[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-AmIndian]: Poliandri on Cobb, 'Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message --
From: H-Net Staff 
Date: Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 11:27 AM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-AmIndian]: Poliandri on Cobb, 'Say We Are Nations:
Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887'
To: h-rev...@h-net.msu.edu


Daniel M. Cobb.  Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and
Protest in Indigenous America since 1887.  H. Eugene and Lillian
Youngs Lehman Series. Chapel Hill  University of North Carolina
Press, 2015.  316 pp.  $32.50 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4696-2480-8.

Reviewed by Simone Poliandri (Bridgewater State University)
Published on H-AmIndian (September, 2017)
Commissioned by F. Evan Nooe

Documenting Indigenous Activism in America, 1887-2015

How have Native American activists, officers, and community leaders;
Native organizations; and Native intellectuals and academics
addressed, challenged, protested, or appealed to US and international
authorities to take responsibility, recognize, or act upon
sovereignty issues that affected specific Native communities or
Native peoples in general? Daniel M. Cobb takes up this question in
Say We Are Nations, an anthology of Native-authored primary sources
sampling the history of Native American political activism between
1887 and 2015. The author presents a blend of Native voices that
offer an alternative political view to the mainstream one on many
Native-related issues that have characterized the history of federal
Native policy and politics in this time span. These issues include
nation building, the recognition of sovereignty, the respect of
treaty rights, self-government, citizenship, land tenure, the
improvement of Native people's living conditions inside and outside
the reservations, racism and discrimination, identity, and social
justice. Cobb, an associate professor of American studies at the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, grounds his expertise on
long-standing research about Native American activism that has
produced such works as his and Loretta Fowler's 2007 edited
collection _Beyond Red Power: American Indian Politics and Activism
since 1900_ and his 2008 _Native Activism in Cold War America: The
Struggle for Sovereignty_, which are known to scholars in the field,
thus making him qualified to tackle this topic.

_Say We Are Nations_ contains an acknowledgments section, brief
introduction, fifty-five documents, brief conclusion, endnotes,
bibliography, and index. The fifty-five documents that Cobb selected
are each a few pages long and are grouped into five chronologically
consecutive periods: the Dawes Act era of 1887-1924; the Indian
Reorganization Act (IRA) era of 1934-54; the termination,
urbanization, and civil rights era of 1954-68; the self-determination
era of 1969-94; and the present era, 1994-2015. This structure is
logical, effective, and reader-friendly. A longer introduction would
have allowed for a more robust framework to support the main content
of the volume; on the other hand, the author situates this work well
within the existing literature on the topic.

Cobb's stated goal for this volume is to employ reflexive and
intersubjective historiography--a recent methodological approach in
the humanities and social sciences that gives greater consideration
to the position of the author and the researcher-researched
relationships as integral parts of any scholarly product--to showcase
indigenized ideas, meanings, and perspectives on the history of
Native American politics and policies in order to provide an
"alternative narrative of Native activism" (p. 3). At the same time,
Cobb refrains from offering his own perspective on the documents, and
rather compels readers to engage in their own "intellectual
excavation ... and interpretive work" (pp. 5-6). The author opts for
an unguided direct read over a readily interpreted analysis of words
by Native activists and leaders, including Kanaka Maoli (Native
Hawaiian) Queen Lili'uokalani's 1899 appeal to US Congress to allow a
new constitution for the Kanaka Maoli Nation, Cayuga Chief Deskaheh's
1923 appeal to the League of Nations in Geneva against Canada's
aggressive assimilationist policy, Vine Deloria Jr.'s 1965 testimony
"We Were Here as Independent Nations" before the US Senate, and
chairperson of the Gwich'in Steering Committee Sarah Agnes James's
2011 call against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge.

The approach represents both a strength and a weakness of the book.
On the one hand, it constitutes a strength in that such greater
interpretive autonomy allows readers to create their own interpretive
threads in order to link the documents. Researchers will also

[Marxism] Fwd: Three Tales of Moral Corrosion | by Masha Gessen | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On a mostly different note, Chelsea Manning, the former soldier who 
spent seven years behind bars for leaking classified information, had 
her fellowship offer rescinded by Harvard. Former White House press 
secretary Sean Spicer and former Trump campaign manager Corey 
Lewandowski, who were meant to be Manning’s short-term classmates at the 
Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, still have their fellowships. 
Harvard’s decision was precipitated by a flurry of protests against 
Manning’s fellowship, including the withdrawal of the CIA director, Mike 
Pompeo, from a Harvard forum.


Let’s linger on this for a second: the head of the nation’s spy agency 
has pressured the country’s most prestigious private university into 
reversing an academic appointment. If any pressure was exerted on 
Harvard to withdraw its offer to Lewandowski, who has been accused of 
attacking a female reporter and was filmed grabbing a Trump rally 
protester by the collar, or to Spicer, who repeatedly lied to the 
American public as the president’s spokesman, it was unsuccessful. Nor, 
certainly, could any such pressure have come from quarters as powerful 
as the CIA, not even close. Any political figure who advocated that 
Harvard refuse an association with an open ruffian or a public liar 
would certainly be accused of attempting to stifle free speech.


full: 
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/09/18/three-tales-of-moral-corrosion/

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[Marxism] CLR James film feast

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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http://socialistresistance.org/clr-james-film-feast/10758 


We were stunned at the unfolding story of CLR James, the revolutionary Marxist 
from Trinidad who joined the Trotskyist movement in the early 1930s and died in 
Brixton south London as an unrepentant activist in 1989.
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Re: [Marxism] The Making and the Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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Alan

You are alive!!! (And as pedantic as ever)  How are things with you
politically?

Comradely

Gary

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 7:13 AM, Alan Bradley via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
>  Nick Fredman wrote:
> > Very much related to campaigns against monuments to Cook and others is
> what> is probably the highest profile current battle against reactionary
> > tradition, the battle to de-recognise as "Australia Day" the date of
> Cook's
> > landing, January 26.
>
> January 26 marks the arrival of the First Fleet, not Cook, of course.
> When fighting over history we need to be careful to get the history right.
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Re: [Marxism] The Making and the Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee

[Alan Bradley via Marxism]

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 Nick Fredman wrote: 
> Very much related to campaigns against monuments to Cook and others is what> 
> is probably the highest profile current battle against reactionary
> tradition, the battle to de-recognise as "Australia Day" the date of Cook's
> landing, January 26. 

January 26 marks the arrival of the First Fleet, not Cook, of course.
When fighting over history we need to be careful to get the history right.
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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It was a clean shot, after the dude threw a banana at someone.

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/09/18/25419894/witness-neo-nazi-threw-a-banana-before-he-got-socked-in-the-face

On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 12:22 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> On 9/18/17 11:59 AM, Dan Michniewicz wrote:
>
>> If you all don't want people to punch nazis, you are going to have to
>> take that message to the street I gather. This is a generalization of
>> course, but in the latest video of a guy knocking out a nazi in seattle, it
>> doesn't look like the guy doing the punching is going to be seeing this
>> counterpunch article. What I'm saying is that more groups than just the
>> ultra-left self-identified antifa think that this is OK.
>>
>
> I have no problem with individual acts like Richard Spencer or this
> asshole getting punched, even though the people doing it have to realize
> that this is a felony that might land them a year in jail. Instead it is
> the *organized* ultraleft that is imposing its tactics on the movement that
> is the problem.
>
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[Marxism] Fwd: For whom the bell tolls in Syria

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2017/9/18/for-whom-the-bell-tolls-in-syria
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 9/18/17 11:59 AM, Dan Michniewicz wrote:
If you all don't want people to punch nazis, you are going to have to 
take that message to the street I gather. This is a generalization of 
course, but in the latest video of a guy knocking out a nazi in seattle, 
it doesn't look like the guy doing the punching is going to be seeing 
this counterpunch article. What I'm saying is that more groups than just 
the ultra-left self-identified antifa think that this is OK.


I have no problem with individual acts like Richard Spencer or this 
asshole getting punched, even though the people doing it have to realize 
that this is a felony that might land them a year in jail. Instead it is 
the *organized* ultraleft that is imposing its tactics on the movement 
that is the problem.

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[Marxism] Fwd: Janet Contursi | Liberals and Ultra-leftists: A Marriage Made in Hell | Rise Up Times

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://riseuptimes.org/2017/09/10/janet-contursi-liberals-and-ultra-leftists-a-marriage-made-in-hell/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Washington State’s Great Salmon Spill and the Environmental Perils of Fish Farming | The New Yorker

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/washington-states-great-salmon-spill-and-the-environmental-perils-of-fish-farming
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi

[Dan Michniewicz via Marxism]

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If you all don't want people to punch nazis, you are going to have to take
that message to the street I gather. This is a generalization of course,
but in the latest video of a guy knocking out a nazi in seattle, it doesn't
look like the guy doing the punching is going to be seeing this
counterpunch article. What I'm saying is that more groups than just the
ultra-left self-identified antifa think that this is OK.

