A University of Minnesota (UMN) liberal arts professor called to “dismantle” and “decolonize” the U.S. during an anti-capitalist, pro-Palestinian event.
Dr. Melanie Yazzie, a member of the Navajo Nation and assistant professor of American Indian studies at UMN Twin Cities, joined the “teach-in” panel discussion on December 3, where she made several controversial statements.
Yazzie, who boasts of teaching about “queer Indigenous studies” and “Marxism” on her university biography page, joined the stage with representatives from progressive groups, including American Muslims for Palestine and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
According to the professor, “It’s our responsibility as people who are within the United States to go as hard as possible to decolonize this place because that will reverberate all across the world.”
“Because the U.S. is the greatest predator empire that has ever existed,” she explained.
The professor co-founded the anti-colonial and anti-capitalist group The Red Nation, which hosted the Palestinian event at the New City Center for Healing Justice in Minneapolis.
Yazzie said that her group wants the U.S. to get “out of everywhere,” including “Palestine” and “Turtle Island” — a name used by some Native American activists to describe North America.
“And that the goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States for the freedom and the future of all life on this planet,” she continued. “It very much depends on that.”
The leftist activist continued to imply that the “entire world” changed with the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel — in which Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis — claiming that “Palestine” paved the “alternative path for native nations.”
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“It is a righteous struggle, and it is so powerful that it has literally, in 60 days, changed the entire world,” Yazzie said. “The entire world has changed. I knew it the moment that it happened that nothing, and I mean nothing for colonizers or for any of the good, humble people of the Earth, would ever be the same ever again.”
She continued to say, “We need to lean into that. Lean into the fact that colonizers are scared.”
Yazzie laughed as she instructed audience members to “Lean into scaring them and making them feel uncomfortable!”
The UMN professor also decried “liberalism” as “bullshit” that was “founded upon imperialism and colonialism,” promoting “death” to the colonialist structure instead.
She addressed the radical message to her “Palestinian relatives,” calling the U.S. a “violent settler project.”
“In addition to solidarity and the things that we might do, having the moral authority as the original people of these lands, to push back against the violent settler project that is the United States.”
“I hope you seek to dismantle the United States,” Yazzie said while the crowd applauded.
