Inspired by the 2010 People’s Agreement written in Bolivia and as a reaction to the Green New Deal’s lack of focus “on Indigenous treaty rights, land restoration, sovereignty, self-determination, decolonization, and liberation,” the Red Nation published The Red Deal in 2019 as a political program to liberate Native Americans and to tackle the climate crisis. As Native working-people have been at the forefront of struggles against fossil fuel expansion and with the ubiquitous seizure of Native land for profit, the national question is posed to the climate movement and the working-class as requiring an urgent response. What Marxists call the “National Question” which is fundamentally about the unresolved conflicts and debates about the rights, borders, and states of nationally oppressed people, is essential to the fight for Native sovereignty and vital to understand in order to create a planet that can support future generations.
Land Back
For the Red Nation, “The path forward is simple: it’s decolonization or extinction. And that starts with land back” (7). The Land Back movement was popularized during the #NODAPL protests at Standing Rock and has spread with many tribes purchasing land granted to them by US treaties. Despite the popularity of this demand, there is disagreement about its meaning. Some argue that land back means that national parks would be managed by a “consortium” of Native tribes. For others, Land Back means transferring deeds to respect Indigenous rights, ensuring food independence, and housing. According to the Native American Organization, the NDN Collective, land back is “the reclamation of everything stolen from the original peoples.”
The Red Nation, a coalition of Native and non-Native organizers based in Albuquerque, New Mexico is “dedicated to the liberation of Native people from capitalism and colonialism.” According to them, “Land back means the return of just relations between the human world and the other-than-human world.” They say land back can be won by overhauling Federal Indian Law which would undo the dominance of colonial relations. Then indigenous laws and governance would enforce treaties which would lead to a relationship to the land based on “collective well-being” (29).
The author of The Red Deal argues that you can only wage class struggle if “Indigenous land repatriation is taken seriously as a precursor” (110). This argument claims that the capitalist state can be reformed in order to give land back. Yet Lenin explains in State and Revolution, that the state exists to protect the private property and rule of one class: “According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of ‘order’, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.” The state arose to handle antagonisms between classes with unresolvable contradictions and to protect the property of the ruling-class. The capitalists will fight any attempt to reform the state in order to improve the lives of the masses including crushing any movement that threatens their rule such as one that demands a redistribution of land.
Origins of the First Class Societies and the Birth of the State
Before the rise of class societies, mobile societies were dependent on hunting and foraging for survival, and there were no distinctions in wealth, yet there was scarcity. Needing to improve the collection of resources pushed people to create new plots and after settling onto land, people claimed land as private property. As private property dominated, two classes arose, one with and one without property. As agricultural production progressed through technology, surplus was created, and a group of people could exist on the product of other people’s work. A class began to control the production and dispensation of wealth in society and acquired private wealth at the expense of the majority. This ruling-class began seeing itself as distinct and cultivated a belief system that they used to rule others which reflected their interest. Eventually, a state arose, placing itself above society, representing the interests of the ruling-class in order to keep the conflict between classes “in the bounds of order” and to subjugate the exploited class.
The monopoly of landed property is a historical precondition for the capitalist mode of production and remains its permanent basis. Marx explains in Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, “Another prerequisite [of wage labor, and one of the historic conditions for capital] is the separation of free labor…from the means and material of labor. This means above all that the workers must be separated from the land...” Capitalist accumulation was based on extracting surplus labor and therefore profit from the labor force employed by capitalist enterprise. This was brought about by separating peasants and Native Americans from their means of production, land, so that they had to become workers for the capitalist system. This destruction of pre-capitalist modes of production while transforming producers into wage-laborers, also transformed the means of survival and production into capital.
Thus, ending the rule of private property requires smashing the state and replacing it with a worker’s state to suppress the bourgeoisie and eventually this “special force for suppression” becomes no longer necessary and it withers away. Instead of fighting to smash the state, The Red Nation calls for fighting for “non-reformist reforms'' through a mass movement to reduce the power of the state “either by fire or a million small cuts” to guarantee indigenous sovereignty. Lenin explains in the “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination'' why self-determination can not be won through reforms: “The domination of finance capital, as of capital in general, cannot be abolished by any kind of reforms in the realm of political democracy, and self-determination belongs wholly and exclusively to this realm.” Fighting for reforms such as a higher minimum wage are important because winning them will not only improve lives but also build powerful movements that challenge capitalism and strengthen our fighting capacity, yet without tying these demands to a socialist society, the market forces of private ownership will remain intact and exploitation of the land for profit will continue.
