Abstract

What, to the fugitive, is decolonization? Meditating on Harriet Tubman’s actions and legacies, this essay traces the interrelations of US property claims over indigenous territory and black bodies, which are foundations of US sovereignty and US state formation, through the intersecting elaboration of fugitive slave law and Indian removal. Separating slavery and its afterlives from the ongoing colonial occupations of indigenous lands is a symptom of colonial unknowing. Tubman teaches us that struggles to dismantle New Worlds of colonialism and black suffering are co-constitutive, proliferating relationships against colonial property claims and decolonizing relations in place.

Share