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| The Seven of Pentacles card from The Modern Way tarot. A person stands with their hands resting on a staff. They are looking down towards the ground. A mounded object (in other images, it is understood to be a bush or shrub) holds six Pentacles in its foliage. A seventh Pentacle rests on the earth by the person's staff. |
What value(s) of "sovereignty" have I, an immigrant-settler and naturalized citizen of the United States of America, perpetuated against the Indigenous nations and people who hold what I recognize to be the original claim to the land on which I have lived?
What are the material costs of my participation in settler colonialism and white supremacist displacement of Indigenous nations and people?
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On May 10, 2024, the Sun moved into the third decan of Taurus, that which is ruled by Saturn. In the fixed Earth sign of sustained material reality, Saturn’s significations of time, structure, and consequences evoke questions of historical losses tied to land as a political entity**.
** I use the term “entity” because it moves towards the framework I personally use as an animist and also within the more general shift Jacqueline Keeler encourages in her writing that challenges our tendency to think of the land as a resource/object to extract, and instead as a living entity to be respected, protected, and in lived with in active relationship.
My keywords for the Seven of Pentacles and Saturn in Taurus are best encompassed by citing a direct quotation by Jacqueline Keeler from her book, Standoff: Standing Rock, the Bundy Movement, and the American Story of Sacred Lands: “[Indigenous peoples’] traditions cannot just be intellectual concepts… they must be lived and afforded space in the real world.”
Jacqueline Keeler is a Diné/Ihanktonwan Dakota journalist and writer living in Portland, Oregon. She is editor of the anthology Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears and has contributed to many publications including The Nation, Yes! magazine, and Salon. Her book Standoff: Standing Rock, the Bundy Movement, and the American Story of Sacred Lands was published by Torrey House Press in 2021, and is the focus of this decan’s post.
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| book cover of Standoff: Standing Rock, the Bundy Movement, and the American Story of Sacred Lands by Jacqueline Keeler |
From the cover copy of Standoff:
“[In 2016], Native young people and elders pray in sweat lodges at the Océti Sakówin camp, the North Dakota landscape outside blanketed in snow. In Oregon, white men and women in army surplus and western gear, some draped in the American flag, gather in the buildings of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. The world witnessed two standoffs in 2016: the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s protest against an oil pipeline in North Dakota and the armed takeover of Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Refuge led by the Bundy family…”
In Standoff, Keeler illuminates how “the Bundy takeover of Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Refuge and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s standoff against an oil pipeline in North Dakota are two sides of the same story that created America and its deep-rooted cultural conflicts.” Through personal, intergenerational life-writing and deep, clear journalistic practice, Keeler writes a crucial text that ultimately interrogates the foundational meanings of citizenship and sovereignty, and makes absolutely clear the role that white supremacist settler colonialism plays in our formation of our identit(ies) as citizens and members of nations.
While this book so far has been the most in-depth and energized reading experience I have had in the past month, at the start of this writing period I entered (and have yet to exit) a period of debility that has impacted my ability to write as much as I wish I could for this particular book and decan. What follows is a briefer post for Standoff, comprised of seven quotes from each of the 7 chapters followed by a reflection question I consider important to carry into my daily life as a result of having read this book.
One:
“The Océti Sakówin encampment was for a moment the dream realized, the dream that the organizational principles of our traditional camp circle societies might once again have a place in the world. / Our traditions cannot just be intellectual concepts, written about in academia or social media posts, they must be lived and afforded space in the real world. Capitalism has introduced the idea that without serving a profit motive that benefits the captains of industry life, ways like ours should not be given any space to exist.” – Keeler, Standoff, pg 32
The cultural norm in the United States encourages intellectual abstraction of societal and political practices in general, and also the specific and annihilative abstracting of the cultural and societal existence of Indigenous nations and people who live here today. As an immigrant-settler living in the United State, what is one practice I can integrate into my practical, everyday life that recenters the people who were the original rightful citizens of the land I live on today?
Two:
“One white guy felt compelled to respond to the tweet of the photograph of Wounded Knee by saying it was okay because Indians were not “noble savages” after all, and did far worse to each other, so we should stop remembering or feeling bad about what happened. In rejecting one stereotype, he had embraced something even worse. The notion that unless Native people are better than any other people in the world they do not deserve basic human rights is the most dehumanizing thing anyone can say to alleviate white guilt. / …To Americans like this gentleman, Indigenous people and our tragedies are annoying reminders of the actual price paid for this land, reminders that must be silenced.” - Keeler, Standoff, pg 88
Regarding the fact that Native Americans suffer the highest rates of death by suicide and murder, Keeler writes that “this ongoing body count is the real price our women, children, elders, and men pay every day for the continued existence of the United States. These are small daily massacres–the body count did not end at Wounded Knee in 1890.” – Keeler, Standoff, pg 90
“A ‘humanness’ based in profitability absent a relationship to the land” (Keeler) is the unacceptable result that, for centuries, has been “purchased” with the harm, death, and cultural losses of our most marginalized peoples. What is one material action I can take today that participates in a culture of reparation and care towards the Indigenous nation whose land I live on?
Three:
“History shows that stories, coupled with power, can make dreams reality.” – Keeler, Standoff, Chapter 3
“Families’ stories (whether Dakota or Mormon) reflect and transmit not only the unique nature and particular cultures of each people but also the philosophical underpinnings of the intergenerational struggle to survive–both materially and politically.” – Keeler, Standoff, Chapter 3
In Standoff, Keeler reads colonizers’ relationship to the land, in addition to the relationship Indigenous nations have to the land. Estrangement is a form of relationship, too. So is having stolen something. Settlers do live with the consequences of these relationship statuses even if we would prefer not to acknowledge these consequesnces, and we are responsible for the relationship we have with the land (based on extractive theft) as well as the relationship we could work to transform the relationship into (based on reparation, amends, and equity).
