The week of this writing on Feb 22nd, the Trump administration ordered to evict the Native American protestors and adjacent allies on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservations. They faced National Guard and police in military gear who were to forcibly push them off treaty lands to allow the #NoDAPL to continue construction unabated. Although the previous Obama administration had promised to stop the construction of the Dakota pipeline, the protestors have continued their actions in preparation for the federal government to infringe on their legal territory regardless of the leading executive official. Lest you, dear reader, believe that the United States has historically honored its treaties (which would be a naive assumption at best), other publications of the American Left have extensively covered the bloody history of the relations between the First Nations and the United States.

There are some things one can do from the computer in regards the tribes who organized the protests at Standing Rock, but it is important to contribute on the ground to the fight of the #WaterProtectors, based in a socialist worldview. We saw this active view as Native women joined the Women’s March last month. Thus with this worldview, it is imperative that we on the Left, and those of us who are now joining the fight with the obvious fascism of the Trump administration, understand the origins of our country. Understanding and knowledge in the face of mass mythmaking and propaganda are critical to supporting the efforts of Natives to secure their sovereignty under an adminstration that flagrantly dishonors the treaties. We must understand how white Americans in general are the descendants of settlers who have repeatedly stolen and conquered land from native peoples who have always fought a war of self defense by their continuing existence. Some would say that the conquest of the First Nations was necessary to the build the United States for the better liberty of humanity, but such an outlook papers over the mountains of bodies and mutiliative process of assimilation that the First Nations have undergone.

This is no time for white guilt or complacency. If any of us have a sense of Virtue, then it is on us to unpack the legacy that we have inherited in the Amerikkkan States. This can only be done by first acknowledging that our country is one waging a war of domestic imperialism against Natives for simply committing the crime of existing despite our best efforts to erase them from our national mythology.