An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

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practices and incorporate them into their own art but say they are “inspired” by other cultures because they are “well traveled”—whatever that means. White people have had a monopoly on appropriating cultures and cornrows for centuries; that’s just what they do. I’m not even all that mad anymore. They really like Black culture, and I understand—who would be proud of bland food and hardly any culture that is theirs? I guess they have the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the dopeness of Picasso, and Marxism, but that’s about it. And to be clear, young people should learn about European art and culture. The history is incredible. But, again, people really like Black culture? I guess they have Elvis and all of those artists who appropriated Black culture and now a “woke” Taylor Swift, but that’s about it. Shit, now that I think of it, what important thing have they given to the world that was indigenous to, umm, Europe? Capitalism? Exploitation? Racism? Pumpkin pie (I love vegan pumpkin pie)? But I digress. Let me get back to the topic of cultural appropriation. I ask in this section, is our discourse about cultural appropriation the final word? Is our constant reactionary stand to it finished? In Black cultural studies theorist Stuart Hall’s essay “What Is This Black in Popular Culture?,” he remarked, “The question is whether we are any longer in that moment, whether that is still a sufficient basis for the strategies of new interventions?” 3 Anishinaabe writer Leanne Simpson wrote, “While it has become the practice of . . . the more liberal and well-meaning segments to condemn racist stereotypes, this group is immobilized with regard to land issues.” 4 Resisting racist stereotypes and spending time critiquing cultural appropriation is important, but I think we need to think a bit more critically about what our aim is. So, what is cultural appropriation? Cultural appropriation is the idea that a dominant group takes, at will, cultural markers from a powerless group, and appropriates them, in unacknowledged ways that ignore the historical roots of said thing and then makes it seem brand new. The “thing” can be appropriating language, clothing, hairstyle, histories—it can be a range of things. Cultural appropriation is nothing more than classic colonialism—taking shit that don’t belong to you, repackaging it as your own invention, and then rebranding it. It’s like when I saw some white man call elote “loaded corn,” and my Latinx friends scoffed at this notion. Again, it is easy to discuss cultural appropriation when it comes to white people doing it, but when it comes to Black and Indigenous peoples, it gets trickier.
Cultural appropriation in Black and Indigenous contexts can be defined in terms of minstrelsy and “playing Indian.” We also call them “blackface” and “redface.” Philip Deloria defines playing Indian as “a persistent tradition in American culture, stretching from the very instant of the national bang into an ever-expanding present and future.” 5 Playing Indian happens in the popular cultural realm in the form of non-Indigenous people wearing headdresses, utilizing Indigenous patterns in the fashion world, or what we discuss most: sports mascots. The importance of understanding the links between blackface and redface are simple: the people who believe, for instance, that Native mascots are acceptable, also tend to hold other racist viewpoints. If you’re white and you think Indigenous caricatures are cool, then you’re likely and unsurprisingly one of those All Lives Matter folks. (Here is your reminder: all lives don’t matter because Black lives haven’t ever mattered. After centuries of protest and resistance, they still barely matter to white America.) However, as Deloria points out, it is really about power. Indian play is more than white people defining themselves through Native culture. It reveals how white American political power is rooted in the domination of Indigenous peoples.” 6 Playing Indian is an attempt to keep Indigenous peoples and their customs stuck in the past in order to take their land. Minstrelsy has had a similar trajectory, with some small caveats. We typically think of minstrelsy, or blackface, as something that happened in the nineteenth century, but it continues today. We think of white people performing in front of all-white audiences making fun of Black people, speaking a bastardized version of Black English. Or they show up as college students, paint their faces black, and use the word “nigga” over and over. According to whiteness scholar Dave Roediger, minstrel shows were fundamental expressions of northern white working-class culture across different white ethnicities. 7 Today, blackface performance is even more deeply embedded across all US cultures and races. Nothing represents the pervasiveness of blackness more than music, especially hip-hop. Anyone who raps is also utilizing Black English. Anyone. If you are a non-Black rapper who utilizes Hip Hop Nation Language, which is also a part of Black English, and you know nothing about Black English(es) and don’t respect its West African roots, as well as learning how it developed in the United States (and elsewhere in the diaspora), then you might actually
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PRAISE FOR AN AFRO-INDIGENOUS HISTO
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REVISIONING HISTORY SERIES A Queer
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To Liseth, El Don, ChiChi
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CHAPTER SEVEN Black and Indigenous
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Indigenous people in our collective
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and places. In fact, the whole book
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INTRODUCTION Thousands of volumes h
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RECONNECTING DISCONNECTED HISTORIES
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solidarity between Black and white
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important to understand how the whi
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Indigenous peoples have sought ways
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need both movements, as both are he
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Some established (mostly white male
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meeting between a variety of Indige
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Atlantic Diaspora Connections (2009
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During every Black History Month in
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consciousness, and to a considerabl
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PAUL CUFFE Perhaps one of the earli
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Afro-Indigenous peoples in the Unit
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antiblackness. Finally, these exper
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America. There was so much we cover
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president-general and another counc
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the dehumanization of Native people
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On March 4, 1801, Jefferson, during
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lasting in its impact than that wit
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The Native person could not truly e
