āthe most american take on this websiteā
You know whatās wild about that reply?
I was not speaking as or about āAmericaā¢.ā I was not defending the United States. I was not doing patriotic chest beating.
I was talking about Indigenous history on Turtle Island and the way Europeans casually erase it when they say things like āEurope is old and America is big.ā
And the response was to flatten that into ālol Americans.ā
So uh. Hey Euros. Maybe do not respond like that when an Indigenous person is talking about European colonization. It is not a good look!
What you are doing when you dismiss that critique as āAmericanā is exactly the thing I was criticizing.
You are centering the United States as the beginning and end of the conversation. You are treating the continent as synonymous with the colonial nation state. You are acting like any defense of pre colonial history is automatically nationalism instead of what it actually is, which is pushing back against erasure.
That reflex is your racism showing. It is not cute. It is not clever. It is a continuation of colonial framing.
Context, since apparently that matters: my mother was a Norwegian Jew. My father is Indigenous North American and Salvadoran. I grew up between Europe and the rez.
I have lived in both places. I have seen how Europeans talk about Indigenous North America when they think they are being enlightened and cosmopolitan.
And I have seen how quickly that enlightenment evaporates when Indigenous people push back.
When I say that North America was already ancient before Europeans arrived, that is not an āAmerican take.ā
It is an Indigenous one. It is a historical one. It is a factual one.
The idea that history on this continent āstartsā with colonial settlement is a European narrative.
It is baked into how the phrase āEurope is old and America is bigā functions. It positions Europe as the seat of time and civilization and Turtle Island as raw space. It quietly suggests that what existed here before colonization was not history in the same way.
So when someone reduces that critique to ālol typical American,ā what they are really doing is refusing to engage with Indigenous history as its own thing.
They are collapsing it back into the colonial state. They are saying, intentionally or not, that this conversation only makes sense as nationalist chest thumping.
There is also something deeply ironic about Europeans mocking āAmerican takesā while standing on centuries of exported empire.
Europe did not just influence the world. Europe carved it up. Europe redrew borders, erased nations, renamed mountains and rivers, and then wrote textbooks about how it discovered places where people were already living.
If you cannot tell the difference between American nationalism and Indigenous resistance to erasure, that says more about your framework than it does about me.
I am more connected to my Indigenous roots than almost anything else in my life.
I was raised in that culture. I was bounced between overseas Europe and the rez growing up. I know how both sides talk. I know how European superiority can hide behind progressive language and sarcasm.
I know how easy it is for Europeans to treat Indigenous history as aesthetic, as mythic, as tragic, but not as real and continuous and older than many of their own national configurations.
So no, this is not āthe most American take.ā It is me saying that Turtle Island had nations, trade networks, agriculture, astronomy, architecture, governance, and living cultures long before Europeans showed up.
If that makes you uncomfortable, you desperately sit with that.
If your first instinct when an Indigenous person critiques colonial framing is to dismiss them as āAmerican,ā maybe interrogate why.
Because from where I am standing, what I see is classic European racism dressed up as smug detachment.
The assumption that your framework is the default. The assumption that history only becomes serious when Europe enters the scene. The reflex to belittle instead of listen.
You cannot claim to be worldly and progressive while still centering Europe as the axis of time.
And you definitely cannot mock Indigenous people for refusing to accept colonial amnesia as normal.
And Europeans: You need to hold your own accountable when this happens. Because it is racism, and racists don't care when the people they're being racist towards push back alone.