Even if vast portions of land were given back to Native people, this would not fundamentally resolve the primary conflict between classes but reproduce it in albeit a different way-likely leading to a strengthening of the Native American tribal leadership who would control this land. Without fundamentally seizing the means of production via a worker’s revolution, the exploitation of workers in order to extract “surplus value” or profit would continue and wealth would remain in the hands of one class at the expense of another.
Origins of the Oppression of Native Americans
The primary accumulation of capital in the US began with the destruction of pre-capitalist modes of production and then labor was transformed into a commodity to be purchased and used by capitalists. When the British arrived, they attempted to enslave Native Americans and force them to work on their sugar, cotton, and tobacco plantations to enrich themselves. Yet upon arrival, 90% of the Native American population died from European diseases, they frequently escaped capture, and defended their land making it difficult to reduce them to plantation bond laborers. Therefore, the colonial elite killed and contained Native people and looked first to white indentured labor to solve their labor shortage. Yet the death rate as a result of over-work and mistreatment pushed colonizers to look to Africa for a free labor source.
The trans-atlantic slave trade became a large capitalist undertaking in the seventeenth century when sugar became the primary cash crop throughout the Carrbbean and South America. This quickly sped up the need for labor which was supplied from the importation of 12 million Black people enslaved and shipped to the Americas. The goals of colonization of Indigenous land were profit, to eliminate their economic base, encourage private property, and force the assimilation of Native Americans into the developing capitalist world market.
The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and the National Question
When analyzing the call for land back, it is essential to look at a specific nation to develop a concrete understanding. According to oral tradition, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was formed after the “Peaceamaker” (Huron) persuaded the Iroquois tribes: Onondaga, Mohawk, Cayuga, Oneida, and Seneca around 1570 who were at war in New York state, to join together in a league which became one of the most influential in pre-colonial and colonial North America.
The Iroquois defended their land against colonizers with a force of 12,000 people. For 130 years after the founding of the League, the Haudeonosaunee expanded their territory to access beaver to monopolize the fur trade. After settling in New York in the 1600s to seize the fur trade, the English and Iroquois established the “Covenant Chain,” an alliance where the British gave the Iroquois guns in exchange for accepting Iroquois’ rule between the Hudson and Mississippi Rivers. By 1700, the Iroquois conquered the main indigenous nations and their territory extended from the Virginia colony to the St. Lawrence and they seized control of Illinois country.
In the 1700s, in an effort to win support and divide the Haudenosaunee, Britain strengthened ties to the Mohawk and Seneca, eventually convincing them and the Onondaga, and Cayuga to join them in 1776 while the Americans strengthened their relationship with the Oneida and Tuscarora. With the onset of attacks by the British and their Native allies in 1777, the confederacy’s unity ended when the Oneida and Tuscarora sided with the British.
The American Revolution laid the political foundation for unbridled capitalism based on industrial production. Facing this development of productive forces, the Iroquois, weakened by the fur trade, could not defeat the Europeans. George Washington ordered a scorched earth campaign to “not merely overrun, but destroy,” the Iroquois’ tribes’ alliance with the British. Beginning with 8,000 at the start of the Revolutionary War, less than 5,000 Iroquois survived and at the war’s end, and the wealthy of New York stole their land and committed genocide.
The US mainly stole indigenous land through forcing treaties upon them under threats of murder and through bribery. In 1784, the US Congress signed the Fort Stanwix treaty where after apprehending six Iroquois and in exchange for $11,500 in goods, Iroquois land in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Western New York became the property of the US government. By 1820, the profits from selling Iroquois land made up half of New York state’s earnings. With the Indian Removal Act of 1830 or “The Trail of Tears,” the Iroquois were driven to southeastern Kansas and enclosed on reservations.
The National Question Today: Land Back or Greater Autonomy?
There are many complicating factors which make the demand for self-determination not the primary demand we should be putting forward to end the exploitation and oppression of Native people. Native Americans in the US are part of more than 500 tribes and they do not share a common language or one culture. Almost all First nations have overlapping land claims based on treaties that were enforced upon them by European colonizers/the US government. Tribal councils established under the Indian Reorganization Act are considered vehicles of tribal sovereignty; they act as governments but they are dependent on federal funding and authority. Yet, indigenous rights are ignored when they conflict with securing profits for the capitalist class.
Forcing Native Americans to integrate into the capitalist world market gave rise to class divisions and a layer of bourgeois Native Americans was admitted as a misleadership class to maintain social control and prevent rebellion by the Native American working-class and poor. Covid-19 and rising inflation has exasperated inequalities. Native American poverty is double the national average. Indigenous people experience inadequate housing, high incarceration rates and many students attend underfunded schools.
