Kyle Mays aint playin. With courage, concision, and candor, When We Are Kin lays bare hard truths about the limits of reparations and sovereignty without decolonization and the dismantling of racial-settler capitalism. But this is not a takedown. On the contrary, it is a clarion call to deepen Black and Indigenous solidarity by understanding the complexities of our braided histories, abandoning liberal notions of property, and fighting for our liberationtogether.
Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
When We Are Kin is rigorous, unflinching, and deeply rooted in Afro-Indigenous love, memory, and accountability. This book is not just history; it is a call to action, a refusal to let white supremacy script our relationships to land, kinship, or one another.
Dr. Jessica Hernandez, author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science and Growing Papaya Trees: Nurturing Indigenous Roots During Climate Displacement
When We Are Kin makes a case for an intentional Black and Indigenous relationality that rejects the logics of white supremacy and colonialism in favor of practices of solidarity forged through co-belonging and co-resistance, a liberation we make together.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead
Kyle Mays has mastered the art of simplifying unnecessary jargon and complicating the half-truths that we take at face value. In When We Are Kin, he makes the best case for Afro-Indigenous solidarity and asks us to reconsider justice and equity on our terms. I will be thinking about this book for quite some time!
Brea Baker, author of Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership
This book gets right to the heart of the matter: Black and Indigenous liberation is intertwined, and the struggle for collective liberation will take all of us. Mayss vision maps out what we owe one another as we do the work of getting free.
Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present
Its rare to find a book that is both genuinely refreshing and entertaining, while speaking with such clarity and courage. When We Are Kin is fearless. Kyle Mays tells the truth plainlyno sugarcoating, no shortcuts. This book isnt optional for anyone serious about building solidarity. And if we are truly committed to liberation, then we need more voices willing to speak this boldly.
Trevor Smith and Savannah Romero, cofounders of the BLIS Collective
In When We Are Kin, Kyle Mays does what only he can dospeak truth to power about Black-Indigenous solidarity with humor, authority, and introspection. He puts his whole foot in it and says all the things that need to be said, confronting the uncomfortable nuances around landback and reparations as strategies of decolonization. With history as his witness and the archives bringing the receipts, Mays demonstrates how the notion of assumed alliance between our peoples, simply because of a shared experience of oppression, creates a fragile and altogether incomplete site of unity. He instead helps us to understand that it is through the cultivation of Black-Indigenous kinship and centering of the land that we get thereactualized tribal sovereignty and Black freedom. A masterpiece.
Amber Starks (Melanin Mvskoke), Afro-Indigenous advocate, organizer, and cultural critic
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