Resurgence and the Landback Movement as Mechanisms for Battling Indigenous Injustice

As Indigenous communities continue to face economic and social disparities, climate-related disasters, and dispossession, there have been significant attempts to rectify the harms of settler colonialism. Two approaches that have been proposed include “resurgence” and “the politics of recognition.”

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Mississauga Nishnabeeg activist and writer of “Indigenous Resurgence and Co-Resistance”. Simpson addresses “the politics of recognition” by examining the corrupt criminal justice system, as well as the illusion of what “justice” actually accomplishes. The settler-colonial concept of justice cannot accommodate Indigenous notions of justice because the same system that is attempting to remediate wrongdoing is the same system responsible for committing those wrongdoings. Instead of seeking validation from the government through their concept of justice, Simpson argues for Indigenous resurgence. Resurgence involves recentering Indigenous lives around grounded normativity, which includes their traditional knowledge and the rebuilding of communities and relationship with the earth. 

The Landback movement aims to return ancestral land as well as re-establishing the reciprocal relationships between Indigenous communities and environmental stewardship. Nick Tilsen, the founder of the movement, said, “When it comes to our work around democracy and challenging the rise of authoritarianism, we’ll continue pushing for structural and revolutionary change not just because these systems are responsible for the stealing of our land, but because they continue to threaten our homelands and uphold the oppression of our people.” (Source 1) The Landback Movement incorporates resurgence as a way to achieve decolonization. Reclaiming physical land is only half the battle, as it is just as important to reclaim the Indigenous identity and the culture that comes with it.

July 3, 2020, A protest blocking the road to Mount Rushmore National Park. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

Indigenous communities have faced oppression and violence at the hands of settler colonists for hundreds of years. The Black Hills are an area of great importance to the Great Sioux Nation. They believe the location is the center of the universe and their point of origin. It was legally recognized as Sioux territory in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, but the treaty was broken seven years later. Following the discovery of gold, the government forcibly seized the territory. (Source 2) Later, 450,000 tons of rock were removed from a mountain, with 90% of the mountain being blown off with dynamite to create Mount Rushmore. Not only did this cause irreversible damage to the ancestral land of the Sioux, it also caused massive changes to the natural mountainside and destroyed natural habitats. The monument requires constant maintenance to prevent further damage to it and its surrounding ecosystems. (Source 3) With each face towering 60 feet high and a combined width of 500 feet, Mount Rushmore is a ghastly reminder to Indigenous communities that white settlers knew no limits.

Sioux Indians on horseback (Photo by Heyn, 1899)

The dispossession experienced by Indigenous communities as a result of colonization has resulted in severe hardships. Most reservations are located in isolated areas, without access to human services like education and employment the unemployment rate has reached 7.9%. Without financial resources like banks and loan offices and a median income of $23,000 a year, most members of the Indigenous community cannot afford basic housing and are forced to share homes with multiple families. (Source 4) Moreover, the reservations are located in food deserts which do not provide the locals with adequate food and water and are located far from any healthcare services. This results in a multitude of health complications, with extremely high occurrences of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes in the Native elder population. (Source 5)

A family’s trailer in Wounded Knee, South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. (Photo by James Nord/AP)

There are also many climate related issues faced by Indigenous communities. Capitalism inherently exploits the earth in an endless pursuit of economic growth. Kyle Whyte, a Potawatomi philosopher, has examined how the exploitation of natural resources through oil production fields have led to “man camps” of laborers and specifically, Indigenous women being sex trafficked for the benefit of these workers. Also the effects of capitalism and climate change are being experienced more frequently by Indigenous communities. With rising sea levels in the Arctic and Pacific and the disruption of culturally fundamental species such as salmon, Indigenous peoples are becoming “climate refugees.” Whyte notes, “Climate change, then, is both a gendered form of colonially imposed environmental change, and another intensified episode of colonialism that opens up Indigenous territories for capitalism and industrialization that occurs through gender violence.”

            The injustices Indigenous communities have faced after European colonization are still present, and they are only getting worse with the cumulative effect of climate change. The United States and Canadian political systems were designed to dispossess and control Indigenous peoples and their lands. The main goal of the Landback Movement is not just to return Indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands, but also to revive Indigenous cultures and communities by implementing resurgence. Indigenous communities participating in resurgence through their governance systems and traditional knowledge will be able to grow and prosper on their own terms, free from the influence of the systems that continue to oppress them.