Excerpt: The “turn toward the indigenous” in social theory over the last couple of decades, associated with the critique of white settler colonialism, has reintroduced themes long present in Marxian theory, but in ways that are often surprisingly divorced from Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. Part of the reason for this disconnection is that the current discussions of settler colonialism have evolved out of traditions in postmodernist and postcolonial cultural theory that are distant from historical materialism. However, a deeper explanation for the gulf between current scholarly work on settler colonialism and Marxism is associated with the claims of some left critics that Marx’s work is characterized by the following: (1) a crude developmentalism and economic determinism; (2) a pro-colonialist stance; (3) a teleological conception of progress; and (4) Prometheanism or extreme productivism in relation to the environment. Such charges are often employed to cast historical materialism as irrelevant or even hostile to contemporary indigenous struggles and perspectives.
