An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

Jews. “Today, all these immigrants’ descendants are running as hard as they
can to escape the descendants of Negroes who helped to unload the
immigrant ships.” 34 Malcolm continued, “I was staggered when old-timer
Harlemites told me that while this immigrant musical chairs game had been
going on, Negroes had been in New York City since 1683, before any of
them came.” 35
In Malcolm’s framing, these European immigrants came to the US,
importantly, as settlers who displaced Black Americans who, in his
estimation, have a more legitimate, even indigenous connection to New
York. By mentioning that Black folks were there first, he was, in essence,
asserting Black claims to New York’s origins. This historical rendition tells
us about Black relationship to land, but it also suggests a form of
ownership, or that Black people were the original people. Malcolm said
nothing of the Indigenous inhabitants, who would have been the Munsee
Delaware. “Manhattan” is an Indigenous word that means, “the place where
timber is procured for bows and arrows.” It is one of the few names found
on early colonial maps in New York that has never been removed.
Malcolm used a variety of discourses concerning Black peoples’
relationship to the United States, which seemed revolutionary and
contradictory. At times, they centered on Black peoples’ relationship to
place. At other times, he connected to the diaspora. And then at others, he
offered direct critiques of US colonization and empire. Ultimately, he was
concerned with the condition of blackness and belonging in the US.
Malcolm’s idea of liberation was based upon control and domination of
land, and though he articulated a vision going forward, it was based upon
white masculine logics of land ownership. Malcolm’s conception of land is
diametrically opposed to Indigenous people’s conception of land. And
Indigenous feminists’ conceptions of land provides important analytical
tools in offering alternative visions of human and non-human relationships
to land. For example, the artist and activist Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe and
the public intellectual Leanne Betasamosake Simpson argue that our
conception of land should be based upon consent, and include a deeper
meaning of the word “place,” which should be a “part of us and our
sovereignty rather than an abstract natural resource for unlimited use.” 36
For Native people, land is more than a physical space. It is where they
construct ideas about themselves. In many Indigenous languages, their
tribal identities and stories are rooted in specific places. How they