On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 10:14 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
>
>
> https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/18/no-antifa-this-is-no
> t-the-1930s-and-we-dont-need-to-punch-a-nazi/
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[Marxism] Fwd: John Jay College puts adjunct on leave over tweet about teaching 'future dead cops'

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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When will professors learn to abandon Twitter, at least when it comes to 
posting 140 character rants?


https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/18/john-jay-college-puts-adjunct-leave-over-tweet-about-teaching-future-dead-cops
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[Marxism] Russian Studies’ Alt-Right Problem

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
Russian Studies’ Alt-Right Problem
By Sarah Valentine SEPTEMBER 17, 2017  PREMIUM

The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., and its viral images 
of white men with torches chanting, "You will not replace us!" and "Jews 
will not replace us!" have made an indelible mark on our collective 
consciousness.


For me, a black woman and scholar of Russian literature, the growing 
visibility of neo-Nazis in this country, many of whom consider Russia a 
kind of white utopia, comes with chilling implications.


I fell in love with Russian history in high school: Catherine the Great, 
the Romanovs, the Russian Revolution. It was a land of contradictions, 
and my 18-year-old self could not resist. I began studying the language 
in college, and at first, all went well.


Then, in my junior year, I studied abroad in Moscow. I had been briefed 
on some cultural differences. I learned, for instance, that it’s 
customary to give gifts to one’s hosts, and that Russians have different 
customs for eye contact than Americans. I was not, however, warned about 
the dangers of being brown and female in Russia. I was routinely groped 
and stared at, and called a Chechen and a Georgian, groups considered 
"black" by Russians. A friend’s mother grabbed a handful of my curly 
hair and asked if she could cut it so I wouldn’t look like a Gypsy.


For those of us whose bodies are politicized no matter where we go, 
there is no such thing as 'pure' or nonpolitical scholarship. I was 
attacked on a train by a towering young man with a shaved head. He wore 
black leather and chains, and wielded a switchblade. He cornered me in 
my seat and began grabbing at my breasts and between my legs. He yelled 
obscenities at me, calling me a whore and other things I didn’t 
understand. I was only able to get away because he was so drunk he could 
barely stand. It was 1999, a time when attacks on African and foreign 
students by neo-Nazi and nationalist groups in Russia were at an 
all-time high. None of my professors had mentioned this.
Midway through my studies as a doctoral student in Russian literature it 
began to dawn on me that my professors’ obliviousness to the politics 
and dangers I faced while studying in Russia was anything but benign. 
When undergraduates I had TA’d returned one fall from their summer study 
in St. Petersburg, word got around that one of them, a young Ghanaian 
woman, had had a bad time on the trip.


My experiences came flooding back to me, and I imagined the worst. She 
had been my student the previous year, but I didn’t know her well. I 
wanted to do for her what no one had done for me, to give her an outlet 
and validate her experiences, but I didn’t know how to reach out to her, 
or if it was even appropriate.


Without mentioning the student directly, I went to my adviser and told 
her I was feeling isolated as a black woman in Slavic studies, that it 
seemed there was no room for discussions of race and discrimination. She 
explained to me that the Slavic field had always been more concerned 
with the political and cultural dynamics existing between the various 
Slavic groups (South Slavic, East Slavic, etc.) than with "outside 
concerns," and she wondered to what extent it even mattered that I was 
African-American, in this context. She had written books on feminism and 
women’s literature in Russia, and I asked her if it mattered to her that 
she was a woman, in this context. She had no reply.


In the end, I said nothing to the Ghanaian student, not sure how to 
breach the wall of silence that existed around the topics of race and 
identity.


Now, over a decade later, the conversation around race and identity in 
the field has made little progress — even as these subjects become more 
important than ever. David Duke, Richard Spencer, and other 
white-supremacist leaders have longstanding ties to Russia and Ukraine. 
According to The Washington Post, Spencer has called Russia "the sole 
white power in the world." (Spencer’s wife, Nina Kouprianovahas a Ph.D. 
in Russian history from the University of Toronto.) Matthew Heimbach, a 
white nationalist, has praised Putin’s Russia as a model for nationalism 
and antiglobalism, which is code for anti-Semitism. Anti-gay legislation 
and violence is common in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe, and has 
been praised by white nationalists in America as upholding "traditional" 
values. Identity Evropa, a group focused on reclaiming the greatness of 
European-American heritage, uses the Russian spelling for Europe in its 
name.


