I'm wondering what the post you shared means by saying "cottagecore fantasies are colonial" I wish to live away from capitalistic societies, live a slower life, live sustainably and more aligned with nature, these seem like good wants. I feel like there must be something I am missing. Is it that I shouldn't have a land related wish at all on land that isn't mine? I'm genuinely curious pls help (if you have the time you are by no means obligated) have a nice day!
Even if your intentions are good or generally benign, you’d still be trying to escape capitalism via settling (yes, settling) on Indian Land, which would either be unceded & currently stolen by North American countries, or reserve/treaty land, which could potentially be chipped down by you simply being there. People are trying to live solitary lives in the woods without thinking about how their presence would affect Indigenous peoples, our land rights, or our sovereignty. Cottagecore is colonial fantasy because there’s nothing that seperates modern randos trying to do this and colonists who came to North America to do the same thing. Farming & homesteading was and IS used as a form of colonialism, which moniyaws would benefit from should they attempt to pursue it. Consider the following:
Canada would falsely advertise the Canadian prairies as “unused” land ready for the taking to European immigrants to encourage them to immigrate to Canada to replace the Plains Indian population. Like in this one, or this one, which was trying to depict the plains as being free of Buffalo and ready for cattle instead (hint: it wasn’t. there were skill plains Indians and bison around.)
Going off that, alongside the fur trade & white hunters nearly hunting the Bison population to extinction, farming was utilized as a forced way of life and assimilation to now-starving plains Natives. Our two choices were 1. starve and die off, or 2. assimilate and start farming. In Sarah Carter’s paper “Two Acres and a Cow”, she explains how Natives were set up for failure in farming by giving us shitty equipment, extreme restrictions on trading or selling produce, extreme restrictions on leaving reserves & denial of applying for credit. However, despite all this, a lot of Natives got pretty good at farming. Until white settlers complained of competition of course, and so the land that Natives had farmed was then given to said white settlers. This is why Alberta and Saskatchewan (known for our prairies and crops) have so much farmland and cropland. Because it was stolen from Natives, who got successful at it.
Despite all this, Plains Natives have been trying to decolonize and revitalize the Plains due to it being one of the most diverse, yet most endangered landscapes in the world. Prairie grasslands also absorb more CO2 & release more oxygen than trees. On top of that, the only reason the Bison populations had gone up to what they are now due to a humungous group effort by various Plains tribes across North America with bison ranches/sanctuaries. We eventually hope to be able to be nomadic or at least hunt Bison once again. Randos trying to farm & have ranches & shit kinda interferes with that. & there’d be people, of course, unwilling to let go of their ranches & farms & cottages in favour of our decolonizing (which is what’s happening NOW) despite the fact that its. Our land. This is both entitled & colonial.
In fact, there’s a whole swath of (white) people actually dedicated to stopping Bison ranches & sanctuaries in favor of farms & European ranches which. Speaks for itself.
A lot of reserves have also gotten chipped down in size due to random European immigrants and settlers just deciding to settle on reserve land without asking, so the land that they occupy suddenly becomes theirs. This happened to my reserve with some Irish hutterites that came. This absolutely does still happen, & if Natives try to contend with this the first excuse is always “But there’s PEOPLE living there! The farms???”
The government LOVES random Moniyaws who want land to farm on so much that they “give away” land to people who ask sometimes. Without asking Natives, of course. See above point. You automatically have a privileged advantage with cottagecore fantasies because it directly plays into helping colonize us & displace us from our land.
Farms are also used against Native land claims when we’re trying to legally “get back” what technically and legally should still be ours. Brazil is going through some similar issues right now.
And that’s just a few things! Again, cottagecore is inherently colonial because there’s literally no difference between it and what European settlers were doing back in the day. It plays a big part in our colonization & interferes with our efforts for decolonizing & land reclamation.
cottage core is only inherently colonial if you believe everyone lives in North America 🙄
“This site is too American” I’m literally Canadian, gave Canadian resources, & talked about Brazil. And Indigenous peoples across the globe are literally going through similar situations because of entitled white people & other farmers trying to do shit like this.
