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smb5187's review
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.0
Good message and content, just a little repetitive since multiple authors contributed
rachelwalexander's review
Star ratings are such an inadequate system for evaluating books and especially reading this - a manifesto for decolonization and resisting settlers when I am a settler in North America. I'll just say - this book is worth reading, it will not hold your hand, you will learn things.
lathramb's review
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
A necessary addition to the published work of Native liberation and resistance to settler colonialism. The authors unsettle the concept of a bordertown, which they define as “white-dominated towns and cities that operate according to the same political and spatial logics as all other American towns and cities,” but these towns become known for their proximity to reservations. By focusing on bordertowns, the authors unveil the ways that all of the land settled and currently occupied in the United States is actually a bordertown, bordertowns are just the spatial locations where settler colonialism (violence) is most obvious. This shows up in various ways: MMIWG2S, cops killing Native people, exploitation of land and man camps that follow, alcohol sales, global pandemic. I appreciated this book for its rigorous analysis of historic and ongoing settler colonialism, its continual connections to global anti-colonial and decolonial movements through lateral solidarity, its challenge of peace and justice as liberally constructed, its complication of reconciliation – just to name a few.
As our nation is currently constructed, Native life, land, and lifeways are a constant threat – because existence is resistance. Liberals, left, and conservative settlers alike turn away from this reality, and violence continues to ensue. A settler is not just a person occupying land, it is an orientation towards all land and life – extracting, exploiting, privatizing, commodifying. Read this book and you’re forced to look.
A few favorite sections in no particular order: Law (chp. 4), Solidarity/Alliance (chp. 8), Off the Reservation (chp. 2), Property (chp. 6), Class (chp. 4), Tradition (chp. 6), Vigilante (chp. 3)
cebolla's review
4.0
I know I hate capitalism, but every once in a while something comes along that reinforces this hatred, and reminds me that I'm not working hard enough to tear it down. This is one of those books.
just_me_gi's review
5.0
"We write as ancestors _from the future, enacting just relations that
cannot be found in the nightmarish present of the bordertown. In this
sense, the settler fears the future. He is an alien in both space and time.
This book offers no measured gestures toward liberation, nor mercy for
settler feelings. The word for that is refonn. But the bordertown cannot
be reformed and settler society cannot be redeemed. We study it not to
change it but to destroy it. To read this book is to move back and forth
between the settler world and the Native world, to enter into relations of
liberation that can replace the bordertown. The Native liberation we write
about is not some distant dream from some future world." p. 18
cannot be found in the nightmarish present of the bordertown. In this
sense, the settler fears the future. He is an alien in both space and time.
This book offers no measured gestures toward liberation, nor mercy for
settler feelings. The word for that is refonn. But the bordertown cannot
be reformed and settler society cannot be redeemed. We study it not to
change it but to destroy it. To read this book is to move back and forth
between the settler world and the Native world, to enter into relations of
liberation that can replace the bordertown. The Native liberation we write
about is not some distant dream from some future world." p. 18