[News] Indigenous Struggles in the Americas

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Indigenous Struggles in the Americas

By 
<http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/roxannedunbar-ortiz>Roxanne Dunbar-ortiz

http://www.zcommunications.org/indigenous-struggles-in-the-americas-by-roxanne-dunbar-ortiz

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a writer, teacher, 
historian, and social activist, is Professor 
Emeritus of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies at 
California State University. She spoke to NLP 
(<http://www.newleftproject.org/>http://www.newleftproject.org) 
about the historical and contemporary impact of 
imperialism in the Americas, and the nature of 
Indigenous peoples’ resistance to it.

You have been deeply involved in Indigenous 
peoples’ activism in the United States. What is 
the current situation of Indigenous people in the 
US economically and politically?

Decolonization is a difficult and long-term task 
for Indigenous peoples in North America, no less 
than for the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin 
America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, with 
advances and setbacks, and uneven 
results.  Politically, the current situation is 
better than it has been since the onset of 
colonization, and that is due to the Post World 
War II surge of a permanent resistance to 
colonialism. The best account of the foundation 
for that movement is historian Daniel Cobb’s 
<http://www.amazon.com/Native-Activism-Cold-War-America/dp/0700615970>Native 
Activism in Cold War America: The Struggle for 
Sovereignty. As in the colonized world in 
general, sovereignty is the essential element 
without which nothing else is possible. The 
Pan-Indian movement, most identified with the 
American Indian Movement (AIM), rose out of the 
ferment of the 1960s militant movements and led 
to a pan-Indigenous movement, with notable 
advances in international law protection of 
Indigenous rights and limits on states’ 
sovereignty.  This in turn unloosed an 
unparalleled cultural development of Indigenous 
writers, poets, filmmakers, actors, visual 
artists, sculptors, musicians, and an 
intelligentsia, including lawyers, historians, 
anthropologists, theologians, linguists, 
philosophers, economists, museum curators, administrators, and teachers.

Economically and socially, the situations of 
Indigenous communities in the United States are 
dire, with astronomical unemployment, dependence 
on federal transfer payments, with the resulting 
social ills of poor health, family dysfunction, 
alcoholism and increasing drug addiction and drug 
gangs. A few Indigenous nations have benefited 
from successful casinos where the income is 
reinvested into infrastructure and human needs, 
most notably in Oklahoma and New Mexico.  But, 
the casino industry does not provide many 
jobs.  The Chickasaw nation in Oklahoma have been 
innovative in investing the income from their 
highly successful casino into subsidized 
enterprises, such as organic vegetable farms that 
provide food for its citizens and school children 
as well as sales at farmers’ markets. They have 
created a number of labor intensive 
enterprises­pencil manufacturing, a chocolate 
factory, and others­and market the products 
throughout Oklahoma.  The income is used to 
develop intensive training in the Chickasaw 
language, and they have established an endowed 
chair for a Chickasaw Studies department, which 
they subsidize, at the local state 
university.  They have also begun purchasing and 
restoring charming old shuttered hotels in towns 
in their area.  The Chickasaws, like the other 
five Indigenous nations forcibly removed in the 
1830s from their ancient homelands in the 
Southeast, at first received new national 
territories in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), much 
smaller in parameters, to replace the lost 
lands.  However, in the 1890s, the federal 
government dissolved the sovereignty of those 
Indian nations and divided their territories into 
individual allotments that could be bought and 
sold.  So, they do not have territorial holdings, 
as do most other federally recognized Indigenous 
Nations west of the Mississippi.  Other 
Indigenous communities in Oklahoma are 
implementing similar projects.  Also, a number of 
the Indigenous communities (Pueblo Indians) of 
New Mexico who have established casinos have used 
the income to return to irrigated farming as they 
had practiced in the Northern Rio Grande valley 
for centuries before colonization, but had nearly 
abandoned in the past half-century.  They have 
developed local and national markets for their 
traditional foods of green chili, squash, beans, 
and corn, especially blue corn.  And there is a 
resurgence of use of the Indigenous languages.

