Steve, one of my classmates at Sequential Artist Workshop recommended I listen to a podcast from the Dig with Nick Estes - Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance .
The interview starts with a discussion about the myth of American self-reliance. Everyone who struck out on their own to live on the frontier not only did it with the implicit or explicit backing of the US military, department of interior or Army Corp of Engineers, but also all the mass produced tools, clothes, weapons and food produced by a supply chain that involved slave labor, exploitation of workers (particularly women) and extraction from European imperial colonies all over the world.
It ties into my story because I am trying to find a way to write about how “back to the land” or “homesteading” or “sustainable farming” or any of those kinds of things are always done with the assistance of mass production which carries the historical and present exploited labor along with it. Also, it isn’t possible for every human on Earth to have 48 acres of farm and forest land, and whatever forces are in place to make it possible to “own” or have exclusive rights to that much property have to involve some degree of force and coercion.
Which is not to say Homesteading is bad, or worse than regular sub-urban life. It’s probably better, but it doesn’t absolve you from participating in systems of oppression. After a certain point it won’t save you from being oppressed yourself.
In Estes book he talks about things American Corporations and the American Government did to destroy native self-reliance and independence even after they had all given up on conflict and settled on the reservation. Everyone knows that reservation land was crap, but I didn’t realize it was also fenced in and you could be arrested for leaving. I didn’t realize the American Government intentionally drove the buffalo to near extinction with the intention of starving people on the reservation and making them dependent on food rations. And then, when the tribes recovered from that and became self-sustaining on agriculture, the Army Corp of Engineers dammed rivers and flooded their fields year after year, very recently too, in the 40s I think.
Interesting history, but also, it can happen to you too.
