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Indigenous Economics: You can’t eat money + + + Site Title : Decolonizing Your Newsfeed + + + $$PLAIN_TEXT_PREVIEW$$
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DECOLONIZING YOUR NEWSFEED
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The former Lincoln Paper and Tissue LLC. in Lincoln, Maine, October 2019 |
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During the shift of seasons two October’s ago, John Banks, head of Natural Resources of the Penobscot Nation in Maine, pulled off Route 2 down Katahdin Avenue trailing along the Penobscot River. He pointed the nose of his sturdy pickup toward the beleaguered gates of the shuttered Lincoln Paper and Tissue mill. The engine idled as we parked and stayed dry from the sideways rain spitting outside. Banks told me a colorful story from years earlier about how allies had risen at dawn one day to superglue the keyholes of office doors belonging to paper executives and their lawyers. The prank was a sign of the times, he said, in the early aughts at the height of a raging river war. Dioxin levels got to be so toxic from illegal dumping in the Penobscot that the tribe filed a natural resources complaint against Lincoln Paper. It was all they could do to try and save their namesake river, the source of their creation story, but also their subsistence economy - the fish and other lifeforms feeding off the river. In more recent years, the Penobscot Nation has been locked in litigation with the State of Maine over treaty rights to the river; the tribe could lose more land and autonomy. The battle is bitter. To Banks, it’s mind-bending. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he told me, shaking his head. But of course, he could see it for it was.
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Unlike other Native nations in the U.S., Maine is the only state in the country that has control over the federally recognized tribes within its settler borders. And the state refuses to let up. It’s the kind of cyclical colonization that came to mind upon reading the recently released “Cash Back” report from the Yellowhead Institute which defines economies like Maine’s - founded upon land theft - as those requiring “a political system that operates by domination to maintain this theft” and through necessary impoverishment. (In the case of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, violence is also used.) It’s by design. |
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Just how dispossession of Indigenous lands, territories, and resources has crippled Indigenous economies like the Penobscot is not gauged in the same way as a colonial economy. “At their core, what makes them Indigenous economies is that they do not exploit that which they depend upon to live,” the report reads. But when there is an unjust depletion of Native resources, it represents the kind of stolen wealth you rarely see in traditional data sets linked to inequality. To be sure, statistics centered on the Penobscot poverty rate of 27%, more than twice the national average, speaks nothing to the 200 years of intentional dependency thrust upon them after their river - their grocery store, their pharmacy, their highway, their sanctuary - was taken away for Maine’s “paper plantations.” In Maine, Big Paper was akin to the automobile industry in Detroit up until the turn of the 21st-century. When John Banks, now 65, returned to his Penobscot homelands a few decades ago, he saw the costs that had resulted from the century-old industrialization - the pollution, the fish depletion, the cancer rates. By the time I had met up with him in 2019, the relationship between the Penobscot and the state of Maine had soured to the point where state lawmakers had introduced bills to find ways to settle the acrimony. The reconciling continues.
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A few years ago, the Penobscot Nation and its allies organized an awareness-raising flotilla beneath a banner that read “Honor the Treaties,” a slogan gaining unprecedented awareness and acceptance across America. But in Maine, even when leaders like Governor Janet Mills have had opportunities to decolonize, she’s drifted. Earlier this month, an effort to change Maine’s relationship with tribes stalled with pushback from the Mills administration over a bill aimed at ensuring the Penobscot and others the “rights, privileges, powers, duties, and immunities similar to those of other federally recognized Indian tribes.” The Penobscot, meanwhile, await a nail-biting decision from the First Circuit in their treaty rights case involving the Penobscot River. “It’s clear to me that the treaties signed in 1796, 1818, and 1820 are spelled out,” said Banks, rattling off the historic land transactions of Penobscot territory. Neither he nor other Penobscots have lost hope. As for the rusting Lincoln Paper mill - just as it was on its way to being leveled for scrap, a North Carolina company stepped in on the eve of the pandemic to reboot Maine’s deforestation. Joining in the recolonization is an unlikely partner: China. I haven’t owned a car since 2004 and commute by bike year-round. It changes how you see and live in this world. That’s what this newsletter is all about. So why are you receiving this latest edition on a Sunday? I checked in Saturday to find that no one had opened the newsletter. There’s been a glitch with Squarespace who has since corrected the problem, but it’s not the first issue I’ve had with them. Read further down to find out how my behind-the-scenes newslettering is going. It’s been a bit challenging, but you guys make it worthwhile. Hope you’re having great weekend! Jenni 🏜
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Total population percentage of the world’s Indigenous Peoples: 5% Total percentage of the world’s poor: 15% Total acreage of Indigenous territory seized by the U.S. between 1776 to 1887: 1.5B Estimated Penobscot acreage attained by Secty of War Henry Knox by “lottery”: 1M Total paid to Knox in an illegal land sale with a British financier in 1796: £107K Total government trust reserved for Penobscots upon Maine statehood in 1820: $50K Total miles Penobscot leaders marched to protest the $50K land exchange: 90 Settlement paid to the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy in a 1980 land dispute: $81.5M Total acreage of Indigenous lands taken by Canada: 1.2B Total acreage granted by the Crown to the Hudson Bay Co. in 1869: 7M Total amount Hudson Bay Co. received, in addition, for asset generation: $1.5M Approximate number of unique First Nations and Indian Bands in Canada: 600 Number of First Nations and organizations under housing debt as of May 2020: 108 Total Native historians hired to remake the 1980s video game, “The Oregon Trail”: 3 Number of “playable” Native American characters in the retired version: 0
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Native Alaskans who grew up along the Bering Sea remember hunting and fishing on the ice for at least nine months out of the year. But as Arctic temperatures rise, the ice is now dangerously thin, and the subsistence economies of the Indigenous Arctic are dramatically changing. After The Ice is a beautiful blend of cinematic verité and animation sharing the journeys of hunters like Jerry Ivanoff of Unalakleet who became a rare voice in government reports about the radically shifting coastlines of the North. The PBS series is free to stream in three bite-sized reels. You’ll wish for more. |
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“Just got done reading another informative newsletter. Is there a way to donate? Ashley, the Internet So flattered by your offer, Ashley. Dawaa’e - thank you! I get this question every so often. As many of you know, I’ve been doing some business planning to explore how to keep this newsletter free while also making it financially keen for me. I firmly believe that the resources and words I curate here in the spirit of decolonization should not live behind a paywall. With that, it’s looking like I’ll probably be hiring a consultant to help me navigate a few technicalities beyond my bandwidth. If you’d like to chip in, that’s so kind, but it’s not necessary. Just FYI, the donation page is the same one that you might have seen back in December for Giving Tuesday, so don’t be alarmed. And thank you!
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Also if you sent me an email in the last year and never heard back from me - ugh! I just came across an unknown inbox on Wednesday with hundreds of messages. This video is for you ⤵️
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The Indigenously newsletter is produced by Jenni Monet (Laguna Pueblo)
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