One of my graduate-school professors contacted me a few months ago, for 
a report on diversity 

[Marxism] Fwd: How ‘white people’ were invented by a playwright in 1613 | Aeon Ideas

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://aeon.co/ideas/how-white-people-were-invented-by-a-playwright-in-1613
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[Marxism] Fwd: No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/18/no-antifa-this-is-not-the-1930s-and-we-dont-need-to-punch-a-nazi/
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[Marxism] Inventing white people

[Gregory Adler via Marxism]

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https://aeon.co/ideas/how-white-people-were-invented-by-a-playwright-in-1613
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Re: [Marxism] The Trump-Putin coalition for Assad lays waste to Syria: Imperial agreement and carve-up behind the noisy rhetoric

[Chris Slee via Marxism]

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Further response to Michael Karadjis (part 2)

Michael quotes my statement:

"If the 'rebels' are no longer fighting the Assad regime, should they still be 
called 'rebels'?  Some former rebel groups have become instruments of Turkish 
intervention in Syria".

He accuses me of double standards, because I have not criticised the Syrian 
Democratic Forces, even though the SDF also "does not fight Assad".

The SDF has a policy of not initiating armed conflict with the Assad regime 
forces, but fighting back if attacked.

I would not criticise any rebel group that adopted a similar policy.  What I am 
criticising is the fact that some rebel groups have become instruments of a 
Turkish intervention that is directed against the Democratic Federation of 
Northern Syria.

Michael quotes my statement that:

"There has already been a 'counterrevolutionary agreement' between Turkey, 
Russia and Assad.  Last year some Turkish-backed groups withdrew from Aleppo 
city and other areas where they had been fighting against Assad's forces.  Some 
of them were transferred to the northern part of Aleppo province in order to 
fight against the SDF".

Michael disputes this, saying:  "no, they were transferred to northern 
Aleppo province to fight ISIS, not the SDF".

Turkey said its intervention was directed against both ISIS and the YPG.  But 
this was a smokescreen.  Turkey had accepted ISIS controlling a section of the 
Syria/Turkey border, including the town of Jarablus, for several years.  Turkey 
had collaborated with ISIS in attacking Rojava.

It was only after the SDF had liberated Manbij from ISIS, and was advancing on 
Jarablus, that Turkey invaded.

Turkey succeeded in blocking further SDF advances, but was unable to reverse 
the gains already made.  Turkey was warned against trying to capture Manbij by 
the US, which was worried this would divert SDF resources away from the 
campaign against ISIS in Raqqa.  However Turkey and its allies have continued a 
campaign of harassment by bombarding SDF-controlled towns (including Tal 
Rifaat).

Michael makes several references to the SDF's capture of Tal Rifaat in February 
2016.  He claims the Menagh-Tal Rifaat region is "occupied Arab territory", and 
that "The rebels [by which he means the groups allied to Turkey] have the right 
to re-take their territory from the YPG-SDF".

This ignores the fact that the SDF has a strong Arab component, and that many 
of its Arab members come from a Free Syrian Army background.

In his Marxist Left Review article, Michael mentions the violent suppression of 
the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and Harakat Hazm (both of which were regarded 
as part of the FSA) by Jabhat al-Nusra.  But he doesn't mention that some of 
the survivors of Nusra's attacks fled to Afrin, where they helped form a new, 
predominantly Arab, group called Jaysh al-Thuwar (Revolutionary Army), which 
later combined with the mainly Kurdish YPG/YPJ to form the Syrian Democratic 
Forces.

Thus the "rebel" groups allied to Turkey can not be considered the sole 
representatives of Arab people in northern Syria.  Tal Rifaat is not "their 
territory", which they are entitled to "re-take".


Chris Slee



From: mkaradjis . 
Sent: Saturday, 16 September 2017 1:13:59 AM
To: Chris Slee
Cc: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] The Trump-Putin coalition for Assad lays waste to Syria: 
Imperial agreement and carve-up behind the noisy rhetoric

Part 2 of response to Chris Slee

On Turkey's role in Syria, Chris asks:

“If the "rebels" are no longer fighting the Assad regime, should they
still be called "rebels"?   Some former rebel groups have become
instruments of Turkish intervention in Syria.”

Turkey has held back the rebels in the region it occupies in the north
from fighting Assad, just as the SDF does not fight Assad. So we could
say they are more or less on the same wavelength. Or does Chris think
whatever the SDF does is OK, they don’t have to lift a finger against
Assad to be called “rebels”, they can be far-and-away the most totally
US-backed force in Syria, which only fights ISIS and never Assad, and
still get called “rebels”, but those who went through hell fighting
both Assad and ISIS for years are immediately denied rebel status as
soon as they are forced into a compromise situation due to the entire
international intervention against them.

These are all (or mostly) real rebel forces, formed by people whose
purpose was and is trying to oust the regime. Currently they are in a
bind. But that does not make them all puppets, any more than the SDF
are US puppets due to