this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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"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 best thing you can do is just never center white people. 99.999% of the time that's the wrong way to frame your argument.
I fully understood what you were trying to say, but I can't say the responses you got are at all that surprising either.
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.
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.
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.
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."
USAmericans are also doing this too. The overconsumption done by yankees would require multiple planet earths if everyone were allowed to consume as much as they do and the US government is guilty of exporting a capitalist system that causes climate change, not to mention the imperialism abroad. There is no functional difference between the US and Israel, just "Big Satan" vs. "Little Satan."
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.
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 with your points entirely, it's just amusing to see the people who do disagree experience a tiny iota of the fear and despair that the indigenous peoples of America and beyond had to feel when their world was destroyed and stolen.
It is really telling that suddenly they fear for their lives once they think they will be victims of the same colonization that gave them privilege. They've internalized that this process only functions through mass slaughter and terror and start waxing poetic about "human nature"
Realistically and logistically speaking, if they were ever to retrieve their land back, the Native Americans would probably be MORE accepting of the idea to live amongst the working class that don't originate from their land rather than "evicting" the population, basic infrastructure (that's already replaced native tribes' land) would need maintenance, first of all.
The fact that it scares them that this highly unlikely scenario of reclaiming land then the Indigenous do whatever they want with it is very poetic. The fact that they've probably also imagined dramatically violent scenarios of this is also funny, funny strange.
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.
You get it. I just responded something similar in this same thread.
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
Not just reddit but very lib brain behavior. They need material support for people on the rez not some cracker with a white savior complex holding a sign at a rally.
it's almost like the most thought-terminating cliches absolutely HAVE to be said and mentioned in the slightest available opportunity 🤣
Also it's very much actively going on and the current generation is totally involved.
There are people still alive who grew up in residential schools. There are even people alive who knew survivors of the Trail of Tears. The genocide of Native Americans really wasn't that long ago and (like you said) still ongoing.
Obama forced an oil pipeline through indigenous land in what? 2014?