As a Marxist, I uphold the right of an oppressed nationality to self-government. Yet, giving land back to Native people would leave the market forces of private ownership intact, continue the exploitation of workers in order to extract profit and wealth, although distributed to a stronger tribal ruling-class, would still be generated by exploiting workers’ labor and the land. On most reservations, including the Seminole’s, tribal council members determine how land is apportioned which has led some to become rich at the expense of the majority.
The Osage Nation provides an important example of how land redistribution is not equal under capitalism and privileges those who have access to resources and political connections. Land given back for the Osage Nation has reinforced inequality between Native people on their 1.57 million-acre reservation where abundant oil deposits were found in the 1890s.
The Osage Allotment Act of 1906 separated the reservation from the mineral estate and determined that names written on the tribal roll would be allotted one “headright” share of the royalty earnings with shares inherited. Today, the majority of Osage people do not own headright shares and few Osage people receive most of the royalty payments with some headright shares being owned by non-Osage people. By 1939, headright owners received more than $100 million in oil and gas royalties. The conditions on the Osage Reservation with high rates of cancer and poverty show the limitations imposed by capitalism on the liberation of Indigenous people even when a tribal leadership has won their land back.
Fossil fuel expansion has reinforced class divisions where a primarily bourgeois indigenous leadership along with fossil fuel corporations have profited from the exploitation of the land and Native American workers. An indigenous, Marxist Canadian, Howard Adams, explains the reasons for the creation of a tribal misleadership class, “It is common practice of imperial governments to use middle-class native elites to provide support for their administration…After these leaders are co-opted, they become supporters of the government and of the colonial rule that suppresses their people.”
This misleadership class is a tool for the parties of big business to sow division amongst working-people and to prevent the building of a movement that could challenge the system of private property. One recent example of betrayal by this midleadership class is instructive. The chairman of the Sioux Tribe, having been recruited into this buffer social control stratum between the ruling-class and Native American working-class, told water protectors to go home at Standing Rock when many were not convinced the DAPL pipeline construction would stop in order to defend the interests of the ruling-class. Within six months of operation, the pipeline leaked five times.
The role of tribal leadership in stifling struggle and the economic benefits they receive from their rotten compromises with fossil fuel corporations continue to be prescient. The Southwest is increasingly becoming central in the US economy as the ruling class ramps up oil production and increases semiconductor factories to compete with China. Electric car companies are increasing in the Southwest as part of the tech war with China connected to the new Cold War. Last year New Mexico alone received $40 million in federal CHIPS Act funding. The US is trying to crush China’s development of AI technology and isolate its high tech sector. To compete, the Southwest increased its manufacturing output more than any other region in the last four years. Biden even has an Arizona ad for his 2024 re-election campaign; glorifying the state as a leader in investments in semiconductor manufacturing. This means our orientation as workers should be looking to organize this increasingly important workforce in this region around a set of demands that connects better working-conditions to building fighting unions in our workplaces that are well organized, and fights for more autonomy for Native working-people over their land, traditions, and culture.
A Question of Leadership and The Role of the Working-Class
The current labor leadership has unfortunately taken a mostly abstentionist approach to social struggles including for a livable planet. The AFLC-IO has come out against the Green New Deal. The labor movement needs to lead the way with economic strikes, organized nationally and internationally with concrete demands. Rank-and-file union members can create climate committees which organize escalating actions that connect the fight for a just transition to renewables to the interests of working-people, including for indigenous self-government.
We should uphold the just demands of the oppressed First Nations for greater control over their traditional lands, culture, and education. Yet, we should not demand that First Nations embrace slogans that do not correspond to their struggles for liberation. Although many First Nations, like the Dene have called for control and decisions over development on lands granted to them in treaties, their own system of government, environmental planning to protect hunting rights, mining royalties, indigenous tribes are not calling for their own nation state. These demands can be part of increasing autonomy for indigenous people but do not need to include a separate state.
The many ways Native Americans are oppressed in the US begs the question of whether “Land Back” should be the main demand of Indigenous working-class struggles. Ending the exploitation of Native people requires mass movements and a working-class party armed with a program to address all facets of society. This would include green unionized jobs, public housing, medicare for all, free, high-quality education and a much higher living wage. It means building structures that can break with the capitalist system and build a socialist society, guaranteeing land back on an equitable basis.
So long as the means of production are owned privately, the persistent pursuit of profit based on the exploitation of land will continue at the expense of workers, the poor and oppressed, and the environment for the profit of one class whether an indigenous misleadership class or a White ruling-class. Only a socialist transformation of society will allow us to produce what we need and will guarantee land rights and indigenous people to genuinely, democratically make decisions about their lives. The socialist struggle is the only way to end colonial subjugation and win liberation for Native Americans, the working-class, and the oppressed, and to achieve the revolutionary change needed to ensure a livable planet.