Are Settlers Really that Unaware & Naive?
Or is it an act to deflect and shirk responsibility? Or is it a move to innocence?
This is the third installment in a series about a 2012 paper penned by researchers Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang about how decolonization is not a metaphor, the namesake of the paper.
In their paper Tuck & Yang group common Turtle Island settler behavior and tactics as “moves to innocence.” Moves to innocence are problematic and unaware behavior that does not align with the goals of decolonization, which is land back with absolute no compromises. We are on stolen land, there is no sugarcoating it.
In this post the first move to innocence, “settler nativism” is discussed.
“I’m 1/16th Cherokee.” Chances are, you’ve heard so many people claiming indigenous ancestry. It’s trite. It’s a trope. It’s almost comical. It’s predictable.
Elizabeth Warren and the late Nancy Reagan are two people of many who have claimed indigenous ancestry.
It’s always their grandmother or some maternal relation where they claim indigenous ancestry, never a grandfather.
The late Vine Deloria, Jr., who penned the 1969 memoir that was an integral part in the genesis of the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, Custer Died for Your Sins, called it “the Indian-grandmother complex.”
(Never heard of the American Indian Movement? You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Movement)
But there are settler strategic reasons why it’s always a matrilineal link and not a patrilineal one.
“Deloria observes that settler nativism is gendered and considers the reasons a storied Indian grandmother might have more appeal than an Indian grandfather.”
For one, the Baby Boomer male nostalgia of playing “cowboys and Indians” in the mid-twentieth century. It seemed harmless? Wrong.
This cosplay was / is harmful. “Indians,” assumed to be male because they are feuding with cowboys, are positioned as enemies or “savages” just because their way of life is different from settler colonialism. They are positioned as intruders, when in fact, it’s the cowboys who are intruders.
But there is yet another sinister reason: to keep indigenous land away from indigenous and keep it in the hands of settlers.
Conversely, the same metric is deployed to expand, exploit, and dehumanize a community for the benefit of settler colonialism that is not all aligned with humanity. (TW: slavery discussed)
“Settler nativism…is a settler move to innocence because it is an attempt to deflect a settler identity, while continuing to enjoy settler privilege and occupying stolen land.”
The subject of blood, the “one-drop rule” and “blood quantum” also is discussed in Move to Innocence No. 1 - Settler Nativism in the context of the role black and indigenous communities have in U.S. society, and how “antithetical” their roles were in the development of U.S. as we know it today.
Through the one-drop rule, blackness in settler colonial contexts is expansive, ensuring that a slave/criminal status will be inherited by an expanding number of ‘black’ descendants. Yet, Indigenous peoples have been racialized in a profoundly different way. Native American-ness is subtractive: Native Americans are constructed to become fewer in number and less Native, but never exactly white, over time. Our/their status as Indigenous peoples/first inhabitants is the basis of our/their land claims and the goal of settler colonialism is to diminish claims to land over generations (or sooner, if possible).
Blood quantum in the contiguous United States, a settler concept and practice, was designed to limit access of land to indigenous communities.
In contrast, the American Samoa, a U.S. Territory, has used blood quantum for their benefit so land stays with American Samoans and not in the hands of people with interests not aligned with the American Samoa. To own land in the American Samoa, where residents are U.S. Nationals and not U.S. Citizens, a person must be at least 50% American Samoan or higher.1 It has been reported that American Samoans do not want U.S. Citizenship.2
For the most part, blood quantum has been weaponized by white settlers to maintain power.
In the racialization of whiteness, blood quantum rules are reversed so that white people can stay white, yet claim descendance from an Indian grandmother. In 1924, the Virginia legislature passed the Racial Integrity Act, which enforced the one-drop rule except for white people who claimed a distant Indian grandmother - the result of strong lobbying from the aristocratic ‘First Families of Virginia’ who all claim to have descended from Pocahontas (including Nancy Reagan, born in 1921). Known as the Pocahontas Exception, this loophole allowed thousands of white people to claim Indian ancestry, while actual Indigenous people were reclassified as ‘colored’ and disappeared off the public record.
Guys, that was 100 years ago. 100 years ago. And look how quickly we are returning to 1924 instead of 2024.
Ancestry is different from tribal membership; Indigenous identity and tribal membership are questions that Indigenous communities alone have the right to struggle over and define, not DNA tests, heritage websites, and certainly not the settler state. Settler nativism is about imagining an Indian past and a settler future; in contrast, tribal sovereignty has provided for an Indigenous present and various Indigenous intellectuals theorize decolonization as Native futures without a settler state.
A move to innocence is a move to double down on navel gazing and eschewing responsibility for our role as settler-trespassers in perpetuating the harms of colonialism. What we’re seeing in red states as far as education goes is a move to innocence, but I would go further and say “it’s a move to cruelty.”
Red state legislators / policy makers feel threatened by DEI, of course they don’t want the next generation to learn about the accurate history of Turtle Island. They have no awareness they are on the wrong side of history.
How do we move past moves to innocence when a certain political faction refuses to take responsibility?
I don’t know the answer to that question; however, the intended audience on this Substack is for people who want to learn, become aware and do better.
The goal of decolonization is Land Back.
American Samoans are doing just that with how they use and apply blood quantum as it relates to land ownership. How can we learn from the American Samoa and apply it to an entire continent, when most to the continent’s inhabitants are settler-trespassers?
One step at a time. Make moves away from innocence and toward education.
# # #
A little about why this Substack was created and who it’s for:
The 2012 paper Decolonization is not a Metaphor, written by Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, is very timely for 2024 in an era where Christian Nationalism is a very real threat in classrooms in states like Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. This settler-trespasser writer wishes to help inform and spread awareness to fellow aware and unaware settler-trespassers in an era where it appears regression is the goal, to put it mildly. This settler-trespasser recognizes she still has a lot to learn; her role is to pass on information.
It has been observed what has happened in Hawaii since Hawaii became a state in 1959. https://radiolab.org/podcast/americanish
I recommend the episode to learn about American Samoa; however, it’s kind of cringe to witness how the reporter (no disrespect to the reporter) doesn’t get why the American Samoa doesn’t wish to become apart of the United States like Puerto Rico or Hawaii.
https://apnews.com/article/ut-state-wire-wa-state-wire-religion-hawaii-utah-f14d76dad1e8344428135128025dcf3a