Magpie Messenger Issue 1: The Answer to Authoritarianism is Sovereignty
As Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island, we’ve dealt with colonizers for more than 500 years. We know what attacks on our Sovereignty look like, and we know what it means to have our land stolen, to experience ongoing and deliberate genocide, all while our rights are attacked and our families torn apart. The world is reeling from the United States’ seemingly sudden “descent into facism,” but for the original Peoples of this land, it’s nothing new. In fact, the very idea of being “American” is predicated on the silencing and erasure of Indigenous voices and bodies. We could point to Ann Coulter’s recent statement, “We didn’t kill enough Indians” to see the ongoing American legacy of anti-Indigenous, genocidal rhetoric. We also see this in nameplaces, in history, in museums, and in popular culture. We even see and experience it in Liberalism, as well as the very social and environmental movements purporting to create change. Settler-colonialism isn’t a thing of the past. It’s alive and well, most visible in the United States’ current iteration of authoritarianism.
We know the brutal parts of our own history under colonialism: forced labor, abusive and assimilative boarding schools, criminalization, military force used against our Peoples, forced sterilization, and missing and murdered Indigenous Women, Children, and Peoples.
Because of this history and our unique relationship to settler-colonialism on Turtle Island, we are aptly positioned to share a perspective that transcends partisan politics and shines a light on what the United States truly is: a settler-colonial and Imperialist force.
We could list the evidence piece by piece, but the current administration’s actions toward this end are seemingly innumerable. Some examples include attempts to resurrect the Insurrection Act in a clear ploy to enact martial law. Stripping back decades of hard-won regulations to gain uninhibited access to our natural resources. The criminalization and terrorism designation of anyone who resists the policies and actions of this administration. By silencing dissent through incredibly violent means, this administration has instilled deep fear in the masses. This fear contributes to an unwillingness and reluctance to push back, which only reinforces the administration’s power.
We also see this administration taking steps to create an uneducated population, which is easier to control. We see them working diligently to defund public media, increase their own propaganda, and establish other efforts to keep the populace under-and ill-informed. Hateful rhetoric is slowly poisoning the entire social milieu.
We also see this administration defunding DEI and dismantling public schools and the Department of Education as a whole, to further keep the masses uneducated about the histories and legacies of slavery and genocide. This increases the likelihood of racial violence targeting Indigenous, Black, & Brown communities while white supremacists and insurrectionists are let off the hook.
We also see them defunding important scientific and climate research to prevent us from questioning their so-called energy crisis and the planet-wide ecological catastrophe unfolding in front of our eyes. We see them declaring a false border emergency and instituting widespread ICE raids as smokescreens for rampant colonial violence against our Relatives south of the so-called border, who are Indigenous to these lands and held relationships with many tribes before false colonial borders were imposed on us.
The administration is doing all of this while ignoring the courts and continuously violating any purported separation of powers. The entrenchment of widespread fear through incredibly violent means, the silencing of dissent and erasure of dissenters, the restriction of access to education and information, and the institution of policies that enable violent people to act without accountability or reprimand are all classic tactics of fascism and authoritarianism.
As Indigenous Peoples, we are the last and greatest line of defense against unfettered resource extraction and the attempts to bend this so-called nation toward authoritarianism. The current administration knows this, and it is intentionally attacking Indigenous Sovereignty in an effort to undermine our relationship to the land and disempower our Tribes and communities to take action. In less than six months, the administration accelerated us onto a path that resembles the Termination Era, a period when the US federal government ended its federal trust responsibility and recognition of many Native American tribes.
The White House implemented a slate of Executive Orders under a “National Energy Emergency” in order to fast track permits for fossil fuel and “critical mineral” mining projects – many of which are located on or within miles of Tribal Lands and Reservations. A process that was already designed to strip Tribes of approval power now has no meaningful consultation, let alone any kind of tribal consent. The administration is also rolling back the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and instituting extreme budget cuts to tribal programs. Additionally, they have significantly reduced the open public comment period for industrial projects from the typical 90 days to often 30 or less. All in an effort to fast-track resource development, reduce public dissent, and limit tribal input. By eliminating the amount of time Tribes and the general public are given to assess a proposal and intervene, the administration is directly attacking our sovereignty and constitutionally-enshrined treaty rights. The administration is also advancing Green Colonialism by fast-tracking and increasing permits for lithium and other mineral mining projects, in addition to other false solutions like carbon markets and nuclear facilities.
Green Colonialism is intertwined with the techno-feudalism being embraced by this administration and its tech industry supporters. Under this new economic order, traditional capitalist markets are replaced by digital platforms controlled by a handful of powerful tech companies, creating systems of dependency that resemble European medieval feudal structures. Regular people don’t own the means of production or the data they generate, and are instead bound to companies and institutions in ways that limit their mobility and autonomy. Meanwhile, Mother Earth is threatened by the massive data centers being built to support the growth of Artificial Intelligence and cryptocurrency platforms.
This administration’s recent proposal to tie undocumented immigrants to their employers, essentially forcing them into labor arrangements they cannot easily leave, echoes this feudal logic. It reimagines human beings not as autonomous people but as assets assigned to economic nodes, with loyalty enforced through legal precarity. This vision aligns with the administration's entire worldview: power concentrated in the hands of the rich, with the rest of us rendered into modern-day serfs, locked into systems with no clear path to freedom.
It’s too late for us to vote our way out of this problem, even if that were ever possible. There isn’t a major political party that would have protected us the way we can protect ourselves. The truth is, electoral politics are a false solution because the idea of a true democracy, like the iconic model of the Haudennosaunee Confederacy, does not exist in the United States government. From the very beginning of the colony, the “founding fathers” did not even trust their own communities to make decisions. Voting was a privilege granted only to wealthy white men, and that legacy continues today in the form of the electoral college, gerrymandering, voter purges, electoral funding campaigns and other forms of electoral discrimination targeting Indigenous, Black, Brown, and poor people.
Ultimately, however, Indigenous People are not simply an ethnic group within one country or another. We are Sovereign Nations that exist independently of and in treaty relationships with others, including the United States. This puts us in a unique position to leverage our political status and assert our Sovereignty while also advocating for others.
As the original caretakers of this land, we have fought oppressors like the current administration since the moment colonizers first set foot on Turtle Island. We have the roadmap to survival, and we know how to live in right relationship with each other, the land, and all life.
Every time this administration takes something from us and we don’t push back, they gain more ground. We need to realize the people are the power. We must collectively stand up and fight back at every oppressive, tyrannical, and authoritarian moment to show all colonial and imperialist forces that we won’t back down.
If we want to be Sovereign, we need to act Sovereign. While Sovereignty is inherent to Tribal Nations and Indigenous Peoples, we know that Sovereignty is not something our colonizers explicitly recognize or respect. It is our responsibility to demonstrate our power at every turn. It’s the only way to protect our communities, our Land, our Peoples, and all life.