/b/ - Siberia

My name is Moonwind, and I'm an Indigenous Two Spirit person who uses a wheelchair. The fact that I use a wheelchair is important, but be careful not to call me a "wheelchair user", which is ableist because it implies that wheelchair is inherent to my being (but in a bad way, as opposed to the way that I imply it).

A certain Valerie from my university has come on this site to make some criticisms of white leftists. I generally agree with these, although Valerie's lack of an Indigenous perspective is a glaring shortcoming (which I hope to later resolve by eternally tarring her as a bigot and taking her former place in the activist hierarchy).

First, white leftists have got to get with the program when it comes to land acknowledgements. Land acknowledgements are one of the most effective and widely used tools of the Indigenous liberation movement. These acknowledgements, when prefacing some public speech or another, serve to remind the listener that they are living on stolen land which needs to be taken back. What "taking back" entails, in a country where the white settler population is so much larger than the Indigenous population, is a minutia that can be safely postponed to never. But what's important is that the land is acknowledged each and every time, so that eventually this can result in change to the system (somehow). White leftists, who even fail to consistently refer to N*rth Am*rica as TURTLE ISLAND, are ignorant bigots for failing to recognize this.

Second, I am worried by the economic policies being proposed by white leftists with a superficial understanding (if any) of Indigenous needs. Some among them have expressed an interest in nationalizing and building up the industrial sectors in impoverished regions, as part of an advanced planned economy. Since some of these regions are inhabited by Indigenous people, this would mean more Western conceptions of "progress" imposed upon us. See, Indigenous people already figured out communism centuries before some old German weirdos decided to pick up on it, simply by living off the land and sharing stuff. You see, colonizers? All you had to figure out was that it's nice to share things.

And why should communism be industrialized? Since we managed without it, we will continue to do so. We didn't want capitalist industry and we don't want communist industry either. Factories are for white people. We Indigenous hunt and gather, and we grow Three Sisters, and we sustain ourselves by the good vibrations of Gichi Manitou, none of your stupid post-Iron Age tech needed. (We still hate anprims, though. Name me one who isn't white.) Is there a contradiction between this, and the fact that I use a wheelchair? If you think so, you are probably too stuck in Western patterns of thought and should probably drop some peyote.

Finally, I would like to remind white leftists of the value of lived experience. Because all narratives about the world are equally correct even when they contradict (except for narratives of European origin which are uniquely incorrect), there is no way a single doctrine or philosophy could lead a movement. The basis for our movement is lived experience, and each person has a certain range of topics they are allowed to have opinions about based on that.

For example, being Indigenous, I can speak on Indigenous issues. Being Two Spirit ditto, being disabled ditto. But a white able-bodied person with only one puny single-gendered Spirit cannot possibly opine on any of these issues without the explicit approval of someone such as me. People voicing opinions about things they didn't personally live, especially white people/cis men/people with functioning legs, disgust and terrify me so bad that I get CPTSD flashbacks to that time I slipped in the shower when I was ten. Do not make this grave mistake again or I will call campus police.

P.S. Valerie, stop stealing my goddamn bannock.