Saami people in Scandinavia are currently fighting for their rights to hunt and herd reindeer: people encroaching on their land to try and farm would have similar effects to us plains indians in North America: it gets in the way of our sovereignty.
In 2013, Mongolian herders were beaten for refusing to lease land to Chinese Farmers. The indigenous herders had temporarily leased land for an agreed limited amount of time, and when they tried to evict the farmers due to their lease being up, this happened.
Mongolian nomads are also being forced to move to the city due to their traditional way of life being threatened because of, you guessed it, climate change from greenhouse gases & farming
Agriculture was also used to colonize New Zealand & land kept being given to Europeans to farm
Same thing with Australia. Colonizers were making bank off of pastoralism on Aboriginal land, meanwhile the Indigenous population was categorized as animals. Less than 50% of Australia’s original Indigenous landscape exists due to the colonialist idea that not working the land a certain way then it’s wrong.
In 1987, White farmers owned 50% of Zimbabwe’s productive land whereas the Indigenous African population was forced to live in the least fertile land & forced to work for them. White farmers today still benefit from that. Indigenous Africans are STILL trying to get their land back.
Japanese colonists extracted raw material from Indigenous Taiwan farms, which of course, they suffered from
And if you think everything is fine and dandy if you’re British, agricultural practices in Britain are currently unsustainable. Not to mention how absentee British landlords allowed Irish farm workers to starve during the Irish famine despite being an exporter of food because they were too poor to pay for the food THEY grew.
Again, those are just a few examples! I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, farming has and IS used as a tool for colonization, and it IS inherently colonial in much of the world
The problem with this argument is the association of “cottagecore” and farming. People who want to live on land naturally and simply don’t necessarily want to farm. Many of us want to live as native peoples have and follow their practices because they are so natural. We want to reject colonial practices.
And what makes it different from what European settlers were doing is 200 years and generations of us being born here. Where do you propose we live off of land? We aren’t European. No matter what, we were born on this land. We are from this land and from this history. But what we want is to start to bring the land back to the way it was treated. To show the respect to the way natives did interact with it and to do so ourselves.
It IS different because we are in a fundamentally different time period and we cannot pretend like 200 years haven’t passed. We can’t undo what European settlers did, we can only hope to treat the history and the native people and the land with more respect.
If ppl wanna do all that then u gotta LISTEN to native people about what we’re saying about our land, which you arent right now. Just because 200 years have passed doesnt mean colonialism has stopped, it continues today, and farm core and cottagecore or whatever is a part of when when people arent taking into consideration their entitlement and privilege when trying to set up on indigenous land. Trying to live “naturally” isnt a one size fits all, and there’s still Native people trying to decolonize and “live naturally” too on our OWN land and get back our OWN land, nevermind moniyaws trying to set up anywhere they please. I propose you learn about the native people whose land you’re on, their history, their land claims, their struggles. How can you help them? How will you and your cottagecore ideals affect them? How does your privilege come into play? Does it affect any land claims that could potentially be used against them? Are there any big companies who want to exploit the area, and how might you come into play to help AGAINST that or potentially in their favor? Is there any revitalization activities going on that you might potentially hinder (ex: revitalization of the plains, replanting of trees, regrowing food, etc) or possibly help with? How does your presence affect the native people? That’s literally what this post was about: checking your privilege and realizing how cottagecore and farm core is used as a tool for colonization because it does. It doesnt matter how benign intentions are because if carried through carelessly without consideration of us, it can still (and likely will) have a negative impact on us, as shown with the multiple resources
Seriously dude. You don’t speak for all natives here. I don’t know a single one that has an issue with cottagecore. You want people to have an issue with it and you’ve really had to stretch to say “yo wanting a cottage and land with flowers and a cute kitchen is evil white man stuff”. When you know what. We all have that and I know my own gran has a kitchen like this where she prepares our traditional foods like moose and bear in it and she even thought the cottage core pics I showed where nice. She loves the herbs. When I asked her if she was offended. She asked me if I was stupid and people that had time to complain about such things didn’t have any real issues in life to focus on. So. Figured I’d share that. Again. You speak for yourself rather then make it seem like all of us support your foolishness. If any races or colour likes cottage core then let them. Seriously. Stop making other young natives look stupid. This is why we don’t get any respect.
