An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

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Ta-Nehisi Coates’s fantastic article on reparations published in The Atlantic in 2014, he notes: And so we must imagine a new country. Reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken lie. Reparations beckons us to reject the intoxication of hubris and see America as it is —the work of fallible humans. 24 This passage is beautifully written. My immediate question though, is, what about Native people upon whose land this conversation is being held? My point is not to decenter the real, structurally racist obstacles that have impeded Black progress. But we must ask, how much should we really be invested in the white supremacist project of US democracy, built on Native dispossession and genocide and African enslavement? Can we imagine something different, more just? It is still very difficult—even taboo for some—to really think about reparations for the descendants of African slaves. I appreciate the effort of the Asheville city council. In November 2019, the city council of Evanston, Illinois, passed a resolution to fund reparations efforts through a cannabis tax. 25 Big shout out to them. It is indisputable, though, that the colonization and exploitation of Africans on the continent and enslavement of Africans in the US and the exploitation of their labor were fundamental to the development of modern capitalism. The connection between enslavement and the modern forms of capital development were rooted in Indigenous dispossession. After all, those Africans had to work on someone’s dispossessed land, and it wasn’t theirs. I want to briefly discuss something that offers a point of departure for discussing Black belonging and what the US “owes” to these folks, and that is the recent example of constructing Black belonging known as ADOS— American Descendants of Slavery. Founded by Yvette Carnell, a writer and media pundit, and Antonio Moore, a Los Angeles–based lawyer, ADOS believes that Black is not a good identity for the descendants of enslaved peoples in the US because it obscures the particularities of enslavement within this country. Moreover,
members argue that ADOS deserves reparations for enslavement and the suffering during the Jim Crow era. An overview of ADOS reads, “Codified by government and exploited by private actors, the creation of an ADOS underclass served as the financial engine of a nation that never recognized the debt it owed the group as a result. As such, the ADOS movement is underpinned by the demand for reparative justice in making the group whole.” Furthermore, “through federally-supported, discriminatory practices like redlining, black presence literally made wealth disappear in communities, all while American whites—and more recently, immigrants— enjoy advantage in a land of apparently equal opportunity that was in fact manufactured on the back of black failure.” 26 The grievances of ADOS are rooted in three centuries’ worth of Black nationalist commentary on what the US owes Black people for enslaving them and exploiting their labor. While some sought to leave the US, others believed that the US should give them land that they deserved. We should ask questions of ADOS, and demonstrate some empathy. First, are there any benefits of the ADOS movement and the questions it is asking? Second, although the project is centered on the United States, I would ask, how does the ADOS movement relate to other nation-state-based movements for belonging in other non-Black countries? Not that ADOS has to expand its philosophy, but making such comparisons is always helpful in theory, if not always fruitful in practice. However, there are limits. Beyond history, time periods, and the facts of how the US developed, ADOS has an “Indigenous problem.” Indeed, its rhetoric curiously leaves out Indigenous peoples, upon whose land the ancestors of the American Descendants of Slavery worked. To be clear, I do support reparations. But in the long term, I believe that a fundamental rupture with capitalism needs to happen. We cannot thrive under capitalism; and in the long run, receiving trillions of dollars from a country that does, in fact, owe us will not end racial capitalism. We need to simultaneously think of the current and long-term situation of Black people, and whether we even want to be a part of a despicable system such as capitalism. What many people, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and the founders of ADOS, fail to consider is, how can we justifiably give Black folks reparations without also considering how we offer reparations to Indigenous peoples? We can and should do both. We need to imagine how we can get freedom together. We need to think big, too. I don’t want to hear what is not
Page 4 and 5:
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
Page 70 and 71:
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
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Here, King describes the root of ra
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working as a collective to achieve
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egistered in Mississippi. She helpe
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surprising if she did. The Choctaw
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understand history, how they practi
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indeed fought in every war since th
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US, given that the US was not Black
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Malcolm understood well the connect
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me think in terms of American’s i
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In the following scene in the docum
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the land, isn’t four hundred year
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For the majority of white Americans
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this growing unity is the best assu
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with hardly any people of color wil
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did their best to understand how th
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“It was not until Malcolm X came
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lived there. What about their claim
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and operates under a racist and imm
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oth deeply invested in Black civil
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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 162 and 163: practices and incorporate them into
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
Page 178 and 179: even absurdly funny. The use of the
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 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
Page 210 and 211: they treated? We should instead cen
Page 212 and 213: Indigenousness are not so different
Page 214 and 215: maintain African enslavement. For n
Page 216 and 217: opposed to her likely believe that
Page 218 and 219: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS YOU DON‘T WRITE a
Page 220 and 221: Emory University. Thank you to the
Page 222 and 223: 5. Patrick Wolfe, Traces of History
Page 224 and 225: the initiative strikes which open t
Page 226 and 227: 13. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the
Page 228 and 229: 28. Robert Dale Parker, ed., The So
Page 230 and 231: 8. Andrew Woolford, This Benevolent
Page 232 and 233: 6. Malinda Maynor Lowery, The Lumbe
Page 234 and 235: CHAPTER 6. BLACK POWER AND RED POWE
Page 236 and 237: 47. William H. McClendon, “The Bl
Page 238 and 239: 15. Abaki Beck, “Rendered Invisib
Page 240 and 241: 1. Billy-Ray Belcourt and Lindsay N
Page 242 and 243: Name: The Harmful Consequences of P
Page 244 and 245: INDEX Please note that page numbers
Page 246 and 247: Beck, Abaki, 143, 144 The Beginning
Page 248 and 249: Chicago Defender (publication), 76,
Page 250 and 251: 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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An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

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