Gord Hill: 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance

[bibliogramma]

Gord Hill's 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance was originally published in 1992 in the first issue of the revolutionary Indigenous newspaper OH-TOH-KIN. The publication date is significant - it was the 500 anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in the Americas, and hence of the beginning of the genocidal colonial project that was the conquest and settling of the lands of the First Nations and indigenous peoples. Celebrated by most white descendants of the settler colonists, it was a time of mourning and of renewal of resistance for indigenous peoples. As the Foreword to the current edition (published in 2008) states,

"Sixteen years after it was originally published ... 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance remains an important and relevent history of the colonization of the Americas and the resistance to it. It begins with the arrival of Columbus and finishes with the resistance struggles that defined the early nineties; the Lubicons, the Mohawks, and the Campaign For 500 Years Of Resistance that occurred all over the Americas, and was a historical precurser to the well-known Zapatista uprising of 1994."

Hill begins his history of indigenous resistance with a summary of the many nations that inhabited the Americas before the arrival of European colonisers.

"The First Peoples inhabited every region of the Americas, living within the diversity of the land and developing cultural lifeways dependent on the land. Their numbers approached 70-100 million peoples prior to the European colonization.

Generally, the hundreds of different nations can be summarized within the various geographical regions they lived in. The commonality of cultures within these regions is in fact a natural development of people building lifeways dependent on the land. As well, there was extensive interaction and interrelation between the people in these regions, and they all knew each other as nations."

Hill summarises the initial contacts between Europeans and the First Nations of the Americas, characterised by kidnapping, theft and murder. They claimed Indigenous land as their own, took slaves, tried to enforce Christianity and European social mores, and issued endless demands for gold and other natural resources. Hill comments: "The formulative years of the colonization process were directed towards exploiting the lands and peoples to the fullest. To the Europeans, the Americas were a vast, unspoiled area suitable for economic expansion and exploitation."

Hill's book is concise and tells the story of white exploitation and genocide in broad strokes (leaving other scholars to fill in details in other works) but part of the value of this narrative lies in its breadth of scope. By relating the projects engaged in by all the European colonial nations - England, Spain, France, Portugal, Holland - that embarked on the exploitation of the Americas, Hill explores both the similarities in the European assaults on Indigenous peoples from Labrador to Chile, and the differences in patterns of colonisation and exploitation that resulted from differences in indigenous populations and resources.

"While the Atlantic coast area of North America was becoming quickly littered with British, French and Dutch settlements, substantial differences in the lands and resources forced the focus of exploitation to differ from the colonization process underway in Meso- and South America.

In the South, the large-scale expropriation of gold and silver financed much of the invasion. As well, the dense populations of the Indigenous peoples provided a large slave-labour force to work in the first mines and plantations.

In contrast, the Europeans who began colonizing North America found a lower population density and the lands, though fertile for crops and abundant in fur-bearing animals, contained little in precious metals accessible to 17th century European technology. The exploitation of North America was to require long-term activities which could not rely on Indigenous or Afrikan slavery but which in fact which required Indigenous participation. Maintaining colonies thousands of miles away from Europe and lacking the gold which financed the Spanish armada, the colonial forces in North America would have to rely on the gradual accumulation of agricultural products and the fur trade."

The other key element of the narrative is that, along with his discussion of the actions of the colonisers in their quest to exploit the land and enslave or eliminate its inhabitants - a discussion informed by socialist insights into the role of capitalism in the colonial project - Hill also focuses on Indigenous peoples' resistance to colonialism - both the colonialism of European nations in the Americas, and the colonialism of the new national elites following the achievement of independence among the various former colonies.

From forced labour in gold mines and forced removals in the 17th and 18th centuries, through to extinguishment of land title and forced assimilation in the 20th century, the various forms of exploitation and genocide are catalogued, along with the efforts of Indigenous peoples along the length of two continents to survive and preserve their way of life.

Of particular importance are Hill's closing chapters, which discuss the modern Indigenous resistance movements, beginning in the 1960s: "Along with an explosion of international struggles in the 1960s, including national liberation movements in Afrika, Asia, and in the Americas, there was an upsurge in Native people’s resistance. This upsurge found its background in the continued struggles of Native peoples and the development of the struggle against continued resource extraction throughout the Americas."

As Hill notes, "A primary focus of these Indigenous movements was recuperating stolen lands" and to this end, occupations, blockades and other protests were organised, from Chile to Canada, to protest the loss of land rights. Global alliances of Indigenous peoples were organised around the world to share knowledge and advocate at an international level. The resistance continues.

Presenting as it does an overview of the actions of both settler colonists and Indigenous resistance in all areas of the Western Hemisphere, Hill's book serves as an excellent introduction to the post-Columbian history of Indigenous peoples in the America.