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Critical Indigeneities
Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States
Faint traces of Indigenous people and their histories abound in American media, memory, and myths. Indigeneity often remains absent or invisible, however, especially in contemporary political and intellectual discourse about white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and racism in general. In this ambitious new book, Kevin Bruyneel confronts the chronic displacement of Indigeneity in the politics and discourse around race in American political theory and culture, arguing that the ongoing influence of settler-colonialism has undermined efforts to understand Indigenous politics while also hindering conversation around race itself. By reexamining major episodes, texts, writers, and memories of the political past from the seventeenth century to the present, Bruyneel reveals the power of settler memory at work in the persistent disavowal of Indigeneity. He also shows how Indigenous and Black intellectuals have understood ties between racism and white settler memory, even as the settler dimensions of whiteness are frequently erased in our discourse about race, whether in conflicts over Indian mascotry or the white nationalist underpinnings of Trumpism.
Envisioning a new political future, Bruyneel challenges readers to refuse settler memory and consider a third reconstruction that can meaningfully link antiracism and anticolonialism.
Envisioning a new political future, Bruyneel challenges readers to refuse settler memory and consider a third reconstruction that can meaningfully link antiracism and anticolonialism.
227 pages, Paperback
Published November 8, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 14, 2022
Excellent Examination of Historical Revisionism. I found the analysis of the rewriting of Bacon's Rebellion persuasive. In too many accounts the anti-Indigenous narrative of s under played and the missed opportunity for cross-racial coalitions overplayed. I rethought my own AP US History curriculum in light of the curious quarantining of Reconstruction and the conquest of the West. The third section on mascotry as a form of minstrelsy was also enlightening. A difficult and necessary book in my estimation
December 12, 2023
I strongly recommend this book. I really appreciate it. Very intelligent, thoughtful, and persuasive. It's offering A New Perspective on how to analyze race, colonization, and it's nuances here in the United States along with it's root causes and perpetuation to this date.
I began reading the book because around me, there is certain demographic of people that refuse to relinquish the pathological tendencies of settler colonialism. That demographic engages in the infantile fantasy of cowboys and Indians and for some reason continues to refer to the professional football team now known as the Commanders (also problematic in itself), as it's former settler Colonial label the "Redskins". I wanted to figure out why, and why they clutch to that yearning so much. This book assists in that greatly. Specifically focusing on Chapter 4 entitled "The Free Pass - The Racial Politics of Indian Team Names and Mascots".
It was quite insightful, it details the etymology of the word, and how the "Redskins" aquried their name in presumed honor, where in the United States "Indigenous peoples are rendered honorable because they are deemed long dead, a necro-indigenous presumption, whereas other non-white groups are not deemed honorable but rather are abject, degraded, and exploitable contemporaneous others to the white settler Norm." This helps explain why the idea behind Indian mascotry is celebrated to this date, but there would be no thought, or rather great discernment for a team named The "New York Jews" or The "San Francisco Chinamen"....or the Chicago Niggas.
There is an inherent anti-blackness in the naming. Thus the need to coalesce politically with indigenous groups against domestic imperialism, and white settler nationalism. The Washington Redskins were ironically the last NFL team to have a black player on its roster. When urged by the Kennedy administration to add some players of color to the team so it wouldn't be so "Lily White" and in turn "Paleskin", owner of the team at the time - white nationalist George Preston Marshall - stated "we'll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites." They had the damn American Nazi party yall, out in the streets during the 60s in support of Marshall with signs talkin bout "MR. MARSHALL: KEEP REDSKINS WHITE!". Peak caucacity.
In this chapter, it was established that "The mascotry phenomenon is an appropriative settler practice that helps to constitute and acculturate a sense of settler belonging on this land through the production of a settler tradition that both acknowledges the presence of indigenous peoples as historical beings while disavowing their presence as contemporaneous beings. As C. Richard King, through the naming practices of this era, white Americans found, and continue to find, a psychic-libidinal way to "absorb indigeneity, laying claim to indigenous people's rightful inheritance while lamenting nostalgically their passing." E.i. Imperialist Nostalgia
The book's structure is amazing, laid out in five chapters. The first two look at not only Bacon's Rebellion in a new light, but this book examines and references a lot of other authors and works that I've read previously, most notably "Black Reconstruction" by W E B Du Bois. Chapter 3 also looks at the radical works of James Baldwin and their relation to indigenous matters. As noted chapter 4 is on the naming and supposed honoring behind mascotry, and chapter 5 concludes with contemporaneous political strategy against the settler Colonial thought process, and corruptive masculinity of the Donald Trump era, which links the misconceptions behind Pocahontas and the history of broken treaties and land "grabs", to Trump's idea that he can "grab em by the pussy" and run an environmentally destructive pipeline through native land.
I highly recommend this book
I began reading the book because around me, there is certain demographic of people that refuse to relinquish the pathological tendencies of settler colonialism. That demographic engages in the infantile fantasy of cowboys and Indians and for some reason continues to refer to the professional football team now known as the Commanders (also problematic in itself), as it's former settler Colonial label the "Redskins". I wanted to figure out why, and why they clutch to that yearning so much. This book assists in that greatly. Specifically focusing on Chapter 4 entitled "The Free Pass - The Racial Politics of Indian Team Names and Mascots".