How do you think the genocide of the native 
population of the United States relates to US foreign policy today?

I think it relates to every aspect of U.S. 
society, but especially foreign policy and 
militarism.  The British settlers in the 13 North 
American colonies were organized into militias 
during the century and a half before those 
militias united into an army that established the 
independent United States.  The militias had only 
one function:  Kill Indians or drive them away in 
order to take their land. Actually, the British 
authorities attempted to limit the settlers’ 
incursion on Indian lands, particularly following 
the Treaty of Paris that ended the 
“French-Indian” war (7 Years War in Europe) in 
1760, when the British agreed to a line marking 
its colonial holdings along the coast and agreed 
to prevent settlement beyond the 
Appalachian/Allegheny mountain chain, leaving the 
rest of the continent as Indian Country. This was 
one of the primary reasons for the settlers’ 
decision to separate from Britain to form their 
own continental empire.  By the time of the War 
of Independence, tens of thousands of settlers 
illegally crossed the mountain barrier into the 
Ohio Valley.  Those settlers, mostly Scots-Irish, 
formed the backbone of the army of independence 
led by George Washington, himself a lifelong 
colonial officer.  This kind of colonial warfare 
formed the purpose and goals of the U.S. military 
after independence, what historian William 
Appleman Williams called a policy of 
“annihilation unto unconditional surrender,” a 
policy that has remained in effect.  This is by 
definition a policy of genocide

How do you view North American traditions such as 
Thanksgiving and Columbus day?

Don’t forget July 4, a day that lives in infamy 
for the indigenous peoples of North 
America.  Lincoln created Thanksgiving during the 
Civil War, and Columbus Day by FDR in 1934, as 
vehicles for controlling the narrative of settler 
colonialism as heroic and liberatory.  Indigenous 
communities in the U.S., as well as Latin 
America, have made good use of Columbus Day with 
counter-events and information, and U.S. Indians 
have been countering the message of Thanksgiving.

You were deeply involved in opposition to the US 
proxy war against the Sandinista regime in 
Nicaragua during the 1980s. It was frequently 
claimed however that the Sandinistas were 
violating the human rights of the Miskito 
population. How do you reconcile your support for 
indigenous peoples with your support for the Sandinistas?

It’s interesting that the question is nearly 
always put that way, clean cut, Sandinistas or 
Indigenous, which side are you on, as if we are 
talking about Nazis and Jews, or workers and 
corporations, in which case one has to choose 
which side.  Following the Sandinista triumph 
there was civil war, which of course the Reagan 
administration exploited; there are always civil 
wars following revolutions, since the revolution 
itself is a civil war. Take the case of the U.S. 
war of independence in which half the settler 
population (“Tories”) fought with the British 
against secession.  The Miskitos were also 
divided, and the U.S. Christian missionaries in 
the Mosquitia had close relations with the U.S. 
government.  The U.S. based American Indian 
Movement, already weakened by years of U.S. 
harassment, divided with one group (that also 
made up the International Indian Treaty Council) 
supporting the Miskitos who worked with the 
Sandinistas, while another, smaller group 
supported the anti-Sandinistas Miskitos.  In 
Latin America, there was little support for the 
anti-Sandinista Miskitos who took up arms and 
allied with the U.S. intervention.  So, it was 
much more complex than simply pro-Sandinista 
meant not supporting the Miskito demands for 
autonomy and self-determination.  I would say 
that my own actions and position was in the 
majority Indigenous thinking on the issue.  The 
northeastern region, the Mosquitia did become a 
war zone (as did the northwestern region), with 
U.S. controlled Honduras allowing camps across 
the border for the Contras and for the Miskito 
anti-Sandinista combatants who were supported by 
the CIA and the Contras.  The heavy presence of 
the Sandinista army and restrictions and 
deprivations caused by war certainly were 
oppressive, and there were instances of abuses, 
but clearly not policy driven.  The propaganda of 
gross human rights violations (Reagan’s UN 
ambassador claimed that 100,000 Miskitos had been 
“slaughtered,” which was more than the entire 
Miskito population) was overwhelming, beginning in February 1982.

