An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

not forget that Indigenous Black South Africans are trying to reclaim land
without offering any compensation to white landowners. That might seem
extreme, but that is justice. When the Afrikaners created the Natives Land
Act of 1913, they stripped Indigenous South Africans from their land and
didn’t allow them to own land. Now imagine you owned land, and someone
took it from you, occupied it, made money off it at your detriment, and then
had the nerve to argue that their actions were justified? Reports indicate that
if there is no compensation, then the South African economy would be
decimated. 29 Good. If Indigenous peoples and those committed to the cause
of Black and Indigenous freedom want justice, then maybe the economy
should collapse so we can remake society and root it in the possibilities of
being human, free from exploitation and dispossession.
MODERN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS. The banks, insurance companies, and all
of the modern financial institutions that were built off Black people’s labor
and the land speculation that contributed to the rapid dispossession of
Indigenous land need to recompense those groups. Morally and materially,
how can institutions that built the foundations of their wealth this way
continue to exist? 30 Even the UK press admitted in an article in the
Independent that after abolition, slave owning families were paid
handsomely for losing their “property.” Those families continue to benefit
today. 31 To put it simply, you don’t have massive development and wealth
without great inequality and underdevelopment. 32
BLACK AND INDIGENOUS CONVERSATIONS. Black and Indigenous peoples need
to have real conversations about what the world is going to look like after
the US ceases to exist the way it does. These groups need to form
partnerships and radically imagine how to create new relationships—even
treaties—with one another, about how are they going to share the land and
how are they going to create new ways of living that are not built on the
exploitation of land and peoples.
HOUSING. If you want to discuss how the modern real estate industry has
impacted African American peoples, be sure to check out Keeanga-
Yamahtta Taylor’s award-winning book, Race for Profit. 33 It is excellent.
Reparations should require the state to provide decent and adequate housing