Voting is Not Harm Reduction An Indigenous Perspective February 2020 – www.indigenousaction.org Zine format printable PDF download: Voting
When proclamations are made that “voting is harm reduction,” it’s never clear how less harm is actually calculated. Do we compare how many millions of undocumented Indigenous Peoples have been deported? Do we add up what political party conducted more drone strikes? Or who had the highest military budget? Do we factor in pipelines, mines, dams, sacred sites desecration? Do we balance incarceration rates? Do we compare sexual violence statistics? Is it in the massive budgets of politicians who spend hundreds of millions of dollars competing for votes?
Though there are some political distinctions between the two prominent parties in the so-called U.S., they all pledge their allegiance to the same flag. Red or blue, they’re both still stripes on a rag waving over stolen lands that comprise a country built by stolen lives.
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The anarchist collective Crimethinc observes, “Voting consolidates the power of a whole society in the hands of a few politicians.” When this process is conducted under colonial authority, there is no option but political death for Indigenous Peoples. In other words, voting can never be a survival strategy under colonial rule. It’s a strategy of defeat and victimhood that protracts the suffering and historical harm induced by ongoing settler colonialism. And while the harm reduction sentiment may be sincere, even hard won marginal reforms gained through popular support can be just as easily reversed by the stroke of a politician’s pen.
If voting is the democratic participation in our own oppression, voting as harm reduction is a politics that keeps us at the mercy of our oppressors.
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Prior to settler colonial invasion, Indigenous Peoples maintained diverse complex cultural organizations that were fairly unrecognizable to European invaders. From its inception, the U.S. recognized that Indigenous Peoples comprised distinct sovereign Nations. The projection of Nation status was committed on the terms of the colonizers who needed political entities to treaty with (primarily for war and economic purposes). As a result, social organizations of Indigenous Peoples faced extreme political manipulation as matriarchal and two-spirit roles were either completely disregarded or outright attacked. The imperative of the U.S. settler colonial project has always been to undermine and destroy Indigenous sovereignty, this is the insidious unnature of colonialism.
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Katherine Osborn, an ethnohistorian at Arizona State University states, “[Indigenous] polities hold a government-to-government relationship with the United States. Thus, their political status is unique, and that means that they are not just another minority group hoping for inclusion in the U.S. political order. For indigenous communities, protecting their sovereignty as tribal nations is the paramount political concern.”
When the U.S. constitution was initially created, each state could determine who could be citizens at their discretion. Some states rarely granted citizenship and thereby conferred the status to select Indigenous Peoples but only if they dissolved their tribal relationships and became “civilized.” This typically meant that they renounced their tribal affiliation, paid taxes, and fully assimilated into white society. Alexandra Witkin writes in To Silence a Drum: The Imposition of United States Citizenship on Native Peoples, “Early citizenship policy rested upon the assumption that allegiance could only be given to one nation; thus peoples with an allegiance to a Native nation could not become citizens of the United States.” The preference though was not to respect and uphold Indigenous sovereignty, but to condemn it as “uncivilized” and undermine it through extreme tactics of forced assimilation.
Since the idea of U.S. “democracy” is majority rule, barring an extreme population surge, Indigenous voters will always be at the mercy “of good intentioned” political allies. Consolidating the Native vote into a voting bloc that aligns with whatever settler party, politician, or law that appears to do less harm isn’t a strategy to exercise political power, it’s Stockholm syndrome.
The Native vote also seeks to produce Native politicians. And what better way to assimilate rule then with a familiar face? The strategy of voting Indigenous Peoples into a colonial power structure is not an act of decolonization, it’s a fulfillment of it. We have a history of our people being used against us by colonial forces, particularly with assimilated Indigenous Peoples acting as “Indian Scouts” to aid the enemy’s military. In only one recorded instance, Ndee (Cibicue Apache) Army Scouts mutinied against the U.S. when they were asked to fight their own people. Three of the Ndee scouts were executed as a result
No matter what you are led to believe by any politician seeking office, at the end of the day they are sworn to uphold an oath to the very system that was designed to destroy us and our ways of life. The oath for members of Congress states, “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
Even if we assume that their cultural values and intentions are in line with those of the people, it is rare that politicians are not tied to a string of funders. As soon as they get elected they are also faced with unrelenting special interest lobbying groups that have millions and millions of dollars behind them and, even if they have stated the best intentions, are inevitably outnumbered by their political peers.
