Since its original release on Folkways Records in 1951, Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” has been a galvanizing force, inspiring peace-lovers and change-seekers across the country in times of political unrest. It has been studied extensively by music critics and academics, tracked over time as it evolved from protest song to sing-along, and heralded as an “alternative national anthem.” But since its conception, the song’s more radical verses critiquing American capitalism and exclusionism have fallen by the wayside. Most messages tend to be distorted or selectively (re)interpreted as they travel through time–but without Guthrie’s self-awareness, the song’s provocative gesture becomes merely patriotic. If social justice activism aims to include Native peoples, it must be open to the critique of patriotic rhetoric.
As black and brown activists frequently remind us, white nationalism is the legacy of this country. Quite literally, the founding structure of the United States relied on an enslaved class of blacks, a ruling class of whites, and the intended extermination of the continent’s Indigenous population (“the vanishing race”). America’s founding mission envisioned a white Christian nation, and its settlers believed they had a divine purpose to expand hemispherically. Pope Alexander VI’s 1493 Doctrine of Discovery gave them the legal right to do so: it was incorporated into U.S. law in 1823 in Johnson v. M’Intosh, the founding case in Federal Indian Law, and was even cited in State v. Elliot, 1991. The separation of church and state, curiously, does not apply within Indian law (Establishment Clause). The ideologies of Manifest Destiny and the Doctrine of Discovery encouraged Europeans to convert the “pagan” peoples of the “New World” to Christianity. When hundreds of millions of Indigenous peoples resisted, the doctrines provided legal and moral justification for their subjugation and genocide.
By critiquing “This Land Is Your Land,” I don’t mean to imply that Guthrie himself promoted conquest, but the song is indicative of American leftists’ role in Native invisibility. The lyrics as they are embraced today evoke Manifest Destiny and expansionism (“this land was made for you and me”). When sung as a political act, the gathering or demonstration is infused with anti-Nativism and reinforces the blind spot. Moreover, my critique is aimed at the nation-state of America, which teaches ignorances about American history so robust and deep-seated that even our society’s most inclusion-oriented activists struggle to transcend them. Just as when Americans call this country a “nation of immigrants,” the proclamation erases Native peoples’ right to exist in the collective consciousness. True allyship–specifically, transcending the anti-Nativism integral to American society—requires first interrogating one’s own ignorances.