[Jodavaho.io] — Josh Vander Hook

From the recommended politics shelf, finished “What Does Justice Look Like”. It’s about the Dakota and injustices during the formation of MN and their suggested path to re-establishing a tribal presence in MN.

It is light on informative, heavy on persuasive. Intentionally controversial and somewhat polemical. For example: Are the Dakota entitled to the billions of dollars of annual revenue of MN economy? Are they entitled to all federal and state lands immediately? Was Fort Snelling a “Concentration Camp”? (Doesn’t the term imply systematic intentional extermination?)

It is the kind of book I would write if my people were forced out of their homeland. The book flags the problems: A native population, divided and infighting, many powerless because they lacked trade and weapons, making deals with deceptive negotiators, with a government struggling to keep itself together during the civil war struggle to free slaves and reunify.

And who moved in - mostly German immigrants fleeing their own wars in mid 1800s? Norwegian folks fleeing revolutions and uprisings and seeking opportunity. These folks were killed in raids and retributive killings, and the backlash was huge and violent and looks genocidal.

It’s worth reading, but not as an informative document. Reading it was more like taking a page from a broad plan to mobilize the proletariate or similar. I completely empathize with their position. But the issues are so thorny that none of their assertions land well, and I think a nuanced take / call to legislative action would have been easier to swallow. Something like “Free college for all Native Americans”? Those types of suggestions just weren’t in the book - it focused on symbolic victories and massive reformations.