Rob Williams NYTs Essay on Kicking Indians Off Their Land [updated with accessible PDF]

Robert Williams has published “Kicking Native People Off Their Land Is a Horrible Way to Save the Planet” in the New York Times.

PDF here:

Julia GoodFox’s Review of Rob Williams’ “Savage Anxieties”

Here. An excerpt:

When the United States ceased its campaign of military assaults against what is now called Indian Country, Tribal Nations and American Indians were not exactly left alone to pick up the pieces of our communities. Instead, what transpired over the 20th Century was a metamorphosis of anti-Indianism from militarized violence and terrorism into a form of assaults that were more palatable for the contemporary Republic. The result is that for over a hundred years, then, U.S. hostilities against us have moved to a battlefield that involves the frontlines of media and popular culture, the checkpoints of education, and the minefields of legislative and other political activities. As Williams shows, these are all connected, and all have their roots in the ideas called Western Civilization. For those who are perplexed about the U.S.’s inability to “get” anti-Indianism but yet can “get” racism against African-Americans, for example—the same country that would not wear blackface or similar imagery at sports events or Halloween or Frat parties, but without batting an eye will don redface or fight to keep anti-Indian mascots—Williams’s study shows that Western Civilization has constructed itself in opposition to the fact that Indigenous Peoples. If American Indians are not recognized as the equal of non-Tribal peoples, then the mainstream U.S. believes that anti-Indianism is normal or a form of common sense. It is just a small leap from redface events to an entire system based upon the inability to recognize the political and legal rights of American Indian Tribes.  This construction has nothing to do with what genocide-deniers on our lands would call “God’s will” or “inevitable” (i.e., Manifest Destiny), but rather has everything to do with the use of culture to perpetuate the oppression of others. The results are indisputably catastrophic, except to those in ignorance or willful denial.