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34
An Indigenous
Peoples' History of the
United States
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
An
Introduction:
"The story of the new world is horror,
the story of America is a crime" - Jodi Byrd (228)
Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous peoples' history of the United States. Boston, MS: Beacon Press
Settler-Colonialism
Central Question:
"How might acknowledging the reality of US history work to transform society?"
Settler
Colonialism
"...the expansion of European corporations, backed by government armies, into foreign areas,
with subsequent expropriation of lands and resources" (6)
Settler Colonialism
- Historical reality - US is a settler-colony
- Reality in which Indigenous nations are not erased
- Inseparable from institutionalization of genocide
- 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, classifications of genocide :
- Killing members of group
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm
- Deliberately inflicting conditions of life
calculated to bring destruction
- Imposing measures to prevent births
- Forcibly transferring children
from group
Erasure:
'Firsting and Lasting'
Erasure
- Absence of a colonial framework impedes comprehension, proliferates the erasure of
Indigenous nations
- Work of federal policy and local agency
- 'Firsting and Lasting' (Jean O'Brien), national and local histories catalogue the 'firsts' (school, founders) of Anglo-American society, as though there weren't already civilized establishments beforehand
- Often paired with Indigenous 'lasts' (tribes, chiefs)
- Indigenous communities often excluded from multiculturalism; transformed into undeveloped, oppressed racial group having contributed 'corn, buckskin, log cabins, Thanksgiving, and democracy'
- This image obscures genocide and Anglo greed
Indigenous
Nations
"As a birthplace of agriculture and the towns and cities that followed, America is ancient,
not a "new world" (15)
Indigenous Nations
- 8500 BC - domestication of plants occurred in only seven locales around the globe:
- Tigris-Euphrates and Nile River systems, Sub-Saharan Africa, Yellow River of northern China, Yangtze River of southern China, the Valley of Mexico and Central America, South-Central Andes in South America, and eastern North America
- Agriculture and cultigens proliferated across the continent through centuries of cultural and commercial interchange
- Precolonial Carribbean cultures and cultural connections limited through Colombus's colonizing missions of annihilation, enslavement, and deportation, and later assimilated enslavement with African populations with Atlantic slave trade
Influences from the South
"Influences from the south powerfully shaped the Indigenous peoples to the north (in what is now the US) and Mexicans continue to migrate as they have for millennia but now across the arbitrary border that was established in the US war against Mexico in 1846-48" (18)
Influences from the South
- Traders of early civilizations (Mayans, Aztecs) also transmitters of culture to northern tribes and nations
- Agricultural communities practiced cultivation and irrigation as early as 1500 BC (Hohokams, Pueblos, Navajos, Apaches)
Dionisio Yam Moo is one of over 70,000 milperos like him who use traditional Mayan milpa farming
techniques.
'Mayans Have Farmed the Same Way for a Millenia. Climate Change Means They Can't'
by Gabriel Popkin for National Public Radio
Published February
3rd, 2017
Sebastien Proust
Governance
- Confederations or federations - what settler-colonists termed the pre-existing systems of Indigenous governance
- The joining of towns under a singular leadership through clan-village system of democracy (Haudenosaunnee confederacy, often referred to as 'Six Nations of the Iroquois')
- The Great Law of Peace - Haudenosaunee constitution which inspired essential elements of the US Constitution
- Featured three principles:
- Peace, equity and justice for all people, power in unity
- Muskogees, Seminoles, and other nations of southeast North America had three branches of governement
- Civil administration, military, and sacred branch
Governance
Hiawatha Belt of the Haudenosaunee,
represents original five
nations connected
in peace
Onondaga Nation
Stewards of the
Land
"Native peoples left an indelible imprint on the land with systems of roads that tied nations and communities together across the entire landmass of the Americas" (29)
Stewards of the Land
- Domesticated animals, used fire to manage under-growth in forests, cultivated gardens of fruits and vegetables as well as groves of trees
- Anglo-settler accounts from Rhode Island to Ohio detailed forests which 'armies may penetrate' and resembled English parks where 'carriages may pass' (28)
- Roads were developed along rivers, major streams, and seacoasts - connecting Atlantic to Pacific, from Valley of Mexico into present-day Canada
"America in 1492 was not a virgin wilderness but a network of Indigenous nations...."
