The majority of the interactions, historic and contemporary, between Black people and Indigenous Peoples living in the so-called United States occur(red) in the bloody context of settler colonial imperialism. In response to lived conditions, feminisms developed in various Black and Indigenous communities as part of resisting settler-colonialism, racism, sexism, capitalism and classism, and other forms of oppression. Feminist movements in Black and Indigenous communities have been proximate, overlapping, and mutually reinforcing, but also in tension with one another; competing at times, collaborative at others. Though both expansive areas of collective work, Black feminisms and Indigenous feminisms tend to center different aspects of the struggle for liberation. Some strain between movements comes from the inadvertent solidification of the settler state that can happen as some Black feminists struggle for their freedom and self-determination within the settler state without explicitly articulating an analysis of settler colonialism. Other tensions come from some Indigenous feminists' refusal of participation in solidarity politics in a way that weakens 'BIPOC' coalitions facing repression, and various expressions of uninterrogated antiblackness. This paper posits that the Doctrine of Discovery (DoD), a 15th century set of religious and state decrees that facilitated Christian European global exploration and expropriation, is a ripe site to analyze together for both Indigenous and Black feminist organizers because it allows for the incorporation of an analysis of settler colonialism without de-centering issues that are essential to Black feminist theory and practice. As a Black feminist organizer with some experience organizing alongside Indigenous feminists, in this paper I examine my own radical tradition regarding the absence of an articulated settler colonial analysis at two moments in US Black feminism--the Combahee River Collective statement of 1977 and the Allied Media Conference AfroFeministFutures panel in 2022. Then I return to how bringing in an analysis of the DoD can assist in increasing opportunities for generations of Black and Indigenous feminist organizers to express solidarity with each other through shared language and conceptual frameworks, for the purpose of healing our lineages, and practicing the liberatory politics we aspire to.

Download Citation #

• RIS Format
• CSL JSON Format