It was quite insightful, it details the etymology of the word, and how the "Redskins" aquried their name in presumed honor, where in the United States "Indigenous peoples are rendered honorable because they are deemed long dead, a necro-indigenous presumption, whereas other non-white groups are not deemed honorable but rather are abject, degraded, and exploitable contemporaneous others to the white settler Norm." This helps explain why the idea behind Indian mascotry is celebrated to this date, but there would be no thought, or rather great discernment for a team named The "New York Jews" or The "San Francisco Chinamen"....or the Chicago Niggas.
There is an inherent anti-blackness in the naming. Thus the need to coalesce politically with indigenous groups against domestic imperialism, and white settler nationalism. The Washington Redskins were ironically the last NFL team to have a black player on its roster. When urged by the Kennedy administration to add some players of color to the team so it wouldn't be so "Lily White" and in turn "Paleskin", owner of the team at the time - white nationalist George Preston Marshall - stated "we'll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites." They had the damn American Nazi party yall, out in the streets during the 60s in support of Marshall with signs talkin bout "MR. MARSHALL: KEEP REDSKINS WHITE!". Peak caucacity.
In this chapter, it was established that "The mascotry phenomenon is an appropriative settler practice that helps to constitute and acculturate a sense of settler belonging on this land through the production of a settler tradition that both acknowledges the presence of indigenous peoples as historical beings while disavowing their presence as contemporaneous beings. As C. Richard King, through the naming practices of this era, white Americans found, and continue to find, a psychic-libidinal way to "absorb indigeneity, laying claim to indigenous people's rightful inheritance while lamenting nostalgically their passing." E.i. Imperialist Nostalgia
The book's structure is amazing, laid out in five chapters. The first two look at not only Bacon's Rebellion in a new light, but this book examines and references a lot of other authors and works that I've read previously, most notably "Black Reconstruction" by W E B Du Bois. Chapter 3 also looks at the radical works of James Baldwin and their relation to indigenous matters. As noted chapter 4 is on the naming and supposed honoring behind mascotry, and chapter 5 concludes with contemporaneous political strategy against the settler Colonial thought process, and corruptive masculinity of the Donald Trump era, which links the misconceptions behind Pocahontas and the history of broken treaties and land "grabs", to Trump's idea that he can "grab em by the pussy" and run an environmentally destructive pipeline through native land.
I highly recommend this book
June 6, 2024
Settler memory is a great intervention (the epistemological partner of Ned Blackhawks ideas of vacancy). I don’t know that I loved all of the chapters as the best examples of settler memory. I also think there’s a gap between scholars and everyday people that scholars don’t necessarily know how to close.
October 27, 2022
An excellent and really important book interrogating the ways in which political memory functions in settler colonial societies. While there are a lot of differences between Turtle Island and so-called Australia where I am based, the concept of disavowal is critical in thinking through the ways in which settler colonialism, and Indigenous peoples and politics are rendered invisible as active contemporary forces. As Bruyneel argues it is not a matter of a knowledge, a lack of education or individual biases but that this disavowal is rather fundamentally related to political power and interest.
December 26, 2022
A well-researched book and analysis on how indigenous history gets erased from the realities that shape the West, particularly the United States and Canada.
This book offers an intersectional approach through case studies that are organized into five chapters, following a conclusion. The language is academic but not entirely inaccessible. For those doing activist work, I found this book to be particularly enlightening in tying together all movements for decolonial, racial, and identity justice.
This book offers an intersectional approach through case studies that are organized into five chapters, following a conclusion. The language is academic but not entirely inaccessible. For those doing activist work, I found this book to be particularly enlightening in tying together all movements for decolonial, racial, and identity justice.
June 14, 2022
A really good book for considering how one’s identity is made up of these nuances of settler colonialism. Really appreciated all the different case studies used, would’ve not hit as hard if it had just been Bacons revolt and Reconstruction
January 1, 2023
Original (at least to me), and Bruyneel does an excellent job with clearly articulating a complex/nuanced argument.
November 12, 2025
worth reading, esp chps 1 and 4
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February 25, 2023I've been a fan of Bruyneel ever since his "Codename Geronimo" essay on settler memory and the peripheral resonance of Native imagery in US folk legend, historical and contemporary. This book fleshes out the details of that essay while giving additional focus to the nature of race discourse, with the author reading examples from Bacon's Rebellion up through Trump's presidential platform. Furthermore, Bruyneel focuses on settler masculinity here, which gets especially fleshed out in the chapter on Trump as well as one on Indian mascots in sports culture. In general, the readings are excellent, and I appreciated the balance between 20th century topics (Du Bois' Black Reconstruction is read for chapter two / Baldwin's approach to race and indigeneity is read for chapter three) and contemporary subject cases (aforementioned). His writing is very easy to parse, and the approach to settler positionality in terms of gender is productive.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews