Jan 26, 2023·edited Jan 26, 2023Liked by Clayton Craddock
"Land acknowledgments' seem to be merely symbolic gestures. They do not address the ongoing harm caused by hundreds of years of colonization."
While you may be on point in critiquing such specific actions as trivial or symbolic, you might do well to recognize the global significance of this moment in history, as regards the legacy of colonization generally.
Whatever anyone's personal views might be, on the fact of peoples living on the former lands of other peoples, one would be extremely remiss in not assessing the way in which, yes, this war in Ukraine has reawakened the entire question of colonization.
If the Ukrainian people and nation are fighting for any one thing, it is exactly this: the right to live on their own ancestral homelands in a manner of their own choosing.
Taken in this light, the current war in Ukraine might well be regarded as the ultimate expression of an indigenous people's fight to do exactly this.
Americans may have a hard time decoding this war in this way, owing to nothing more than the fact that most Ukrainian people have pale skin, and trace their ancestries from Europe. But nonetheless, a close look at Ukraine's history for centuries shows much more common cause with the situations of indigenous peoples all over the world than might appear at first glance.
This is a very real thing, around the world, right this very moment.
As I write this, there are thousands of protesters in the streets in Australia to point out the fact that the day British ships first sailed into Australian waters, celebrated on this date as a national holiday for generations, was in fact the day an invasion began which came to cost the original inhabitants of that continent severely.
And this is but one example of how The Indigenous Question has come into a far harsher light since the invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago.
In following as much English-language press from Russian sources as I can manage, I find again and again examples of native peoples in the territory of what is now the Russian Federation, whose lands had been seized by force, by ethnic Russians, in past centuries and whose languages, cultures and folkways have been under incessant attack (known as 'russification') ever since. To read the history of the Uzbeks, Bashkirs, Yakuts, Tatars, Kalmyks, and as many as a hundred fifty others, the ancient Ukrainian Kozak civilization among them, is very similar to reading the histories of native American peoples, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn.
This issue has never quite gone away, nor has the stain of colonization ever stopped being a standing compromise to the integrity of newer ways of life implanted atop those which have been swept aside as nuisances and pestilences by invaders out to seize land by any means necessary. This holds true in the Americas, in Australia and the entire Pacific islands region, in northern Finland, in Ireland, throughout all of Africa, and across Russia.
And it is indeed the very reason Ukrainians have taken to arms for these past nine years.
To ignore this historic dilemma which is far from resolved is no longer an option, whatever one might think of the ways and means of keeping it in the light. There is some reason to question whether the very 'united' stature of these United States will even be able to survive it.
Unless, of course, one sticks one's head into the sands of American Exceptionalism once again, and pretends that there is something so unique about this one country that we have no motive to concern ourselves with what is happening around the world.
There isn't, and never has been, anything so exceptional about the USA that we are immune from the ever-changing tides and trends of world history as it occurs, whether we approve of it or not.
"Land acknowledgments' seem to be merely symbolic gestures. They do not address the ongoing harm caused by hundreds of years of colonization."
While you may be on point in critiquing such specific actions as trivial or symbolic, you might do well to recognize the global significance of this moment in history, as regards the legacy of colonization generally.
Whatever anyone's personal views might be, on the fact of peoples living on the former lands of other peoples, one would be extremely remiss in not assessing the way in which, yes, this war in Ukraine has reawakened the entire question of colonization.
If the Ukrainian people and nation are fighting for any one thing, it is exactly this: the right to live on their own ancestral homelands in a manner of their own choosing.
Taken in this light, the current war in Ukraine might well be regarded as the ultimate expression of an indigenous people's fight to do exactly this.
Americans may have a hard time decoding this war in this way, owing to nothing more than the fact that most Ukrainian people have pale skin, and trace their ancestries from Europe. But nonetheless, a close look at Ukraine's history for centuries shows much more common cause with the situations of indigenous peoples all over the world than might appear at first glance.
This is a very real thing, around the world, right this very moment.
As I write this, there are thousands of protesters in the streets in Australia to point out the fact that the day British ships first sailed into Australian waters, celebrated on this date as a national holiday for generations, was in fact the day an invasion began which came to cost the original inhabitants of that continent severely.
And this is but one example of how The Indigenous Question has come into a far harsher light since the invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago.
In following as much English-language press from Russian sources as I can manage, I find again and again examples of native peoples in the territory of what is now the Russian Federation, whose lands had been seized by force, by ethnic Russians, in past centuries and whose languages, cultures and folkways have been under incessant attack (known as 'russification') ever since. To read the history of the Uzbeks, Bashkirs, Yakuts, Tatars, Kalmyks, and as many as a hundred fifty others, the ancient Ukrainian Kozak civilization among them, is very similar to reading the histories of native American peoples, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn.
This issue has never quite gone away, nor has the stain of colonization ever stopped being a standing compromise to the integrity of newer ways of life implanted atop those which have been swept aside as nuisances and pestilences by invaders out to seize land by any means necessary. This holds true in the Americas, in Australia and the entire Pacific islands region, in northern Finland, in Ireland, throughout all of Africa, and across Russia.
And it is indeed the very reason Ukrainians have taken to arms for these past nine years.
To ignore this historic dilemma which is far from resolved is no longer an option, whatever one might think of the ways and means of keeping it in the light. There is some reason to question whether the very 'united' stature of these United States will even be able to survive it.
Unless, of course, one sticks one's head into the sands of American Exceptionalism once again, and pretends that there is something so unique about this one country that we have no motive to concern ourselves with what is happening around the world.
There isn't, and never has been, anything so exceptional about the USA that we are immune from the ever-changing tides and trends of world history as it occurs, whether we approve of it or not.
But one can always pretend.