cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1336560

From comrade Sungmanitu:

Last thread we dispelled some major misconceptions of Indigenous people and the founding of America, but what about Western Expansion? How much do you honestly know as a historical materialist? One of the most common misnomers I hear in educating people is “why should we care about something that happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago?” Capital was written 1867, the same time we signed our first treaty. When I say we I do not mean some homogenized conception of Indigenous people, but rather I am speaking specifically about the Oceti Sakowin and the ending of Mahpiya Luta’s (Red Cloud’s) War. Classically the story goes that as the US moved westward they conquered and erased nations in their wake, a seemingly unstoppable machine of capitalist expansion. In reality, the US lost many wars and only won the ones they started by surprise. In our classic conception of manifest destiny, we assume a wave o