I was gonna ask “Are Mestizos settlers?” but I quickly realized that the answer to this question probably isn’t black and white. If the answer to this isn’t just “Yes” or “No” then what determines whether or not a Mestizo person is a settler?
I was gonna ask “Are Mestizos settlers?” but I quickly realized that the answer to this question probably isn’t black and white. If the answer to this isn’t just “Yes” or “No” then what determines whether or not a Mestizo person is a settler?
Define “stolen”, please. I am a Russian jew, living in an area that was conquered back when the Rus as an entity was young. My ancestors moved here after the Socialist Revolution, when jews were given full rights. Technically this isn’t my land. Technically it is stolen. Does it make me a settler? Does that mean I must pay reparations and atone for my sins?
This comment is made more specifically as an answer to the OP, not to Russian Jews. I simply cannot answer your questions but I would encourage you to look deeper into this yourself.
I think you conflate being a settler with sinister intentions or immorality. I don’t think this will help you understand. In fact settler-colonialism is usually justified with good intentions. And interestingly enough, reperations in some contexts do more to justify theft and violence than anything. Some colonized/semi colonized places have rejected reperations from colonizers entirely, including China.
I would suggest getting to know more about the land you live on and the people of that place and then look into what the USSR (and now the RF) did or did not do in terms of anti colonialism or decolonization. It must be stressed that only you and your community can get to know your situation in a way that answers your questions through engagement.
As you do this it will be more clear what your place is and what obligations you may have.
Also it is very important to note that land as a concept in North American Indigenous philosophy is usually not what you think. It is an intergenerational, “international” (as in other creatures and agents are also part of nations as well as other peoples are- not nation-states), system of relations that is built on obligations and reciprocity. This is still a heavily watered down definition frankly
So when Indigenous scholars talk about land in their books (sometimes capitalized as Land) they are talking about more than just dirt, but an infrastructure, a “mode of life” as Marx says in The German Ideology, that is also inherently opposed to capitalist accumulation.