Native Americans and Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation, Dispossession, and Wage Labor

Summary: Coercion, violence, genocide, and war against Indigenous populations were central components of the birth of the capitalist mode of production. As land was privatized and commodified, it became a central force of capitalist development, production and wealth, (alongside slavery and wage labor) for the U.S. nation-state. People were ripped from the land and their means of sustenance, and this process has turned the vast majority of people into exploited wage laborers where wealth has been concentrated into the top of US society. What has this process looked like for Native Americans and Indigenous Nations in the United States? How should issues of class oppression and exploitation be understood alongside fighting for Indigenous sovereignty, against further dispossession, and for Native American self-determination?