Notes on “Tribal Capitalism”
This was written as a short response to this clip from the television series Rutherford Falls.
Is indigenous capitalism valid under their circumstances? What are the critiques? Is it valid in what the show writers presented?
Indigenous utilization of capitalist forces is a series of constructive reactions against changing economic conditions incurred by the colonial reorganization of land use and subsequently the relationship people are forced to have with it now because of it.
Asking if it’s “valid” is not the important question. The logistics and sustainability are much more important questions as they influence how to mitigate the damage of having to rely on something so fundamentally opposed to sustainability rather than pointlessly signal the character of the action.
That question would’ve been a lot more important four centuries ago when French colonialism in North America resulted in political-economic conditions that produced a cascading series of conflicts which practically annihilated the Indigenous polities and networks of the Midwest, making it an easy thoroughfare for European settlers. But, we are no longer in that period where pre-capitalist economics can considerably rival a nascent capitalism.
The trauma caused by the sudden onslaught — of the mechanized spirit of capital unleashing annihilative productive forces onto the Americas — has thoroughly established itself in our histories and would be next to impossible to dislodge or heal from in a lifetime. Gaming seems to be the most obvious solution to the political realities imposed upon Indigenous peoples. These realities disavow any access or control of productive land to develop raw material economies like those in the so-called third world or major urban centers for niche manufactured goods like those in the so-called second or first worlds.
This is why Indigenous America is called the “fourth world” informally; because it occupies a unique position outside of the extractivist relations of the third world, largely due to the technological progress of settler-colonialism finding more efficient ways to evacuate and rob land to do the extraction without the inconvenience of diplomacy. Yet, despite the fact that it technically exists within the borders of the so-called first world, it never really receives any of the benefits from being so, having to constantly define itself around geographically parsable privilege.
The logical conclusion when you’re given less than the bare minimum is to ironically embrace a form of extractivism that mines only what settler populations are willing to redistribute with the assumed pleasure they have as part of a leisure class. The gaming economy exploits only the resource of colonial leisure and subsequently colonial hubris without having to worry existentially about what it’s giving back, because it rightfully knows it doesn’t owe anything to the people who refused cooperation and diplomacy in favor of seizure.
The comparison between reliance on gaming economies in Indigenous nations and the planet-ruining extractivist philosophy of settler-colonialism is laughable if not offensive: They only reason they’re even given the same name of “capitalism” is because they both involve the accruing of profits. One must look at what is being exploited and what is being compensated for an understanding as to why such a comparison is frivolous.
I can’t speak for everyone obviously, but I think most tribal authorities would prefer not to engage in “capitalism” in the sense of what settlers have done to the land, much like how survivors of a home invasion where the perpetrator viciously stabs and kills several family members would prefer not to use the murderer’s knife to chop vegetables for a stew. But, it’s far easier to feel better about being cornered into weaponization of the very land we live on if we can use what was left behind to desecrate the tombstones of our murderers.