What were some of the social achievements of the Sandinistas?

In the short period the Sandinistas had before 
the crippling effects of the Contra War, really 
only 3 years, they put food, health care, and 
literacy first, mobilized the already mobilized 
communities all over the country to get involved, 
all students and faculty to volunteer to teach 
reading and writing to the 60 percent illiterate, 
called for international assistance, both 
voluntary, governmental, and from the United 
Nations.  The UN agencies, in particular, love it 
when a government invites them in to set up 
programs.  UNESCO, for instance, provided 
materials and teacher training in literacy, and 
also awarded Nicaragua with its highest honor in 
1981 for its success in wiping out illiteracy in 
the country.  In the Mosquitia the Miskitos, the 
Sumos, the Ramas, and the English speaking 
Afro-Caribbean communities demanded literacy in 
their mother tongues, as well as bilingual text 
books in the schools, which the Sandinista 
government agreed to.  The World Health 
Organization organized polio and other 
vaccination programs as well as training medical 
workers in working with communities to prevent 
infant mortality, largely caused by dehydration 
from diarrhea, by introducing water purification 
methods.  The UN Food and Agricultural 
Organization (FAO) implemented programs for food 
production to replace the commercial wheat and 
cattle agribusiness promoted under the Somoza 
dictatorship.  Land titles were given to small 
farmers who had been pushed off their land by big 
producers and provided with seeds and farm 
tools.  All of this took place in a devastated 
country.  Only the wealthy neighborhoods of 
Managua had been rebuilt after the 9.0 earthquake 
of 1972 flattened the city, and added to that 2 
years of out and out warfare against the 
Sandinista insurgents, including Somoza’s bombing 
of most of the large cities, the Sandinistas had 
to start from scratch and also bear the $90 
million debt left by Somoza (a requirement from 
the Carter administration in order to recognize 
the new government).  The Nicaraguan 
constitution, which was developed in community 
meetings all over the country as well as 
consultations with international law specialists, 
as well as with indigenous activists, included 
the establishment of 2 autonomous regions in 
eastern Nicaragua, southern region (majority 
Afro-Caribbean with minority populations of 
Miskitos, Rama, and Hispanic) and northern region 
(majority Miskito, with Afro-Caribbean, Sumo, and 
Hispanic minority populations), with parliaments 
to be elected in each to control all aspects of 
policy in their respective regions.  Also, 
autonomous universities were established in each of the regions.

What is your view of the current Nicaraguan 
government led by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega?

I tend to follow the views of the MRS, the 
Movement for the Renovation of Sandinismo, which 
split from Ortega’s domination of the 
FSLN.  However, for the Miskitos, this 
administration has been certainly more responsive 
in terms of constitutional autonomy than those of the preceding 15 years.

Politically you have described yourself as being 
an “anarcho-syndicalist” - can you explain what that means?

My grandfather in Oklahoma was in the Industrial 
Workers of the World (IWW), a national and 
international anarcho-syndicalist organization 
founded in 1905.  He joined at the founding; he 
was already in the Socialist Party in Missouri, 
then in Oklahoma.  He died before I was born, but 
I was always aware of his courage and commitment 
and the achievements of the IWW.  My father was a 
sharecropper and tenant farmer, and he and his 8 
siblings and mother had suffered a lot from the 
repression that came down on my grandfather.  I 
call myself an anarcho-syndicalist in honor of my 
grandfather and that organic tradition in U.S. 
labor history.  But, I don’t like labels, and I 
always want to be open to new thinking, changing 
my mind, developing.  I do still strongly think 
that there is no better source for understanding 
how capitalism works and why it must be done away with than Marx.




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