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CHAPTER THREE ENSLAVEMENT, DISPOSSE
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local autonomy—Reconstruction cha
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unpleasant, but we must try and com
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Choctaw owned 14 percent and the Cr
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surpassed those predecessors by per
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eaders to reconsider the role of In
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a time they moved back to Wisconsin
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white people were interested in rem
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of their resistance to white encroa
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liberation and women’s rights. Ty
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covered numerous topics in the spee
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commit the same sin that the nation
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had to change. They could no longer
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Still, Native people continued to s
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government’s boarding schools and
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civilization and its so-called virt
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function of the National Associatio
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treatment with white men, . . . [th
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In the post-Garvey era, after the U
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learned about the prolific and viol
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Eastman likely participated in the
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Du Bois’s paper offered a broad s
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and men to assert their right to ci
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CHAPTER FIVE BLACK AMERICANS AND NA
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gap we have today, are rooted in ea
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Black Americans remembered this Ind
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legacies have been tainted. People
Page 112 and 113: Here, King describes the root of ra
Page 114 and 115: working as a collective to achieve
Page 116 and 117: egistered in Mississippi. She helpe
Page 118 and 119: surprising if she did. The Choctaw
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Page 122 and 123: indeed fought in every war since th
Page 124 and 125: US, given that the US was not Black
Page 126 and 127: Malcolm understood well the connect
Page 128 and 129: me think in terms of American’s i
Page 130 and 131: In the following scene in the docum
Page 132 and 133: the land, isn’t four hundred year
Page 134 and 135: For the majority of white Americans
Page 136 and 137: this growing unity is the best assu
Page 138 and 139: with hardly any people of color wil
Page 140 and 141: did their best to understand how th
Page 142 and 143: “It was not until Malcolm X came
Page 144 and 145: lived there. What about their claim
Page 146 and 147: and operates under a racist and imm
Page 148 and 149: oth deeply invested in Black civil
Page 150 and 151: challenge the assumed authority of
Page 152 and 153: Committee. BWLC, with Frances Beal
Page 154 and 155: international monopoly finance capi
Page 156 and 157: Conference on Indigenous Peoples an
Page 158 and 159: awarded until 2011, and discontinue
Page 160 and 161: CHAPTER SEVEN BLACK AND INDIGENOUS
Page 164 and 165: e performing minstrelsy without eve
Page 166 and 167: influenced by racist oppression, th
Page 168 and 169: Beyond the specifics of this incide
Page 170 and 171: acism and sexism, as well as across
Page 172 and 173: there is hardly any chance in hell
Page 174 and 175: For example, in July 2007, in Detro
Page 176 and 177: No one wants to be a r*dsk*n. It is
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Page 180 and 181: was trying to make. Jones responded
Page 182 and 183: Desus sarcastically adds, “How ca
Page 184 and 185: CHAPTER EIGHT THE MATTER OF BLACK A
Page 186 and 187: Indigenous and Latinx police, “sh
Page 188 and 189: protester and getting hit with them
Page 190 and 191: Native people’s use of tropes, sl
Page 192 and 193: CONCLUSION THE POSSIBILITIES FOR AF
Page 194 and 195: “they are the problem” and tell
Page 196 and 197: oppression and white supremacy. . .
Page 198 and 199: movements.” 14 We can learn from
Page 200 and 201: est to acknowledge the importance o
Page 202 and 203: Ta-Nehisi Coates’s fantastic arti
Page 204 and 205: possible. Our imaginations, coupled
Page 206 and 207: to people of African descent. I don
Page 208 and 209: 2. You know how Indigenous Nations
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Indigenousness are not so different
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maintain African enslavement. For n
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opposed to her likely believe that
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS YOU DON‘T WRITE a
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Emory University. Thank you to the
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5. Patrick Wolfe, Traces of History
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the initiative strikes which open t
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13. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the
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28. Robert Dale Parker, ed., The So
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8. Andrew Woolford, This Benevolent
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6. Malinda Maynor Lowery, The Lumbe
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CHAPTER 6. BLACK POWER AND RED POWE
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47. William H. McClendon, “The Bl
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15. Abaki Beck, “Rendered Invisib
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1. Billy-Ray Belcourt and Lindsay N
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Name: The Harmful Consequences of P
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INDEX Please note that page numbers
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Beck, Abaki, 143, 144 The Beginning
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Chicago Defender (publication), 76,
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Dyson, Michael Eric, 140, 149 Eagle
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Hamilton, Charles, 110 Hampton, Fre
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Kaplan, Amy, 205n54 Katznelson, Ira
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Metacomet (chief), 60 Metropolitan
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N.W.A. (band), 161 N-word, as term,
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Red Cloud (Oglala Lakota leader), 6
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“The Souls of White Folk” (Du B
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Wheatley, Phillis, xxii, 8-10, 14,
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North and South American activists
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Dennis Banks and unknown woman at a
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Audience at a rally in support of D
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American Indian Movement member and
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