Trigger Warning (Suicide) - the Hecht 3 in the Nuclear Terrorism answers discusses suicide bombers, and the Hallward, 11 in the AT: Impossible describes “libidinal suicide” neither is a depiction but for safety concerns I wanted to make sure to warn everyone.
This file primarily argues that the idea of giving cash payments, or work guarantees (economic incentives.) rely on a number of settler colonial understandings but most importantly treat land as a neutral, natural, and without value minus economic interactions. It treats land as agentless and without understanding history or importance. The critique centers around a land-based understanding of ontology, epistemology and wealth which interrelates that the only redistributive practice that can alleviate the harms of settler colonialism is one that gives back the land. The critique also is separatist and argues that inclusion within state apparatus is dangerous and violent towards natives and only helps white guilt while using material needs of natives as a bargaining chip for forgiveness. This acts to render settler colonialism a past event and when we do that, we are ignoring the ongoing and systemic violences that occur now due to settler colonialism towards native peoples.
The critique has two versions the short version simply makes a rejection/education claim about rejecting rights-based frameworks for land based educational and resistance strategies. This is an ethical endorsement of a specific strategy towards decolonization. This can be read with other arguments and possibly even with arguments that might link to it as it works on an ethics level.
The second version (Long) makes a more pervasive and structuring claim that settler colonialism structures every aspect of a statist existence and renders no possibility for an ethical interaction or relation of settlers towards natives. This renders the entire systems of western ontology and epistemology immoral and requires their rejection. This critique makes the claim that the only ethical prioritization we can take is one towards unconditional decolonization. In reality this would mean giving back the land in all or part and unsettling settlers is an act of unsettling and forcing settlers to engage their own violence.
There is the evidence here to do a large structural critique but that is not how I set this particular file up.
Land based education generally always starts with an affirmation of the stolen land we currently reside upon. Ann Arbor resides on the traditional territories of the Anishinabae people of the Three Fires Confederacy – These include the Ojibwe, Ottawa, Potawatomi and Wyandot peoples.
The next step is the recognition of that lands theft making our actions that aren’t toward decolonization are acts of settler flight. Once we’ve done that the advocacy for decolonization is the only possible answer.
Concepts to keep in mind when debating.
Landedness mean constant recognition of the land, the aff won’t do this even if they attempt some form of recognition politics, they will inevitably go back to defending settler colonial understandings.
Futurity – Settler Colonialism is incomplete and the completion of the settler colonial project requires the extinction of natives. This means there is not possibility of a future for native persons within settler colonialism. However, if instead we ignore settler futurity, then we can create forms of decolonization that can make indigenous life possible.
Rights based frameworks – rights-based frameworks try to create inclusions within systems the critique is a rejection of settler colonialism meaning inclusion within and rejection off seems to be at odds.
Land is wealth and money is not land – this is incredibly important because ALL WEALTH GENERATES from LAND not the other way around. The aff might say “natives could buy land” that’s the very nature of settlerism in that it presupposes the giving back of small tracts of land somehow solves the problems of a 500+ year history of genocide and theft. The unsettling reality that the only redistribution that would alleviate the current harms of settlerism is the complete giving back of the land is crucial.