(30)
American Origin
Narratives are Fallacies
- US provincialism and national chauvinism impede revisions to these narratives
- Governing officials insisting on the 'taming' of America
- Whiteness as ideology of supremacy, leading to geopolitical and sociocultural makeup of US society
- From Crusades 'liempieza de sangre' (cleanness of blood), to Social Darwinism of mid-19th century, to today
Myths
President Donald Trump gives commencement address at US Naval Academy 2018 graduation ceremony
"Many have noted that had North America been a wilderness undeveloped, without roads,
and uncultivated, it might still be so,
for the European colonists could not
have survived. They appropriated what had already been created by
Indigenous civilizations"
(46)
Cult of the
Covenant
"...the faithful citizens come together of their own free will and pledge to each other and to their god to form and support a godly society, and their god in turn vouchsafes them prosperity
in a promised land" (47)
Cult of the Covenant
- 'Liempieza de sangre' - popularized in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal) and resulted in increased privileges of 'old Christians' regardless of class, leveled based upon racial sameness
- Calvinism - John Calvin proclaimed free will did not exist, and that salvation was reserved for an elected few called upon by God
- Indicators for one called upon by God: good fortune and material wealth, bided by 'organized' society
- Indicators for one damned: poverty, dissention, darkness of skin
- Modern-day covenant:
- "The US Constitution, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the writings of the 'Founding Fathers', Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address, the Pledge of Allegiance, and even Martin Luther
King, Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech are all bundled into the
covenant as sacred documents that express the US
state religion" (50)
Scotch-Irish 'Exceptionalism'
- Core of settlers to the Americas were the 'Scotch-Irish' - Protestants from Scotland recruited by the British to first settle lands of northern Ireland's Ulster region, driving out native inhabitants
- Were prompted to relocate to the Americas mostly due to struggle with British-Irish policy and economic ruin in Ireland's wool and linen industries
- Small portion of Scotch-Irish fled for religious reasons
- First settlers were seasoned settler-colonialists, described as foot soldiers to the British empire with individualistic values and glorifying warfare
Scotch-Irish
'Exceptionalism'
"They saw themselves, and their descendants see themselves , as the true and authentic patriots, the ones who spilled rivers of blood to secure independence and to acquire Indigenous lands - gaining blood rights to the latter as they left blood footprints across the continent"
(54)
Populist
Imperialism and Manifest Destiny
Populist Imperialism and Manifest
Destiny
- Populist imperialism held that wars of conquest involving ethnic cleansing were something good, with the purpose of bringing 'economic opportuninty, democracy, and freedom to all'
- Accelerated by manifest destiny:
- Ideology which normalized invasions, occupations, and genocide of Indigenous lands and nations by way of colonialist and imperialist enterprise as though it were an ordained process
- Westward expansion did not occur as a natural movement, not as the wagon caravans depicted in Western cinema and literature
"...those who still hold to the narrative remain
captive of the ideology of manifest destiny,
according to which the United States expanded
across the continent to assume its
preordained size and shape" (118)
Culture of
Conquest
Culture of Conquest
- Early settlers enacted a culture of conquest
- Profit-based motives and Christian zeal as justification for colonialism and militaristic tradition
- 1500s, 1600s English drew upon this ideology with view of privatization of land as sacred
- Commoners who resisted land privatization were characterized as 'violent, stupid, lazy'
- Privatization of common lands accompanied by suppression of women through witchhunts, both carried throughout 1500s and 1600s
"In language reminiscent of that used to condemn witches, they quickly identified the Indigenous populations as inherently children of Satan and "servants of the devil" who deserved to be killed" (36)
Military as
Colonialist Presence
- Founding military ideologies and strategies first implemented
on Indigenous people
- 'Battles' characterized by unlimited violence and irregular warfare by settler-colonialists and US military
- A necessary distinction: was not the British who waged 'war' against Indigenous nations, but Anglo-Americans
- 'Battles' between Anglo-Americans and Indigenous entailed public rhetoric of US officials claiming self-defense, yet explicit action demonstrated outright destruction and extermination
"Battles"
- Example of this shown in 1814 'Battle' of Horseshoe Bend and Treaty of Fort Jackson:
- 800 Muskogees and their allies were killed, 300 women and children were captured; Only 49 of then General Andrew Jackson's men were killed
- After 'battle,' Jackson and his men skinned Muskogee
bodies to make souvenirs and reins for their horses
- Treaty officialized Muskogee Nation surrender
under "principles of national justice and
honorable war" (100)
Bloody
Footprints
- Wars from late-1600s into 1800s developed and reiterated US genocidal policy aimed towards Indigenous people
Bloody Footprints
- Scalp-hunting, "a permanent and long-lasting element of settler warfare against Indigenous nations" (64); wanton murder of Indigenous people for bounty from local governement
- Privatization of war even in absence of warfare
- Bloody scalps and bodies of Indigenous people referred to as redskins
Annexation
of Mexico
Annexation of Mexico
- Private property land grants begun by Spanish parliament and left in place by Republic of Mexico, opened door to US domination by granting land to slave-owning Anglo-Americans, spurning 1836 Battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto
