2: Give it to your kid.
Step 3: The kid whines finders keepers, and that they shouldn't have to give it back.
As far as I know, my ancestors didn't steal anything. It's possible they did, and I'm sure they unfairly benefitted from systemic injustice and oppression of others, and I'm happy to help address that at the expense of my own privilege, but I don't see how that makes it okay to literally deport me to some strange country for their hypothetical crimes.
Bruh, coming here was the theft itself. What part of stolen LAND do you not understand?
Not the indigenous people's problem. If they tell you to leave, it'll be up to you to figure it out.
I don't have another country waiting to accept me, and I don't particularly want to leave the only place I've ever lived, so if they want me gone, it is their problem. Are they tossing me in jail because I have the wrong ethnicity? Deporting me to a place I have no connection to?
I have no right to say what they should do and neither do you.
Do you think all indigenous people can do whatever the fuck they want, as long as they are on their own land, and noone has any right to judge their actions?
1930s germans were indigenous people on their own land, after all.
I agree that cultural assimilation requirements and dealing harshly with white nationalists are ok; mass expulsion is not.
And I'm also pretty sure that most native Americans don't want mass expulsion, so this whole discussion is moot.
The aggressor, in the process of atoning for their atrocities, doesn't really have a right to say that the recourse proposed by the victim is unreasonable.
We are the colonial aggressors, Indigenous people are the colonized victims. I'm obviously not saying that eye for an eye doing the same to us as we did to Indigenous people is justified, but simply returning the land we stole is more than reasonable. And the logical extreme of returning stolen land is that if the rightful owners then wanted you to leave, you should.
Let's say a man and a woman live in the same house, and the man hits the woman. If the man is truly seeking to atone for his crime, and the woman tells him to move out because even seeing his face is traumatic for her, would it be reasonable for the man to complain that he has nowhere else to go? To ask the woman where she thinks he should go? To try and guilt the woman into letting him stay? If he does any of those, is he truly sorry for what he did?
You're right that most Indigenous people don't want mass expulsion. We should be incredibly grateful for that and it's a testament of their compassion and desire for equality among all people, even after all we did to them. What we shouldn't do is tell them that they can't tell us to leave or that we'd refuse to leave because we have a rightful claim to this land. Doing so is completely unproductive and will only serve to make us less deserving of staying.
Basically, read it as "you should kill yourself if you're not exactly where your ancestors lived 10000 years ago". That's what these people seem to think, they just don't want to say the quiet part out loud.
I live in a country where we have a very large amount of Russians, many of whom completely lack citizenship because they moved here during the soviet occupation so didn't get automatic Estonian citizenship after our independence, but also haven't gotten Estonian or Russian citizenship after the fact. This number has decreased over the years because most people have acquired some citizenship, but we still have tens of thousands with no state at all. I can't imagine simply deporting all of those people. In fact, we're now giving out citizenship to children of non-citizen parents who have lived in the country for at least 5 years, to avoid creating more stateless people. This is despite the fact that a lot of those people getting citizenship are also the descendants of settlers, with roots in a country hostile to our own. Those people's entire lives are here, who are we to uproot them just because we were here first? It's too late now.
You're talking to someone from .ml.
You should probably choose your battles on this one, the amount of people there that can't see double standards or hypocrisy is astounding.
Very few countries currently are based on native eviction, where settlers have nearly replaced the indigenous peoples. The US, canada, australia, new zealand, israel are the main ones.
I think it's projecting western colonial guilt to claim that all countries are equally based on indigenous eviction. Even colonial projects like Spain's in South America did not do to their indigenous peoples what the british did to north america.
Colonialist Spain formally recognized in 1542 Indigenous peoples as "free vassals of the Crown" as Spaniards themselves, not slaves. Of course, as in The Mission movie portrayed, many colonialists violated the Crown's laws (Columbus himself was imprisoned for violating a Crown law from 1495 banning enslaving Taíno people). The Spanish crown wanted conversion + integration whereas British sought *erasure * of the Indigenous. But it was not just the Crown laws, individuals from Spain easily intermarried from early on, the English did not.
This distinction of the Spanish colonist vs all their norther neighbors that were far more repressive. I attribute this to the Spanish experience under Islamic rule for 8 centuries, where differences were highly tolerated and conversion was 'only' mandatory for those not considered as "peoples of the Book" mentioned on the Islamic scriptures.
To conclude, Spanish colonialism, from the Americas to the Philippines, was abusive, sometimes heavily, but the centuries later the 'civilized' British one was plainly genocidal from beginning to finish and the independent United States, continued with the legacy if not increasing it. In word of historian James Axtell: "The Spanish asked Native people to become something else [Christians]; the British demanded they vanish."
As a founding point? Yes, I agree. I also agree that colonization scale done by British was greater than anything ever done before.
