The anthroplogist Francesca Merlan has proposed that Indigeneity is characterized by the power dynamics between colonizers and Indigenous communities or between Indigenous groups and the state (Merlan). In Settler Memory, the political scientist Kevin Bruyneel uses this relational meaning of Indigeneity to explain the continual erasure, displacement, and extermination of Indigenous people caused by white settler colonialism. More precisely, he explores how these forms of oppression are perpetuated through scholarship, media, politics, and culture in the United States. Due to the persistent disavowal of Indigenous people in both past and contemporary American settler memory, Bruyneel poses the question of how society can refuse settler memory and what approach might be taken to insure that anti-racism and anti-colonialism (or decolonization) are fully realized.
Bruyneel’s argument regarding the present disavowal of Indigeneity is inseparable from confrontations with the past. In chapter one, Bruyneel discusses one of the most significant events of settler memory at work: Bacon’s Rebellion. In scholarship devoted to Bacon’s Rebellion, race is typically contextualized according to a white-black binary. As the binary implies, there is no space for Indigenous identity or presence to be accounted for. Many narratives about this event, then, erase the role that Indigenous people played in the white settlers’ quest for resources and power and do not center the violence and dispossession of their homelands to which they were subjected. The latter grew out of the perceived threat that Indigenous people would impede white settler “progress,” as well as their ability to practice enslavement on stolen Indigenous land.
Borrowing from the legal scholar Michelle Alexander, the chapter asserts that enslavement of black people and dispossession of Indigenous people are inextricably linked. As the event is known for its alliance between poor whites and enslaved and free black people, historical analyses of Bacon’s Rebellion often fail to focus on the fact that the goal of the collective was to drive out Indigenous peoples (23). Bruyneel later articulates that this “inconvenience” that Indigenous people posed is still an afterthought in the construction of oppression and racial hierarchy in the United States. This idea is emphasized in Bruyneel’s contemplation of America’s original sin, slavery, which could not exist without settler colonialism. Without access to Indigenous land, the extent to which the institution of slavery flourished wouldn’t have been as prominent. That said, if settler colonialism aims to grab Indigenous land for perpetual use and growth in power, the institutions of slavery, white supremacy, and the consequences of racial capitalism would be soon to follow.
Seamlessly, this line of analysis continues into the next chapter, which focuses on political memory in the context of the Reconstruction Era. In aiming to manifest power and prosperity, the political/historical memory here often produces a hypocritical stance on what it means to be free and what constitutes citizenship. While enacting violent dispossession on Indigenous communities, settlers claimed that it was their right to land that provided them safety and security as citizens. This rhetoric failed to address that this would mean depriving others’ freedom in the process. Bruyneel does address, though, that this political memory affects non-white citizens too, however, it is not by volition. Rather, it is a consequence of racial capitalism controlling the political and economic freedoms of black people and impeding the process for an imagined society in which race-class coalitions and sovereignty are respected (50). It cannot be imagined because of the violence enacted by white settler politics (i.e., Homestead Act of 1862 and Peace Policy of 1869) that disrupted Indigenous lives and traditions. Furthermore, the political memory of Indigenous populations has made it so that actions to retaliate must be radical in nature. In my opinion, arguments to rectify political and cultural corruption do not have to be peaceful as white settlers could not fully conceive peace for Indigenous and black populations from the beginning.
Next, Bruyneel further elaborates on the limitations and possibilities for an imagined society of abolishing and decolonizing the settler state. He does so through the perspective of James Baldwin, in addition to addressing the simultaneous presence and erasure of Indigenous people in settler mythology and propaganda. Bruyneel introduces James Baldwin with an unfortunate instance in which the Indigenous presence again is an afterthought. Rather, Indians are used in Baldwin’s critique as a transition from focusing on “the past” to “the present,” and one defined narrowly as revolving around the black freedom struggle. This was evident in his identification with the story of cowboys and Indians, in which the fate of the “dead Indian” is used as a prophetic tool to inform black Americans about what white supremacy and the state are capable of. Using the same American myth, Baldwin’s constant attention to Gary Cooper gives insight to what James Baldwin perceives as a model for whiteness and maintains the notions of white settler masculinity and white settler sexuality that control the sociocultural legitimacy of “Others” (i.e., non-white people). Albeit with good intentions, Baldwin perpetuates that the genocide and conquering of Indigenous people is in the past despite the shared histories of white settlers’ imposing racializing and gendered violence now and then (90-91, 104). If there is one point to be taken from this chapter, it is that you don’t have to be white to sustain settler memory. However, it is incorrect to place the blame on the individual as settler colonialism’s violent legacy is present in every aspect of life.