- "One of the first acts of the pro-slavery independent government was to establish counterinsurgency force that followed the 'American way of war' in destroying Indigenous towns, eliminating Native nations in Texas, pursuing ethnic cleansing, and suppressing protest from Tejanos, former Mexican citizens" (127)
- After 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico's ceded northern territories experienced same 'American way of war'
- US occupation and settlement exterminated over 100,000 California Indigenous people in twenty-five years, reducing the population to 30,000 by 1870
- Land became the most important commodity with promise for accumulation of capital for both
settlers and US government
'Indian Country':
Present-day Oklahoma and Enemy Territory
'Indian Country'
- Recalls origins and development of the US military and the nature of US political and social history as a colonialist project
- 1830 Indian Removal Act, Georgia seized Cherokee lands claiming their Native laws were null and void
- Cherokees organized and took case to US Supreme Court which ruled them entitled to their land, yet when the President Andrew Jackson ignored decision, US Supreme Court did nothing
- Jackson jailed Cherokee leaders, randomly picked Cherokee men to provide bogus signatures, enacting forced removal
- 1838 Trail of Tears, forced march of Cherokee Nation out of homelands to 'Indian Country', half of 16,000 died on journey
Doctrine of Discovery
"This doctrine on which all European states relied thus originated with the arbitrary and unilateral establishment of the Iberian monarchies' exclusive rights under Christian canon law to colonize foreign peoples...." (199)
Doctrine of
Discovery
- Originated with 1455 papal bull allowing Portugal to seize West Africa, followed by 1492 Spanish voyage to the Americas, ultimately resulting in 1792 US claim to doctrine by then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson
- Enabled colonizing countries to come into vast amounts of resources and labor which created opportunity for industrialization and establishment of bureaucratic structures and political republicanism
- Doctrine extends to assimilation through imposed citizenship, federal mandates, termination of federal trust protection and transfer payments guaranteed by treaties, and relocation among other methods
Culture
of Resistance
"Indigenous nations had defied the founding of the United States in a manner that allowed for their survival and created
a legacy, a culture of resistance, that has persisted" (79)
Culture
of Resistance
- 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz, organized seizure and eighteen-month occupation of island by Indians of All Tribes alliance drawing Native pilgrimages from all over continent
- Proclamation of the Indians of All Tribes, expressed Indigenous solidarity as well as five demands for institutions
- 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties, eight Indigenous organizations formed 20-Point Position Paper on federal government's responsibility to implement Indigenous soveriegnty honoring treaties; caravans converged in DC at Bureau of Indian Affairs
- Self-determination as resistance and decolonization involved Indigenous control of own social and economic developments
Restoration of
Native Lands
- Indigenous Americans, especially legal scholars, prefer
the term restoration when discussing lands promised by
treaty, or repatriation for lands acquired outside of treaties
- 1970 Public Law 91-550, first restoration of any Indigenous nation signed by President Richard Nixon, returning lands to Taos Pueblo Nation
Restoration of Native Lands
Nixon signing Public Law 91-550, 1970 National Archives
Dennis Banks, co-founder of American Indian Movement, at Mt Rushmore (Sioux land), 1974 Rick Smolan
- 1980 United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, US ruled that
Sioux sacred site Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, were illegally seized,
were offered $106 million with interest as reward
- Offer denied on principle - monetary compensation
does not equate to restoration of homelands
- By 2010, account contained nearly a billion
dollars and remains in the account still
today
Conclusion
"...Whatever historical trauma was entailed in
settling the land affects the assumptions and behavior of living generations at any given time, including immigrants and the children of recent immigrants" (229)
Today and Tomorrow
- Mainstream narratives of poverty and social dysfunction found within Indigenous communities "...miss the specific circumstances that reproduce Indigenous poverty and social scarring - namely, the colonial condition" (211)
"How might acknowledging the reality of United States history work to transform society?" (2)
Citations
CBS News (2018). Trump tells Naval Academy grads cynics are trying to tear down America.Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMxsBshpehU
Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous peoples' history of the United States. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
National Archives Catalog (1970, December 15th). President Richard Nixon speaking to attendees at signing ceremony for the Blue Lake Bill, HR 471, which deeded lands to Taos and Pueblo Indians. Photo retrieved from https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7268141
Onondaga Nation (2018). Hiawatha Belt. Retrieved from
http://www.onondaganation.org/culture/wampum/hiawatha-belt/
Owen, L. (1973). The drum leads the people to the mass grave of those who were killed in the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Photo retrieved from
https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2013/02/27/173048452/revisiting-wounded-knee-40-years-later
Poplin, G. (2017). Mayans have farmed the same way for millennia. Climate change means they can't. National Public Radio, Inc. Retrieved from
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/03/510272265/mayans-have-farmed-the same-way-for-millennia-climate-change-means-they-cant
Smolan, R. (1974). Native American Dennis Banks, co-founder of the American Indian
Movement at Mt. Rushmore. Photo retrieved from https://nppa.org/news/call
photographs-and-stories-rick-smolan%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cbroken-promises%E2%80%9D