Swamplife

The Alligator in the Room

Anthropologist Laura Ogden’s Swaplife, explores the Florida Everglades as a point of contention between nature and culture, communities and politics, and subsistence and capitalism through the perspective of rural whites. Ogden acknowledges the rich and vibrant Indigenous history of the land before the first colonizers arrived from Spain in 1513. The land was abandoned after the Europeans obliterated the Native population, except for the Indigenous survivors who remained in the area and formed communities with other Natives who moved further south. The Seminoles, along with descendants of enslaved Africans, were now living on “Spanish territory” and would be subjected to further displacement from European and white American forces, ultimately culminating in the Second Seminole War.

Under the leadership of President Andrew Jackson, white soldiers waged a war on the Indigenous communities that inhabited the land. Ogden omits “President” from Andrew Jackson’s name, but perhaps it is implied. It is important for the reader to recognize, however, the war on the Seminoles was not ordered by Andrew Jackson when was an army general, but in fact he was the 7th President of the United States, leader of the political body that would eventually dominate the world through similar tactics. According to America, this war served the principle of manifest destiny and was morally and legally justifiable. Therefore, it is not surprising the Everglades would find itself “bound up in the national and global political economy” (2011, 15), not only as a means of commercial exploitation but also as a location characterized by systemic oppression and domination under the guise of a romantic idea of America. Naturally, the Everglades were romanticized as uncultivated, exotic, and in need of taming. Ogden asserts this sentimentality to the creation of a “wilderness paradigm reverberated with Edenic overtones that positioned rural inhabitants of wild lands as uncivilized threats to nature’s purity” (2011, 2) without concluding this paradigm was developed as a means to conquer. Naturally, this subjugation characterized by an insatiable desire for power, capital and land would extend to all vulnerable populations, including poor whites.

Ogden declares “…Native presence in the Everglades is accorded an acceptability that is not extended to poor rural whites” (2011, 3). This may be true, but “acceptability” does not matter if your land was stolen, and your kin have been annihilated. While she elaborates “the nature-Native metonym entails… a history of genocidal removal practices…” (2011, 3) her assessment of rural whites disregards the compounding of manifest destiny and white supremacy to subjugate Native Americans confirms her bias. Her comparison of them to Indigenous populations proves to be shallow as it diluted the power dynamic between whites and Native Americans. Even though she eventually touches on this relationship, classifying it as “complex reciprocal dependencies” (2011, 10), which is generous, Ogden fails to make the connection between the plight of rural whites and Indigenous people because of her own sympathy for white people; she even stated this book is personal for her because of her connection to the rural white community. The biggest flaw in this text is that she does not seem to understand as soon as the colonists encountered the land and the government took over, the Everglades were never intended to belong to the inhabitants, whether they be Indigenous, African American, or rural whites; Ogden can point to Bacon’s rebellion to confirm this.

 The issue I raise about Swamplife is reflected in the insurrection on January 6th, 2021. Many were surprised the rioters, the majority being white, would loot the sacred Capitol Building and murder police officers, especially after a resurgence of law enforcement popularity after the Black Lives Matter protests. The superficial assessment realized the disparate treatment of African American and white protestors. Yet, many forgot the Capitol was built by slave labor on stolen Indigenous land to help construct a government that never intended to treat them with humanity. For many, the events of January 6th were not shocking, but in fact were indicative of their experience of America. The majority of these insurrectionists, like the rural whites in the Everglades, were financially oppressed and locked out of the American dream, the child of manifest destiny. Yet, they were rioting in name of Donald Trump, a man who would worsen their financial situations but would maintain the culture of white male patriarchy that sells the promise of the American dream. The rural communities Ogden examines are concerned with maintaining the position and land they gained through colonialism and genocide. This illusive locus sells poor whites on the American dream without the intention of following through.

Ogden can write an entire book about the oppression of rural whites and the romanticization of the wild, but it is parochial to not conclude the same forces that commit genocide will also disrupt a community’s subsistence without hesitation, be it the banning of alligator hunting or “displacement through the politics of nature” (2011, 3) to serve the interests of the state. These forces will also murder a police officer while chanting Blue Lives Matter and desecrate their government while parading the American flag. This culture that puts manifest destiny above humanity, does not care about human life, even if it is white; but many whites continue to pledge allegiance to it and expect what the Founding Fathers never intended them to have. While the Florida Everglades is home to unique wildlife and narratives that color the relationship between social class and oppositional culture, it is merely a microcosm of white supremacy (“white” as an elusive construct) that discards inconvenience while consuming, infecting, and ultimately poisoning everything it touches until it implodes.