Russia’s War on Ukraine is a Colonial Project — Putin’s goal is not just territorial gain but the destruction of Ukrainian identity, culture, and peoplehood through land seizure, civilian killings, child abductions, and forced assimilation — similar to historical campaigns against Native Americans.

Civilian Suffering is Deliberate — Attacks on civilians, infrastructure, and cultural sites (like the Mariupol theater bombing) aim to break Ukrainian will to resist and clear the land, mirroring tactics used in the American Indian wars.

Land Acknowledgements Without Resistance Are Meaningless — If Ukraine loses, future generations will only have symbolic acknowledgements of a lost nation; Ukrainians are fighting not just for land, but for the survival of their people and state.

Imagine a public event 50 years from now in Kyiv. The convener speaks to the assembled crowd.

“Before we begin,” she says, “I just want to say that we acknowledge that we are standing on and benefiting from land that has been seized, expropriated, and stolen from the Ukrainian people. For thousands of years, this has been Ukrainian land. This is still the homeland of the Ukrainians. Their descendants are still living here among us.”

That’s what will happen if Russian leader Vladimir Putin gets his way—and gets his territory. He has never been discreet about his ultimate goal of absorbing all of Ukraine into the Russian federation, beginning with Crimea and the four provinces he has already annexed. It’s a classic colonial project, not substantially different from what settlers attempted to do to the Native Americans: seize their land and wipe them out as a people. The difference today is that Ukraine, recognized internationally as a sovereign nation, has received considerable international support for its defense. More than four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukrainians are not just fighting for territory or for a state but for the very survival of a people.

Let’s be clear: land acknowledgements wouldn’t exist in the United States if Native Americans had more successfully resisted the genocidal campaigns waged against them. That’s not to say that the tribes didn’t fight back, in some cases quite effectively. Take the case of Red Cloud, the Oglala Lakota war chief. As David Treuer writes in The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee:

In a series of brilliantly staged attacks and battles, he pushed........

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