However, that wasn't my point. My point was: almost everyone on Earth lives where they do because their ancestors killed or evicted the people that lived there previously. This is in particular is not unique to any western country. Hell, reading the history of Russia, my home country, makes it pretty clear that my own deep ancestry did plenty of killing and evicting too, mostly of themselves, to get to where they all ended up (not even talking about Siberia here). It wasn't at the founding point of Russia though, and none of the peoples who lost their wars are culturally alive anymore. Does it matter if all the conquest led to the foundation of a modern country, or just different tribal lands (or later city states)? I don't think it does.
I think what does matter is justice for those descendants of the colonized who are still alive, and if there's noone left, at least understanding and recognition of the horribleness that lead up to the point of your birth.
What percentage of Israelis do you think are born there?
I call this the finders keepers rule of colonialism. The western supremacists think that as long as you
Then the finders keepers rule kicks in, and you get to keep anything you stole. They even will yell "no ethnostates!!" at indegenous peoples they evicted and stole land from.
The main point is that its not for anyone but indigenous peoples to determine what they want to do with their land.
I agree that colonizers have harmed indigenous people, but find the argument anyone has a birth right claim to property proposterous. As Proudhon proclaimed, "Property is theft!". I expect any revolution toward anarchy to remove property from the owning class.
I am less knowledgable than you about "land back". How does "land back" differ from other ethno nationalist movements like "blood and soil"?
That's not the Indigenous peoples' problem. They might even think it's poetic justice for how European culture treated them. Europe, for its part, also has no right to complain about the influx of North Americans because they started this whole thing.
Are you familiar with "moral desert"? I'm legitimately quite curious about your system of ethics. I don't really believe in moral desert myself; instead, we should try to improve the lives of everyone, and in particular increase equality and if necessary equity.
In my opinion, land back is important because it will help bring equality back into balance. It's just one of many steps to repairing society into an equitable state though. The "righting" of historical wrongs is not necessary for this; and I honestly don't think such a thing even makes sense as a concept. Should we hunt down descendents of nazis and kill them for the crimes of their ancestors?
I'm not saying that I'd necessarily agree with the expulsion of all settlers, but I'm saying it's not my place to pass judgment and if they tell me to leave, it's definitely not my place to argue why I have a right to this stolen land.
Yes it is. Some things are unforgivable and must be made right in its entirety. The people who benefited from that wrong, myself included, have absolutely zero right to comment on what that should entail.
Not up to you or me, that's up to the indigenous tribes themselves to decide.
Less than half an hour later, the finders keepers rule I talked about elsewhere in this thread gets invoked.
Extremely redditor behavior
it's almost like the most thought-terminating cliches absolutely HAVE to be said and mentioned in the slightest available opportunity 🤣
(I admit I probably violated rule 1; my apologies to @Samsuma for that.)
What I mean by this is that people who are actually involved in these issues out on the street talk very differently than people do on lemmy. Or reddit for that matter. I go to some Indigenous issues protests in British Columbia now and then, usually it's street blockades; "land back" is a very common rallying call. I've chatted with many protesters; what they mean by this is "the landlords should be indigenous" essentially. And also that much more territory should be transferred back to the reserves. Some people even put the goal at replacing the government entirely. But nobody is talking about ethnic cleansing.
By finders keepers, what I thought you meant was "it was done in the past, by different people, so it's not a problem that can be solved anymore." That's different from "we have to completely erase all people descended from settlers/colonists."
Reclaiming stolen land is not ethnic cleansing.
Correct and it leads to a simple question: If the tribal governments decide that all land claims and titles in the county upon which your house resides are null and void, they're beginning a land reclamation project, current title holders have no rights to the land, what are you going to do? Fight them? Claim ethnic cleansing? It's their land, not yours.
Right. That's my point. Land back ≠ ethnic cleansing. I'm not sure we actually disagree with each other? The comment I posted, which is now deleted, was entirely just saying "no, land back does not mean ethnic cleansing" in response to @Samsuma.
I don't have any rights to the land to begin with. I'm not a home-owner. What would be different? If nobody gives me a home, then I'm homeless. As a ~socialist, I don't believe we should have homelessness, but that's not what you asked
I didn't suggest ethnic cleansing in the meaning of land back, nor does land back suggest ethnic cleansing. ONE of the scenarios of land back means you (as in the settler populus) would have to start pack up your stuff and leave, if this is what the Indigenous would want with their land reclaimed, then it's not up to you or me.
This is of course highly, highly unlikely and as others and I have mentioned in other threads, the Indigenous majority would actually realistically want people to stay, most probably including you (idk, I'm not a USian, never mind a Native American), if this is what you're worried about.
If I was a USian, I'd thank my lucky stars that they'd be this kind and HAVE BEEN despite them sustaining centuries of one of, if not the most brutal ethnic cleansing, land desecration and genocide, which is still ongoing to this day.
Go back to where? I've never lived anywhere else. Land back does not imply ethnic cleansing, and when you say shit like this, you marry the concepts, doing massive damage to the movement.