Thread by @KimTallBear

Seriously? As critical race theorist Cheryl Harris showed way back in '93 , the white power structure seizes the RIGHT TO DEFINE ALL RACIAL CATEGORIES. This is what #pretendians are doing, defining the Native w/o regard for Indigenous definitions.
 essence.com/news/politics/…

& non-whites shore up white supremacy when they insist on definitions of Indigeneity forged in white supremacy. After stealing land & resources, white people & their institutions stole Indigenous children, bones, & blood. "Identity" theft is part of long line of appropriation.

if you defend her right to ID individually as Cherokee & Native (in part via DNA), you defend white supremacist rights to partition us all into (hierarchical) races, which guards access to the privileges of whiteness, Indigenous land & life that the (white) nation state claims.

And please don't tweet the inanity of her apology to me. Decolonization involves, as Tuck and Yang write, the RESTORATION OF INDIGENOUS LAND AND LIFE. apologies are just words. Give #LandBack, #BonesBack, #BloodBack, & respect for Indigenous Peoples' definitions of who we are.

the other clueless response to critiques of Warren's #pretendianism is the classic "there are more important issues" to worry about. as if all of these forms of theft of land, water, resources, blood, children, & Indigenous self-governance capacity are not mutually sustaining.

e.g. i heard about a (no doubt white liberal) scientist asserting that "the only good Indigenous governance is NO Indigenous governance" (science as the Wild West). Attacking Indigenous peoples' rights to self-govern is a form of social death that aids our actual physical death.

this was the entire 19th & 20th c. US "civilizational" project, federal policies first of extermination, then assimilation. a coordinated policy program designed to suppress Indigenous governance capacity while stealing natural & biological "resources," including actual children.

When I point out the appropriation of Indigenous ppl’s blood to produce the science Warren used to make DNA claims, i get #ButTrump! (i.e. “more important things to worry about”). Actually, it’s #AndTrump. Trump and Warren are both protagonists in the white supremacist story.

p.s. i am not an analyst of settler-colonial state party politics. i'm an Indigenous Studies scholar who wrote a book on the racist foundations of the idea of "Native American DNA." I analyze race and anti-Indigeneity in the US & Canada. i've followed Warren's story since 2012.