Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Sovereignty on Turtle Island

Trump’s call for Canada to become the 51st State and his threat of tariffs has lead many working class people and progressives to rally behind Canadian nationalism.

 

This rhetoric, along with calls to take over Greenland and Panama, is reminiscent of Manifest Destiny, the ideological basis for expansion of the US across to the Pacific in the 19th century.

 

States do not act in the interest of everyone, but are the executive of the national capitalist class that exploits working people for profits. Parliament and democracy are important, but true democracy happens when workers, oppressed minorities and communities mobilize collectively to wrest concessions from bosses and political leaders.

 

Canada and the US are both settler colonial states. They were formed through the conquest of many autonomous Indigenous Peoples who were the original inhabitants of Turtle Island, an Indigenous name for North America.

 

Like many nations across Turtle Island, the territory of the Kanienʼkehá:ka (Mohawk) people of Akwesasne straddles the  US / Canada border. Why should they pick one genocidal colonial nation over the other?

 

Through settler violence, diseases, starvation, treaties and genocidal institutions like Residential “Schools”, courts and paramilitary police, Indigenous peoples were forced off the lands they had stewarded for many thousands of years to make way for US and Canadian sovereignty.

 

Many Indigenous peoples were eradicated in this process, and those that survived had to adapt to changed circumstances and at times their only way to resist was to maintain their traditional knowledge, spirituality, laws and practices on the land away from the prying eyes of the colonizers.

 

But resistance was constant and continues to this day, as does the violence that forms the basis of the Canadian settler colonial state.

 

In recent years, many workers and communities have recognized the historical injustices of settler colonialism in Canada, and have actively supported struggles for Indigenous justice and sovereignty. This includes the resistance of Wet’suwet’en land defenders to the CGL pipeline, the fight for mercury justice for the Grassy Narrows First Nation and the Land Defense Alliance of First Nations fighting to protect their lands for future generations against plans to mine critical minerals in the so-called “Ring of Fire”.

 

US Tariffs on petroleum will increase pressure for more LNG and tar sands pipelines to the BC coast. Gitxsan land defenders are sounding the alarm about the new Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline over their land. The canceled Energy East pipeline to the maritime provinces may be revitalized. And there will be more pressure for mining on Indigenous land over their objections.

 

Nationalism, even left nationalism, means supporting the Canada of the bosses and colonizers, the state that pushes down wages and working conditions and destroys the lands and waters that Indigenous people rely on to survive, further driving the planetary climate and ecological crisis.

 

Workers must struggle in solidarity across borders against Trump’s attacks and the reaction of the Canadian state, and support Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island for justice to prevail.