An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

CHAPTER EIGHT
THE MATTER OF BLACK AND
INDIGENOUS LIVES, POLICING, AND
JUSTICE
LIKE MANY PEOPLE who believe in justice, I was angry at the deaths of
Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. It reminded me of the continued
epidemic of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada and
the US. 1 I was also reminded of the killing of Indigenous people like
fourteen-year-old child Jason Pero, in November 2017. 2 These murders and
systematic violence reminded me of two things: that we live in what Frantz
Fanon called “atmospheric violence,”‘ and that policing, a form of
surveillance and social control, is intimately tied to US democracy. 3 As
Malcolm X once stated about the lack of justice in American courts,
This is American justice. This is American democracy and those of
you who are familiar with it know that in American democracy is
hypocrisy. Now if I’m wrong put me in jail, but if you can’t prove that
democracy is not hypocrisy then don’t put your hands on me.
Democracy is hypocrisy. If democracy means freedom why aren’t our
people free? If democracy means justice, why don’t we have justice?
If democracy means equality why don’t we have equality? 4
The question of whether we can achieve freedom within US democracy,
including under its laws and justice system, its economic structure, and
whether we can truly take the conceptual principles set out by white slave
owners and land stealers and apply them is still up in the air.