Klee Benally talks with Kevin and Natasha Tucker of Primal Anarchy podcast (also black and green press) back in April 2021. Thinking about this part (starting 40:25) and my own positionality, how it impacts my thinking, fears, path forward, etc.:

"I think like, there's a lot of people, where they like sort of concretize concepts, ideas, they want to celebrate that, and sort of make something just of that moment. And that's why I don't like a lot of academics. I think these ideas become proprietary on some levels. They become a position where you stick a flag, and that idea, that, you know, dynamic, is something has always been colonial.

I'm not interested in decolonizing anarchism. I think... anybody who usually says 'let's decolonize anarchism, let's decolonize this.' usually like... you know what you're proposing, right? You know that like, these ideas and understandings are a sort of like an overall contradiction that, you know, is just gonna... is like a hamster wheel or something. I'm not interested in those conversations or proposals.

But I will say, you know, and I think this might be important for your listeners, just to continue a bit of like orientation in relation to my politics and maybe this is useful for this part of the conversation. Um, is that the matriarchs in Dziłíjiin, Black Mesa who are part of the ongoing resistance to forced relocation really have deeply shaped my approach and understanding the dominant social order and its politics. You know, I have a strong affinity with anarchism, but not anarchist identity.

As I mentioned, um, and it's not a position that, you know for me, it's not what white anarchism wasn't doing for me, you know. It's more about the propositions of mutual aid, direct action, voluntary association, um, are familiar with and translatable through it's geneaology-- though, I guess I should be clear, it's just like though anarchism's geneology is nothing I really desire to be tethered to, I further offer that this position of Indigenous anarchism, I guess, is just that there can be no law above nature. Um, and it's the most I think sort of simple way of communicating what Indigenous anarchism is and should be. Um, and I don't know how much there needs to be built around that, um, aside from, just understanding what our orientations from our original teachings are in relation to that. And what the existing, you know, problems that we're facing, how that could be then reconciled as potential solutions to address those problems."

https://primalanarchy.net/podcast/2021/4/18/episode-27-interview-with-klee-benally

#KleeBenally #AnarchoPrimitivism #IndigenousAnarchy #Unknowable #Autonomy #AntiColonial

**Edited to add correct spelling of Diné word, Dziłíjiin, for so-called Black Mesa

As an anprim this quote had an instant appeal for me

https://www.instagram.com/p/DQH6mx3klwV/

I think the part about describing how modern society is in itself insane and neo-liberal capitalist economics reduces humans into individual economic units and devalues all forms of co-operation is valid.

Catch22 states that if you live in a world that is insane the only sane response is to become insane yourself.

The author then goes on to claim that if humans go back to living in a small tribes that are in harmony with nature then all mental illnesses will disappear.

Except its not like that. The rates of mental illness of all types in existing hunter-forager or subsistence agricultural societies are broadly similar to those seen "Western civilization".

What is different with "primitive" societies with regards to mental health is how individuals experiencing mental health issues or neurospicyness are treated by the other members of the society.

Someone who is a dreamer and who struggles to concentrate is given a label of ADHD in the West. They have to struggle in jobs they are not suited too. In a "primitive" society they might spend their time caring for the elderly or looking after livestock.

Someone living in "civilisation" who experiences hallucinations is highly likely to be heavily medicated and / or institutionalised. In a hunter-forager society or even more "modern" societies they might have been a shaman or priest. The gods and goddesses talk to them after all. Or they might be a warrior chieftain who revels in the slaughter of the battlefield instead of being labelled a psychopath and running a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Its easy to imagine someone reading the glib statement in the insta post and being inspired to get back to nature. They might become farmer on a small holding or homestead for example. They will get muddy and be closer to nature in a personal sense. They will still have to operate within globalised neo-liberal capitalism. Their mental health issues may improve but they wont go away as the root causes are the same.

It will take a lot more writing to pin down what I think needs to be done to move humanity closer to nature in the future.

#anprim #AnarchoPrimitivism #BackToNature #HunterForager #MentalHealth #capitalism #NeoLiberalEconomics #society #nature #ecology

Any civilization more "advanced" than the societies and technologies of Indigenous People before their colonisation and genocide by "developed civilizations" is a form of collective mental illness.

Neo-liberal capitalism / fascism is the most acute form of this illness.

#IndigenousCulture #Culture #Civilization #AnarchoPrimitivism #AnPrim #colonization #genocide #neoliberalism #capitalism #fascism #MentalHealth

We need to expand the mutual aid and direct support content on this platform.

There are so many people struggling rn, and I don’t see enough ppl on my timeline uplifting requests for support- particularly support requests from Black and Indigenous ppl are ignored the most

#MutualAid #Anarchist #Anarchisme #anarchocommunism #anarchosocialism #anarchonihilism #anarchismwithoutadjectives #AntiCivAnarchism #anarchoprimitivism #communism #socialism #libertariansocialism #authoritariancommunism #stalinism #marxism #marxistLeninist #MarxistLeninism #maoism #mlm #tankies #tankiescum