https://www.desertfest.co.uk/band/divide-and-dissolve/
"Divide and Dissolve's music is an acknowledgement of the dispossession that occurs due to colonial violence, it honours ancestors, opposes white supremacy and calls for indigenous sovereignty.
Nothing she said is wrong and it is all to be applauded. But something I realise people in the US forget, white people are indigenous too!
True white people are not indigenous to America, but they are indigenous to Europe.
This is where it gets very complicated. Native Americans are indigenous to America and Africans are indigenous to Africa. Takiaya Reed is a mix of both and can claim indigenous roots in either place.
But when she comes to England she is now the foreigner and if she insists on indigenous rights and the return of the land to indigenous people she is also arguing for the return of England to the indigenous white English.
Now this is exactly what the NAZIs said of Germany.
So its very complex isn't it. Few would argue that the near total genocide of Native Americans is not the worst crime in human history, a black mark not just against European colonists but against humanity as a whole. It is against this backdrop that humanity must somehow fashion an future that resurrects it from a pit of total evil. Takiaya Reed is quite right to stand up for indigenous rights and call out Europeans for this atrocity.
But in so doing she reflects the exact beliefs of the NAZIs who are also well known for another genocide.
There are racists who argue that Black people should not be in England they belong in Africa. When you hear Black people worship their African roots you are inclined to think that perhaps Africans should go back to this much loved land, and leave Britain that doesn't seem to be a valued place them. So there is nothing actually wrong with racists saying Black people should go home. The problem is when racists don't carry this through and bring White people home to England. NAZIs did actually do this. They wanted all Germans to come back to German lands. And they wanted Non-Germans to leave. You can't really argue with this, it is consistent and logical.
On the other hand the other problem is when anti-racists don't carry their logic through. If England is a multicultural island that welcomes all people without prejudice then it follows that the people coming to England have no prejudice either and forget about where they came from to belong with everyone else. No more nonsense African identity etc.
So there are only two choices here: either we believe that the world is a mass of homogenous people who are interchangeable and can come and go and live everywhere, or you believe that the world is composed from people with roots and culture based in various regions. The third option is nomadic tribes who do not have specific territory but carry the culture with them. Interestingly the most famous is the Jewish people who were nomadic but settled. The myth of Moses could well be a dramatisation of this radical shift from nomadic to settled and Israel becomes the settled land. I'm not entirely sure Jews have resolved this as some think that Israel remains in their hearts not as a physical place. So whether Jews are really nomadic or settled is still a contentious issue.
But anyway we can be clear that moving into a region and massacring all the people there like Jews and Europeans did is wrong.
We can also say that a new government massacring "foreigners" who have come to live in the territory is also wrong.
But when we make the choice whether humans have a right to land based on historical claims we must follow the logic through. We either give everyone this right, or no one. If Jews want Israel then NAZIs get the fatherland and Native Americans get their old hunting grounds back. Or if we deny people this then everyone loses the right to ancestral lands and identity based on place.
Them's the choices. As easy as that.
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