Indigenous self-activity against settler colonialism: Jorge Ramirez, ‘Archives of Indigenous Self-Activity: Capitalism, Violence, and Indigeneity in the Americas’, Radical History Review, 133, 2019, pp. 149-162 | settler colonial studies blog

Indigenous self-activity against settler colonialism: Jorge Ramirez, ‘Archives of Indigenous Self-Activity: Capitalism, Violence, and Indigeneity in the Americas’, Radical History Review, 133, 2019, pp. 149-162

23Jan19

Abstract: This essay reviews four books in Indigenous studies: María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo’s Indian Given (2016), Elizabeth Hoover’s The River Is in Us (2017), Dana E. Powell’s Landscapes of Power (2018), and Nancy Postero’s The Indigenous State (2018). The books address the colonial and national space-making projects that have militarized the US-Mexico Border, the Mohawk community’s confrontation with industrial pollution in Akwesasne, the Diné struggles in the Navajo Nation over sovereignty as a result of an extraction-based capitalist model since the Cold War, and the complexities of Bolivia’s Indigenous state that has called for decolonization and emphasized indigeneity. By bringing these four books together, the review demonstrates that indigeneity has been a site of struggle shaped by capitalism, violence, and militarism alongside settler colonialism in the western hemisphere. Furthermore, by examining indigenous self-activity in the western hemisphere it also reveals how systems of domination have never been absolute or complete but continuously attempt to reestablish their power.

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