In chapter four, Bruyneel discusses the modern United States and the many ways that Indigenous people are absent and present in society, especially in the realm of sports teams and mascot names. Upon reading the defense for keeping mascot and team names for the sake of “tradition,” one might question the entitlement of settler privilege in these sport narratives. By focusing on keeping “their traditions,” settlers become complicit in maintaining images that portray Indigenous people as violent, even as they enact violence against Indigenous people. These acts of appropriation also fail to acknowledge the need for Indigenous agency in the realm of public representation. Instead, violence and romanticization become commodified and treated as hegemonic (115). As settler memory continues, then, so does the inability for Indigenous people to engage in self-represention in the public sphere.
The critical theorist Edward Said’s asserts that the Orient cannot name itself due to the imposition of preconceived definitions by Western imperialism (Said 29). The same can be applied to the settler representations of Indigenous communities that are denigrating, vilifying, or romanticized in nature. All the while, the naming or renaming of mascots does not urge settlers to help Indigenous communities affected by these dangerous stereotypes. The reality is that the communities subjected to these appropriated names are still fighting to protect and preserve their populations, land, culture, and their sovereignty from a militant white settler society. Past and contemporary representations of Indigenous people in sports, the military, and contemporary media make the likelihood of Indigenous erasure that much greater.
In his last chapter, Bruyneel outlines Trump’s history of violence toward Indigenous communities across three different time periods: before his presidency, during the 2020 presidential elections, and during his presidency. Before his time as president, Trump’s settler colonial aims to erase Indigenous presence were clear after he sought revenge on Indigenous American casinos, which he blamed for his business losses (148). Mirroring the anti-Indian sentiments found during Bacon’s Rebellion, Trump revealed that he too perceived Indigenous presence as a threat to his settler aims, and specifically his domination of capital. During the 2020 presidential campaign and election, Trump made his anti-Indigenous sentiments known through repeated mockery of Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” and through his idealized political memory of Andrew Jackson, a former president known for “Indian killing” and spearheading the dispossession and forced displacement of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole (141). That said, violence is an inheritance in the political memory of the United States, executed by the government and imposed onto Indigenous populations. This was apparent in Trump’s presidential approval in continuing construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and ending the protected status of the Bear Ears National Monument. Through his assault on Indigenous communities, Bruyneel argues that Trump asserted himself as a model for white settler nationalism and white settler masculinity in his attempt to “Make America Great Again” (141).
In his closing remarks, Bruyneel discusses how society can refuse settler memory through solidarity movements. Given the information Bruyneel provided, however, I feel like the triumph over settler memory seems unlikely to happen. Systems and institutions protect people in power, especially white people, all the time. Under the guise of diversity and inclusion, I feel like solidarity will be difficult to achieve not only because of the persistence of the white-black binary but also because of the immigration of new settlers from Asia, Europe, and so forth. As radical and transformative movements as described by Bruyneel can appear to be, typical conceptions of what it means to transcend settler memory continue to center notions of settler innocence and, more importantly, whitenes. Both of these implicitly work against a fuller imagining of Indigenous futures, sovereignty, and possibilities.
Works Cited
Bruyneel, Kevin. Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States. University of North Carolina Press, 2021.
Merlan, Francesca. “Indigeneity: Global and Local.” Current Anthropology, 50, no. 3 (2009): 303-333.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Routledge, 2009.