Decolonial Marxism with Sungmanitu Bluebird

The Response

On our last show, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Land Back with David Cobb — specifically, we discussed moving the idea of land back from a metaphor to a reality, by focusing on a specific case in northern California where the city of Eureka actually gave 200 acres of land back to its original stewards, the Wiyot tribe.

On today's episode, we're going to continue the conversation, and, in a way, pull back from the specific policy examples of land back and look at it as an idea again, specifically, as a revolutionary ideological framework that exists as a part of Marxist thought, a continuation of Marxism-Leninism — what has been called decolonial Marxism.

To do this, we've brought on Lakota activist and political educator Sungmanitu Bluebird. Sungmanitu grew up in both Detroit and on Pine Ridge reservation and is currently based in Michigan's upper peninsula.

Sungmanitu’s work synthesizes Marxism with Indigenous knowledge and decolonial Marxist theory and practice. They are a former member of the Red Nation, a mutual aid movement builder, and an organizer with the Chunka Luta Network, a project meant to push decolonial Marxism-Leninism as described by the Guyanese Marxist academic, writer, and educator, Walter Rodney.

Resources:

• Chunka Luta Network
• Land Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper
• Decolonial Marxism:Essays from the Pan-African Revolution by Walter Rodney
• Questions about the LandBack movement, answered, High Country News
• Absolutely epic: Blackfeet release wild buffalo on tribal land, Independent Record
• This new wildlife sanctuary will be unlike any other part of the U.S. — and it’s 6 times the size of Yosemite National Park, The Cool Down

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