An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

consumption, to grow the domestic market, (2) land as production resource
for export to the world markets for hard exchange, (3) land as space for
national unity, (4) land as a place for a state, either a national state or
multinational state. 44
If land is central, how does Alkalimat also forget that we live in a settler
state? If land is a space for national unity or a multinational state, as
Alkalimat argues, where are Indigenous people supposed to go? We do not
know because Malcolm X never went on record about what he might do
with the “Indigenous question,” likely because he believed that the “white
man” had exterminated the “Indian.”
Malcolm’s style, frankness, and ability to “make it plain” for his
audience made him one of the more well-known, if not beloved, Black
activists of the 1960s. As a result, he remains, among a wide range of
activists, from Black nationalists to communists, an icon long after his
death. Although he did not invent the Nation of Islam or its rhetoric of
Black supremacy, his efforts made that discourse open to both the Black
and white public spheres, with mixed results. Yet, as powerful a rhetorician
as he was, Malcolm X was, on the one hand, a powerful voice of the Black
oppressed, and, on the other hand, an uncritical participant in settlercolonial
discourse, at least early on in his political development. In other
words, he accepted the European American belief that Native people had
disappeared. Malcolm based his belief that the US government owed Black
people land on two conclusions: one, because Native people were
“invisible” as a result of being duped out of their land, the US government
had land that it could entrust to Black people; and two, Black folks had
earned a right to land through their labor during slavery.
Malcolm believed that Black separation from whites was essential for
Black freedom. That is, white Americans were not going to truly accept
Black people into their society; therefore, they should have land of their
own. While civil rights activists sought to reform US society so that it
would become integrated, Malcolm reminded Black people that they
weren’t anything more than second-class citizens, and would never be full
citizens because, unlike white people, Black people “didn’t come here on
the Mayflower.” 45 Instead, he reminded them, they were brought here by
the architects of US democracy.
He also argued that Black people were owed land because of their
exploited labor and the blood they had shed in wars. Black people had