https://projects.seattletimes.com/2016/under-our-skin/?fbclid=IwAR1MnwGYGVVaCSlm6Iy26Ho88jDN3hjCHKQn5LJnmmTJ4-fWenyLSCT2als#
Settler Privilege
THIS PIECE IS LONG OVERDUE (and it's short) - Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Settler Privilege by Dina Gilio-Whitaker, who also co-authored a great book “All the Real Indians Died Off” and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans, and her forthcoming book, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock.
Peggy McIntosh first popularized the concept of white privilege in her now-classic 1989 essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” The impact of her essay was due at least in part to its clarity and readability; it broke down into a list of easy to understand ideas why white people have unearned advantages in society based on their skin color. Not that it was necessarily easy for white people to accept that they are in fact “more equal” than others, but the essay opened up a conversation that has gained serious traction in our social discourse.
People who do not have ancestral connections to Native communities are all either settlers or immigrants. People with ambiguous “Native ancestry,” like Elizabeth Warren, are so disconnected from whatever Native roots they may have had that they can no longer be considered Native. Settlers are people whose ancestors who came to acquire recently dispossessed Indian lands, such as recipients of the homesteads of the nineteenth century and earlier land speculators. Immigrants are people who came later to cash in on the benefits of American citizenship that didn’t necessarily include land (but might have if they came with enough money to invest in American land). Most are settlers (also “colonizers”) or immigrants by choice, with the exception of Blacks who are descended from slaves who were settled here without their consent.