Voting in the colonizer’s elections keeps Indigenous Peoples powerless.
Our power, broadly speaking, does not come from non-consensual majority rule top-down man-made laws but is derived in relation with and proportion to all living beings. This is a corporeal and spiritual power that has been in effect since time immemorial and is what has kept Indigenous Peoples alive in the face of more than 500 years of extreme colonial violence.
The late Ben Carnes, a powerful Choctaw advocate, is quoted in an article about the Native vote by Mark Maxey stating, “My position is that I am not a citizen of a government who perpetuates that lie that we are. Slavery was legal just as well as Jim Crow, but just because it is law doesn’t make it right. We didn’t ask for it, the citizenship act was imposed upon us as another step in their social and mental conditioning of Native people to confiscate them of their identity. It was also a legislative method of circumventing the ‘Indians not taxed’ clause of the Constitution, thereby justifying imposing taxes. The U.S. electoral system is a very diseased method where candidates can be purchased by the highest corporate (contributor) bidder. The mentality of voting for the lesser of two evils is a false standard to justify the existence of only a two-party system. Checks and balances are lacking to ensure that public servants abide by the will of the people. The entire thing needs to be scrapped as well as the government itself.”
Voting will never be “harm reduction” while colonial occupation & U.S. imperialism reigns. In order to heal we have to stop the harm from occurring, not lessen it. This doesn’t mean simply abstinence or ignoring the problem until it just goes away, it means developing and implementing strategies and maneuvers that empower Indigenous People’s autonomy.
Since we cannot expect those selected to rule in this system to make decisions that benefit our lands and peoples, we have to do it ourselves. Direct action, or the unmediated expression of individual or collective desire, has always been the most effective means by which we change the conditions of our communities.
What do we get out of voting that we cannot directly provide for ourselves and our people? What ways can we organize and make decisions that are in harmony with our diverse lifeways? What ways can the immense amount of material resources and energy focused on persuading people to vote be redirected into services and support that we actually need? What ways can we direct our energy, individually and collectively, into efforts that have immediate impact in our lives and the lives of those around us?
This is not only a moral but a practical position and so we embrace our contradictions. We’re not rallying for a perfect prescription for “decolonization” or a multitude of Indigenous Nationalisms, but for a great undoing of the settler colonial project that comprises the United States of America so that we may restore healthy and just relations with Mother Earth and all her beings.
Our tendency is towards autonomous anti-colonial struggles that intervene and attack the critical infrastructure that the U.S. and its institutions rest on. Interestingly enough, these are the areas of our homelands under greatest threat by resource colonialism. This is where the system is most prone to rupture, it’s the fragility of colonial power. Our enemies are only as powerful as the infrastructure that sustains them. The brutal result of forced assimilation is that we know our enemies better than they know themselves. What strategies and actions can we devise to make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land?
We aren’t advocating for a state-based solution, redwashed European politic, or some other colonial fantasy of “utopia.” In our rejection of the abstraction of settler colonialism. we don’t aim to seize colonial state power but to abolish it.
We seek nothing but total liberation.
