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So thanks to @KimTallBear and this episode of @mediaINDIGENA I've gone down a Woody Guthrie rabbit hole.
This Land is Your Land is a settler colonial anthem.
Fight me. https://radiopublic.com/media-indigena-weekly-indigenous-G7o97a/ep/s1!7c35c
This Land is Your Land is a settler colonial anthem.
Fight me. https://radiopublic.com/media-indigena-weekly-indigenous-G7o97a/ep/s1!7c35c
In 1941 Guthrie was hired by the ministry of the interior to write a passel of songs promoting the dams that the govt was building. This meant jobs. Good for the common man that Guthrie championed. https://www.americanstandardtime.com/2016/06/18/how-woody-guthrie-found-hope-for-america-on-the-banks-of-the-columbia-and-left-an-indelible-mark-on-northwest-music/
Dams are bad for Indigenous people tho. Dams flood our lands. Displace us.
And it's no good saying that Guthrie didn't give any thought to Indigenous people. Like that's any kind of defence anyway.
And it's no good saying that Guthrie didn't give any thought to Indigenous people. Like that's any kind of defence anyway.
Guthrie was born in 1912. In Okemah Oklahoma. This is the latter part of the allotment period. Lots of grifting and scamming and outright theft to get Indian land. Court cases went on well into the 40s and 50s. Indigenous presence blocking progress would be common talk.
You can't tell me that he could grow up in that environment and not have passively absorbed the attitudes and beliefs.
We're all colonized. We have to make conscious decisions to think differently.
We're all colonized. We have to make conscious decisions to think differently.
And poor whites, despite their own mistreatment by the ruling class in the decades before and after the civil war, were quick to take whatever upper hand they could. To see themselves as better than Black people. Better than the Indians.
Entitled to this land even.
Entitled to this land even.
We talked with Cherokee academic and author Daniel Heath Justice about this some time ago. https://soundcloud.com/patty-wbk/elizabeth-warren-and-cherokee-101-with-daniel-heath-justice
And Rebecca Nagle has a fascinating podcast about how this is playing out before the Supreme Court https://crooked.com/podcast-series/this-land/
You love the song. I get it. It's got a great everyman vibe to it. All sharing and caring and American exceptionalism like if we could just get along
But when that exceptionalism, when that everyman stuff is predicated on Indigenous erasure?
America itself relies on erasure
But when that exceptionalism, when that everyman stuff is predicated on Indigenous erasure?
America itself relies on erasure
