Red Nation Rising: From Border Town Violence to Native Liberation

__Red Nation Rising__ is the first book ever to investigate and explain the violent dynamics of bordertowns. Bordertowns are white-dominated towns and cities that operate according to the same political and spatial logics as all other American towns and cities. The difference is that these settlements get their name from their location at the borders of current-day reservation boundaries, which separates the territory of sovereign Native nations from lands claimed by the United States. Bordertowns came into existence when the first US military forts and trading posts were strategically placed along expanding imperial frontiers to extinguish indigenous resistance and incorporate captured indigenous territories into the burgeoning nation-state. To this day, the US settler state continues to wage violence on Native life and land in these spaces out of desperation to eliminate the threat of Native presence and complete its vision of national consolidation “from sea to shining sea.” This explains why some of the most important Native-led rebellions in US history originated in bordertowns and why they are zones of ongoing confrontation between Native nations and their colonial occupier, the United States. Despite this rich and important history of political and material struggle, little has been written about bordertowns. __Red Nation Rising__ marks the first effort to tell these entangled histories and inspire a new generation of Native freedom fighters to return to bordertowns as key front lines in the long struggle for Native liberation from US colonial control. This book is a manual for navigating the extreme violence that Native people experience in reservation bordertowns and a manifesto for indigenous liberation that builds on long traditions of Native resistance to bordertown violence. Contents 6 Foreword by Radmilla Cody and Brandon Benallie 10 1. "I Can't Fucking Breathe!" 14 "I Can't Breathe" 17 From the Plantation to the Bordertown 19 The Upside-Down Places 21 Settlers Need Indian Killers 22 Off the Reservation 24 From Larry Casuse to The Red Nation 27 2. Anti-Indianism 32 Anti-Indian Common Sense 32 Off the Reservation 33 Indian Country 35 Drunk Indian 36 Urban Indian 37 Relocation 39 Savage/Savagery 41 Church 42 Nature 44 Poverty 45 Public Education 47 3. Indian Killers 50 Indian Rolling 50 Vigilante 51 Police Violence 53 Indian Expert 54 Drunk Tank 56 Forced Sterilization 58 Gender Violence 59 MMIWG2S: Missing and Murdered Native Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People 61 Militarization 63 White Supremacy 64 Exposure 65 Homelessness 66 Pandemic 68 Public Health 70 4. Looting 72 Settler Colonialism 72 Rape 74 Man Camp 76 Treaty 78 Law 79 Alcohol 81 Capitalism 83 Bordertown Political Economy 85 Class 87 Exploitation 89 Resource Colonization 91 Structural Violence 93 5. Counterinsurgency 96 Criminalization 96 Boarding Schools 97 Race 99 Charity 100 Civil Rights Report 102 Gender 103 Hate Crime 104 History 106 6. Settler Scams 110 Property 110 Nonprofit 112 Sacred Sites 114 Peace and Healing 115 Police Brutality 117 Human Rights 118 Liberalism 120 Tourism 122 Tradition 123 7. Burn the Village 126 Abolition 126 Kinship 130 Solidarity/Alliance 131 Land 133 LGBTQl2S 134 Sovereignty 136 Decolonization 137 Liberation 139 8. Don't Go Back to the Reservation: A Bordertown Manifesto 142 I. The future is Native. 142 II. All land is Native, and all settler towns and cities are bordertowns. 143 III. The values that govern life in all settler nations competition, aggression, self-interest, exclusion, violence, exploitation are values learned, practiced, and perfected in the bordertown. 143 IV. Settler colonialism and capitalism go hand in hand. 143 V. Native death is the raw material that built the bordertown. 143 VI. The bordertown cannot be reformed. Settler society cannot be redeemed. 144 VII. Private property mediates all expressions of settler kinship. 144 VIII. There is no Native liberation in a heteropatriarchal world. 145 IX. Settler colonialism is the disease. Decolonization and abolition are the cure. 145 X. Native liberation will be won in the bordertown. 146 Notes 148 Foreword 148 Chapter 1 148 Chapter 2 148 Chapter 3 149 Chapter 4 150 Chapter 5 152 Chapter 6 152 Chapter 7 153 Bibliography 154 Index 156 About the Authors 162