People from ohio / utah / etc middle of continent, realize how in the US u never rly hear so much about like Tajikistan? Yeah you are North America’s Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, etc.
nobody warns you this but addiction happens without you noticing and one of the first things that it attacks is your ability to care. if you find yourself using recreational drugs every day, stop and take one day a week sober. if you struggle with this or if you don't see the point of the exercise, you are likely already addicted and you need help.
nobody ever taught me the warning signs for drug addiction, only that "it costs lots of money and destroys your life!!!1" which is not helpful if you can't recognize a developing addiction in yourself.
so here's some things to watch out for with recreational drug use:
planning your day around drugs e.g "i'll give myself an extra half hour before heading out so i can get high first"
rapidly switching emotions around drugs. you love them but you hate that you love them so much. you hate the way you feel on them but you hate being sober. feeling guilty after using even when you didn't give a crap beforehand.
caring less about spending money. if you are budgeting for drugs like they are food, you are likely prioritizing them more than is healthy.
getting high to do household chores and other unpleasant things because it would suck less and be more bearable on drugs
feeling anxious or restless while sober, not knowing what to do with oneself, feeling lost or ungrounded.
thinking about doing drugs constantly even while sober. maybe it's the first thing you think of when you wake up. maybe when you're bored or otherwise have free time, drugs are one of the first things you can think of to occupy yourself with.
going to work or school while under the influence, especially if it happens regularly and if you're seeing your performance suffer as a result.
the idea of taking a 'tolerance break' sounds good to you until it's actually break time, at which point you can come up with 20 very reasonable sounding points to explain why it wouldn't benefit you actually and you should just keep doing drugs regardless.
even if you succeed at quitting the drug, you keep your dealer's number on your phone "just in case"
you pretend to be sober when you aren't. you worry about other people noticing how much time you spend high. you make efforts to hide your drug use or minimize how much other people think you're using. you're scared of other people's judgement if they were to find out.
you have mood swings laced with self-hatred, regret, financial worries, and guilt. these mood swings are then very quickly wiped away by feelings of "but it doesn't matter, i can do what i want, and clearly i'm doing just fine while using drugs frequently". news flash, if you are rapidly switching between feeling numb-ok and hating yourself more than anything because of your drug use, you are mentally ill.
yes this applies to weed. weed is a drug and you can get addicted to it like any other substance. addiction is not the same as physical dependence; it is psychological and it can happen to anyone. you are not immune to addiction.
yes this applies to Adderall. Adderall is a drug and you can get addicted to it like any other substance. addiction is not the same as physical dependence; it is psychological and it can happen to anyone. you are not immune to addiction.
Hey guys. You still should not use ChatGPT even if it only generated correct and high quality answers. The reason you shouldn't use it isn't 'it sucks at what it does' even if that is often true, it misses the point. The reason is that it's trained on stolen writing (which has always been public knowledge) and wastes unimaginable amounts of energy (also very public knowledge at this point).
The idea that you shouldn't use it solely because it gives bullshit answers only leads to people finding things it is actually good at and thinking that means it's totally okay to use it for that. I don't care about how much you don't want to write a cv yourself and how good chatGPT is at writing them. I'm sure there are things it doesn't suck at! I can totally believe you when you say it's capable of generating a decent cv in a fraction of the time it'd have taken you to write one that's half as good and took much more effort. That's not a good enough reason to use it
Ironically, I don't love your reasons either. "So if it were energy efficient it would be okay?" "If it was trained only on publicly available knowledge and writing, it would be okay?"
What about the value of human ingenuity and learning new skills? Even if learning to write a CV is somehow not useful for you throughout your life, learning to code switch and format information in a variety of ways will, and this is a step along the way. We need to stop looking for ways to voluntarily make ourselves less present in our own lives and minds.
“We need to stop looking for ways to voluntarily make ourselves less present in our own lives and minds.”
This is conservative and reactionary rhetoric btw. Used for the internet. For the printing press. pls. be careful the language you use
Actually, this tone and language policing is far more in line with conservative thought than being present in one's life by making things yourself and not relying on AI or big tech. Pointing at someone's language as being "dangerous" by labelling it with enemy terms without ever explaining or exploring why it might be dangerous is also an easy but disingenuous way of manipulating people against an idea or target without appropriate cause, it simply is bad because you said so! Saying it bigger doesn't make it more true, but I can use that rhetoric too!
If you genuinely mean well, do not tone and language police people who agree with you, discuss the contents of their arguments and how you find them dangerous. By tone and language policing, we weaken our cohesion and communication as a group as infighting unnecessarily increases and people struggle to express simple ideas. This only helps those who want to hurt us.
