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debored wrote

The Fight For Turtle Island by Aragorn!

Some interesting critiques of anarchism from indigenous perspectives, but overall not the most useful text, especially if you follow Aragorn!'s other projects. I believe someone interviewed Aragorn about it on an episode of The Brilliant.

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

The Brilliant, Episode 93 - The Fight For Turtle Island

Aragorn!'s episode synopsis:

I put together a book. It is not a book about me. It is about a dozen other people who are, in some way, the audience and content of the book. It was a real challenge putting it together as the interview subjects did not conform to the framing I eventually put on the book. Most of the conversations were about people, biographies, and local challenges. The book is about an epic fight for Turtle Island that is invisible to most people. It is about memory, family, and the future of a livable planet.

It is also about anarchism. The original thesis of this book went something like this: The difference between indigenous and anarchist perspectives only requires some sort of keystone or translation guide; the two perspectives have so much in common that the only work is mapping the geography. But as the saying goes the map is not the territory. Clearly many, if not most, anarchists are happily married to Enlightenment thought and believe that the problem is not the production of widgets but how the widgets are produced. Similarly many indigenous people are not exactly on board with the kind of total social and material transformation alluded to by an anti-civilization, green anarchist perspective. To put this another way, I was wrong in my initial thesis and in face of that wrongness I am questioning both my anarchism and my relationship to indigeneity.

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

Anybody got a PDF for this yet? I was too cash-strapped the last opportunity I had to get hold of this book, and unsure whether it was any good.

I have read a lot of aragorn!'s stuff though so I wonder if it'll be worthwhile.

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