Red Scare: The State's Indigenous Terrorist by Joanne Barker (review)

S P R I N G & F A L L 2 0 2 0 W I C A Z O S A R E V I E W US empire defines terrorism as the “unlawful” use of violence, fear, and intimidation, particularly against civilians, in the pursuit of ideological or political aims. The term primarily refers to intentional violence and is used most often in the context of war; however, terror and terrorism in relation to Indigenous people are reproduced differently under the US/Canadian settler empire. What does it mean to call Indigenous people terrorists on their own land? This is a question Lenape feminist Joanne Barker addresses in Red Scare: The State’s Indigenous Terrorist, noting, “Indigenous People are identified and made identifiable by the state as terrorists in order to advance imperialist objectives” (p. vii). Two defining concepts she uses, the Murderable Indian and the Kinless Indian, are meant to be identifiers for how Indianness is “terrorism” and therefore justifies the genocide and Indigenous removal from their lands. The Indigenous feminist framework which Barker takes up disentangles settler policies, signifiers, and language used for antiterrorist laws and sentiments. Terror and the fear-driving discourses of settler empire reinforce a designation for settler justifications and weaponizing for harsher sentencing of the state’s exploitation, policing, and violence under the systems of colonialism and capitalism. In the US and Canadian contexts, terrorism and terrorists are defined exclusively within settler political order. Thus, the “red scare” embodies the full spectrum of settler racism and xenophobic fear that justifies war-making against Indigenous people. The racism and fear further perpetuates into a belief that security and social stability Red Scare: The State’s Indigenous Terrorist by Joanne Barker University of California Press, 2021