There is nothing "conservative rhetoric" about DIY.
The only other interpretation of "being present" is mindfulness and meditation, which is more spiritual than capitalist.
Hey guys. You still should not use ChatGPT even if it only generated correct and high quality answers. The reason you shouldn't use it isn't 'it sucks at what it does' even if that is often true, it misses the point. The reason is that it's trained on stolen writing (which has always been public knowledge) and wastes unimaginable amounts of energy (also very public knowledge at this point).
The idea that you shouldn't use it solely because it gives bullshit answers only leads to people finding things it is actually good at and thinking that means it's totally okay to use it for that. I don't care about how much you don't want to write a cv yourself and how good chatGPT is at writing them. I'm sure there are things it doesn't suck at! I can totally believe you when you say it's capable of generating a decent cv in a fraction of the time it'd have taken you to write one that's half as good and took much more effort. That's not a good enough reason to use it
Ironically, I don't love your reasons either. "So if it were energy efficient it would be okay?" "If it was trained only on publicly available knowledge and writing, it would be okay?"
What about the value of human ingenuity and learning new skills? Even if learning to write a CV is somehow not useful for you throughout your life, learning to code switch and format information in a variety of ways will, and this is a step along the way. We need to stop looking for ways to voluntarily make ourselves less present in our own lives and minds.
“We need to stop looking for ways to voluntarily make ourselves less present in our own lives and minds.”
This is conservative and reactionary rhetoric btw. Used for the internet. For the printing press. pls. be careful the language you use
at Nesvizh Castle, “a residential castle of the Radziwiłł family in Niasviž, Belarus. It is 183 metres above sea level. 1919-1945 the complex was in Poland and was considered one of the most beautiful castles in the Kresy region.” ~ Wikipedia
The Democratic Party is far from perfect but the current Republican Party has been taken over by white Christian nationalists.
Please show up to vote on November 5 and vote Harris/Walz and vote blue up and down the ballot. It’s the only way we can keep our secular democracy and work to change things for the better.
I mean are they trying to convince me to vote red? Because if Palestine is gonna get it either way but red also kills Queers™, states, and voters, that really does seem like the better deal.
The Democratic Party is far from perfect but the current Republican Party has been taken over by white Christian nationalists.
Please show up to vote on November 5 and vote Harris/Walz and vote blue up and down the ballot. It’s the only way we can keep our secular democracy and work to change things for the better.
Is this the worst timeline? Are you a wolfaboo? An unbased turbovirgin twidiot westoid, perhaps? Maybe even an SJW triggered tumblrina vro fluent in Yapanese? Are you a dank topkek tradlarp theorycel? Perchance you slid into the dms of the soyjak aislop orange man bad refucklican? Did they hit the pentagon? Did the thicc thirsttrap they/them spoopy schizoposter romaboo ghost you on read? Was the rentoid roseboy your Roman Empire, sister in christ? You thought you were the react Andy to the unspoken skibidi rizz greypilled Mr. Beast clone? Was the Groyper Truecel Troll going your 13th reason why? You had enough ropefuel from your zoosexual PDF File unaliver f3t1sh1st vro getting called out and doxxed by the Sharty?
the collective "work together to block it out signs up to block it out" and urgent "we need help" walkie talkieing from staff for backup to the location while joe in the background is talking about how "democracy has prevailed" and "democracy must be preserved" and how "we're at an inflection point in history where the decisions we make now will determine the fate of our nation and the world for decades to come" before he starts talking about trump fine people both sidesing charlottesville as his personal moral inflection point… unreal
can't embed a second video inline to a reblog but here's the moment he says on both sides. like if you can't see that this is genocide whitewashing propaganda from someone who just signed off on an additional $20B in weapons… this is not a good faith conversation
there are multiple videos from different angles & in this one you see a man reaching across two aisles to hit one of the women holding the banner on the head multiple times with his we <3 joe sign
blakekathryn
origamiaround
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