As an immigrant settler living in the United States of America, what is the origin point of the story of my relationship to the land I live on? I once might have thought it began with my life as an individual immigrant-settler--how can I actively acknowledge that the beginning exists far, far, far back through history, so that the story acknowledges the Indigenous nation and its people who lived here before their land was taken?
Four:
“Treaties are international agreements entered into only by sovereign nations. The United States does not make treaties with its citizens or random groups of people. Ratifying treaties with the Great Sioux Nation meant the United States recognized the sovereignty of the Great Sioux Nation… Signing a treaty does not extinguish sovereignty; it’s an act of sovereignty.” – Keeler, Standoff, Chapter 4
The easement granted to build the DA Pipeline amounted to a violation of international law, as the land the pipeline was planned to be built on was unceded Native land. The horrific violence that was enacted upon Standing Rock protestors–including launching attack dogs at unarmed Native protestors–was a clear manifestation of how racism upholds the colonial violation of Native sovereignty, given how the Bundy protesters threatened to fire guns at federal employees and were responded to not with violence, but with withdrawal of federal forces. When racism is a systemic force that perpetuates the violation of international human rights, antiracist reparations are absolutely and undeniably in order.
What is an amends process I can participate in on a regular basis that acknowledges and affirms the sovereign rights of the Indigenous nation whose land I am living on?
Five:
“This history of violence begs the question, what was Manifest Destiny? What was the United States of America built on? The image the term calls to mind for many Americans is the 1872 painting “American Progress” by John Gast of a blond female figure in Roman garb leading American pioneers into the West and bringing progress in the form of technological innovations like the telegraph, trains, and ships while buffalo and Plains tribes flee before her. To many Americans, until fairly recently, this image symbolized the civilizing of the savage and poorly utilized continent, and the advancement of humanity… This image also illustrates that the price of this progress would be genocide and the entitlement required to believe that everything here, everything belonging to the nations of people that already were here, even their very lives, were free for the taking. The question facing more recent immigrants and each new generation born into this present state of affairs is: Will they continue to partake in this barbarism?” Keeler, Standoff, Chapter 5 [italics mine]
As an immigrant-settler (especially as one who became a naturalized citizen) of the United States of America, I am complicit in the inherent violence of the ongoing occupation of Native lands. To meaningfully change my role within this history of violence, to live in amends instead of in complicity, what old ideas, beliefs, and assumptions about my identity as a “citizen” need to be faced, reckoned with, and transformed?
Six:
“I return to the peaceful Cowboy Indian Alliance in South Dakota and Nebraska as a counter to the armed and primarily white standoff at the Bundy ranch. This coalition of Native American and white landowners created a giant crop art in a Nebraska cornfield that read “Heartland #NoKXL.” Canté is the Lakota/Dakota word for heart, and it makes sense to me that such an unforeseen collaboration would be in the heart of Maka, our mother. That it would be my Yankton Dakota Sioux relatives and white farmers and ranchers from South Dakota and Nebraska who would be leading the fight is surprising–yet still a logical consequence of what a relationship to the land, to our mother, would nourish.” – Keeler, Standoff, Chapter 6
After further researching the Cowboy Indian Alliance in South Dakota and Nebraska, what lessons of futurity can I learn from the history of this alliance? How does this alliance between communities who might not otherwise have aligned with each other impact my understanding of working towards right relationship, and how does it impact my understanding of community-building as an active process that I can participate in?
Seven:
“I went back the winter of 2018 to Standing Rock. Visiting the site of the former village, it was hard to believe it was ever there. With the light layer of snow on the ground, I couldn’t even make out where flag row had been, where hundreds of flags of tribal nations had once flown and flapped in the dappled Indian summer breeze. It seems like a dream now. The meadow was pristine. The only remaining visible sign was a blue “No Trespassing, United States Property” sign, reattached upside down on the barbed wire fence near the road with the words “Stolen Land” written over it in black marker.” – Keeler, Standoff, pgs 235-236
I describe myself as Asian American, because I believe that my racial identity cannot be separated from political ecosystems of power, historical oppression, and all the stories of all my cousins in this land and all lands. To be Asian American is to be involved in political history and political futures. This identity catalyzes and supports my efforts to reimagine my citizenship as something that cannot be defined by any governing body, any state, any law, but instead must be defined by my relationships with and responsibilities to other people and communities. I can redirect the focus of my citizenship to the urgent, material ways in which we are all connected through space and time, distance and history. For this reason, I emphasize again and on each day forward that I am an immigrant-settler and naturalized citizen of the United States of America, and I claim my responsibility and right as an Asian American to say it:
Land Back. May all peoples living under occupation receive liberatory care and support in their human fight to live free.
Where is one area in my life where I would like my most truthful and just definition of “citizenship” to be deepened through action? What will I do to make it so?
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Closing questions:
How do you define citizenship in your life?
To what extent does this definition of citizenship rely on the validation of a governing state?
To what extent does your definition of citizenship acknowledge the sovereign rights of other people(s)?
What stories form the foundations of your definition of citizenship?
What is a story you would love to tell in the future about your citizenship?
What are some obstacles that are in the way of that story existing yet?
What is one action you can take today to affirm the future of that new story of your citizenship?
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