With the goings-on as of late: ICE crackdowns in major cities across the “US” and how that all looks and sounds familiar, ahem summer of 2020. The ripple effects the Epstein Files will have in Indian Country. Water, data, and Uranium mining. Now war on Iran. So much going on (how are you coping?). We know this play, though, somehow it all seems familiar because memory is not so distant when it’s happening AGAIN in your (stolen) backyard.
We’ve seen our economic systems, our political systems collapse and in their place, what do we get? Capitalism/wage economy, or dependency cloaked in the story of what it means to earn your living by working for someone else.
So we have to be prepared and ready to do the dreaming and the tangible building when all this is over. How? We have to keep manifesting and doing the planning and learning and research now. But we also have to always be ready to show out when tangible building needs to be done. There are many helpful resources out there now, in all formats, all how-tos for building community now and in response to the rise of facism in this country.
One thing I keep going back to is this: we break down in order to build new/different. We start by tearing down the system that singles out the most vulnerable of us for exploitation and extermination. Because we know this is not the way, we don’t extract, exploit, we don’t eat our vulnerable. K’éʼ doesnʼt do that.
And this is OUR HOUSE. Who’s house?! OURS.
And yes, this has everything to do with gender. It’s all connected. Indigenous peoples have the knowledge and experience of gender-based violence that has long been identified as a hallmark of colonization. I.C.E. raids, anti-Trans legislation, and dismantling of the federal education system in this country has everything to do with gender. These are all attacks on the family, whoʼs domain is that of family/home? When the Diné were forcefully separated from their traditional (organized along matriarchal lines) subsistence practices and instead became wage workers (organized along patriarchal lines), it was Diné women who felt this separation most acutely as they were traditionally the holders of “wealth” in their communities. A policy like Livestock Reduction meant many things for Diné families–disconnection being the main result, disconnection from identity (especially for Diné asdzaan), disconnection from an important source of subsistence and income. Perfect for circumstances for assimilation, eh? Again, this is not our first rodeo, we persist, even after all that. Ready to build different.
Some notes this post:
- Many monographs have been written about the results of replacing subsistence living with wage work for Native peoples, too many to list here but there are out there if you are ready to learn more. No time to read a whole book? Check out this informative report from the Diné Policy Institute, youʼll find a quick history of Navajo economics on page 7: https://www.dinecollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Flea-Markets-of-the-Navajo-Nation-A-report-on-the-Informal-Economy.pdf
- A great online (not a monograph) on the Stock Reduction policy can be found here: https://project1492.org/navajo-livestock-relocation/
- Here’s a sweet zine on being in community where you are: file:///Users/sheptsosie/Downloads/WontYouBeMyNeighborZine.pdf
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