An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

also talking to white women, the Beckies and Karens, who weaponize
racism and call the police on Black people for simply living their lives. We
shouldn’t be surprised by them, though: their forbears participated in the
slavery of this country. 8 I am pessimistic, but until they really listen and
take heed of Black folks’ understanding about how society works, they
won’t free themselves of their own white womanness, and truly be free.
It seems that Indigenous peoples often have a hard time dealing with
Black people and their historical experiences. As I’ve alluded to elsewhere
in the book, instead of thinking about Black people only through the lens of
enslavement—though that is the fundamental source of their oppression—
how about we think of them the way Cedric Robinson thought of them?
How about we consider that they are a part of a longer historical legacy of
(African) Indigenous peoples forcibly removed from their homeland? Why
not? We do this for Cherokees forcibly removed to Indian territory, and they
are still considered Indigenous even though they were removed from their
homeland. I think this will require that we think long and hard about our
commitment to the national boundaries of the United States, and think more
globally—which of course means to also include Africans and the
descendants of the enslaved.
I know that some people are going to proclaim that Black people are
settlers and even have settler privilege. I will concede—based upon history
—that some Black folks have contributed to settler colonialism by doing
things on behalf of the settler state. For instance, I’m thinking here of the
Buffalo Soldiers engaging in the western expansion of the US nation-state.
However, they were not settlers. As Zoé Samudzi and William Anderson
argue in their book As Black as Resistance (2018), the descendants of
enslaved Africans today have tried to reconcile their past, recover their
roots, and also create a home space within the US. 9
There are Indigenous folks actively working to assert Indigenous
sovereignty by engaging with Black folks on Turtle Island. I think
Anishinaabe scholar Leanne Simpson has some important thoughts about
this, particularly in her reflections during the aftermath of Missouri
prosecutor Robert McCulloch’s decision not to pursue charges against
police officer Darren Wilson, who murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri. Speaking out of solidarity and love, Simpson wrote, “I was
reminded over and over this week that Black and Indigenous communities
of struggle are deeply connected through our experiences with colonialism,