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In thinking about how our US society can come to terms with the various things that have happened in our past, we must ask ourselves how do we move to acknowledge responsibility. Since we are not responsible for what our ancestors did we are responsible for the society in which we live in which is a product of the past.  When we accept responsibility this provides a means of survival and liberation.  We all are affected by US dominance and intervention.  Considering the existence of American Indian ancestries and heritages, these should be a part of the curriculums taught in public schools and universities.  Indigenous peoples offer possibilities for life after empire.  The process starts by honoring treaties the United States made with Indigenous nations.  In order for our future to be realized it will require extensive educational programs and the full support and active participation of the decendants of settlers, enslaved Africans, and colonized Mexicans, as well as immigrant populations.

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Robert D. Kaplan, was a meticulous researcher and influential writer born in 1952 in NYC. He wrote for major newspapers and magazines before serving as chief geopolitical strategist for the private security think tank stratfor. He has been a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, DC, and a member of the Defense Policy Board. Kaplan became one of the principal intellectual boosters for US power in the world through the tried-and-true American way of war.

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The ghost dance prophecy is a spiritual movement that came about in the late 1880's when conditions were bad on indian reservations and the Indians needed something to give them hope.  The movement was found by it's orgin named Wovoka.  He declared a vision appeared to him in a dream that by doing the round"ghost dance" continuously the dream would become a reality and the participants would enjoy the new earth.  The dance was claimed it would bring about renewal of the nature society and decline in the influence of the whites.

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In 1984 Frederick Jackson Turner presented his history making frontier thesis claiming that the crisis of that era was the result of the closing of the frontier and that a new frontier was need to fill the ideological and spiritual vacuum created by the completion of settler colonialism.  This thesis served as a dominant school of the history of the US West through most of the twentieth century.

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The most ruthless Indian killers were awarded and idolized as great heroes; Harrison became the president, and John Sevier’s statue still exist today. “A bronze statue of John Sevier in his ranger uniform stands today in the National Statuary Hall of the US Capitol” (90).

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In 1982 the government of Spain and the Holy See proposed that 1992 be celebrated in the United Nations as an "encounter" between Europe and the peoples of the Americas and that Oct 12 be designated as the UN International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples.  As time drew near to this time various nations took action.  Spain took the lead in fighting the indigenous proposals.  Large sums of money was spent preparing their own celebration.  The US cooperated with the project and produced its series of events.  In the end compromise was won at the UN.  Indigenous peoples garnered a decade for the World's Indigenous Peoples, which officially began in 1994 but was inaugurated at UN headquarters in New York in December 1992.Aug 9 was designated as the annual UN International day for the world's indigenous peoples.

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In the early nineteenth century, many towns of Indigenous nations began building some rigorous Indigenous resistances, and challenged squatter settlers in many different parts of the country. Indigenous peoples had discovered the need to call for the Alliance of all Indigenous Nations instead of each resistance fights alone and gets destroyed at the end. However, this alliance was a little too late. By then, there were already too many federal troops and mercenary fighters like John Sevier who kill Indians for pleasure.

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“Between 1607 and 1814, Americans forged two elements – unlimited war and irregular war – into their first way of war” (56). Anglo settlers used irregular techniques of warfare against the Indigenous peoples to carry out genocides. The purpose of the irregular war is to destroy the will of the enemy or their capacity to resist, employing any means necessary to include; the extreme violence against noncombatant civilians (women &children), destroying villages and towns, targeting food sources (corn fields), spreading diseases (Smallpox), and utilizing intelligence & surveillance. This kind of war was alien to the Indigenous peoples. The author believes this approach to war is still in force in the twenty-first century, but the name changed to Special Operations.

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During the Pequot War, colonial officials had offered bounties for the heads of murdered Indigenous people and later for only for their scalps, which were more portable in large numbers. In 1697, settler Hannah Dustin has murdered ten of her Abenaki captors in a nighttime escape, presented their ten scalps to the Massachusetts General Assembly and was rewarded with bounties for two men, two women, and six children. Then scalp hunting became a lucrative commercial practice. Scalps and Indigenous children became means of exchange, currency, and this development resulted in black market. The settlers gave a name to mutilated and bloody corpses they left in wake of scalp-hunts: Redskins!

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Corn was life, it was everything. It was traded up and down the American continent. It became more a form of currency and was a foundation for religion.

Native Americans had an ideal and healthy diet, mostly composed of vegetables and supplemented by animal meat. This caused the population to boom to 50 million. In contrast the European population was rather small.

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It took the liberalization of the 1950-1960s Civil Rights Movement to include people other than European-Americans in the threads of the American cloth. Even still the American myth persisted.

Historians started to include women, African American, and immigrants. Native Americans were relegated to the first Americans - thus making them distant immigrants.

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The United States prior to what Dunbar-Ortiz calls "European Invasion" was not terra nullis - a land without people.
This is a classic one-sided story. A method of oppressors (European-Americans) of dehumanizing the oppressed (Native Americans).

Francis Jennings states that if America was really virgin land then it would have remained so. The European/American colonists seized trade routes, farm land, rivers, roads, crops, and animals that had belonged to the Native Americans - thereby starving Natives out of everything and causing them to rely on the colonists.
"Incapable of conquering true wilderness, the Europeans were highly competent in the skill of conquering other people, and that is what they did. They did not settle virgin land. They invaded and displaced a resident population" (47).

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Genocide never lags too far behind colonization. "The objective of US colonialist authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples...This is the very definition of modern genocide as contrasted with premodern instances of extreme violence that did not have the goal of extinction."

In school I (Jane) was not really taught to consider what European Americans did not Native Americans as genocide. When in actuality it was. Textbook. Elimination through violent and forceful tactics...indoctrination, etc. It's like a conveniently forgotten genocide. And whenever a discussion of Native Americans came up, disease and germs were as well. Making it seem that it was contact with bacteria and viruses that caused most of the elimination. Dunbar-Ortiz points that this is a lie when she states that what happened to Native Americans is "commonly referred to as the most extreme demographic disaster - framed as natural - in human history, it was rarely called genocide until the rise of Indigenous movements in the mid-twentieth century forged questions" (Dunbar-Ortiz 40).

Bottom line: Germs had their role in the decline in population among the Native Americans; however, what happened at the hands of European/Americans colonists was not natural. Disease weakened the people, but the Europeans/Americans killed, enslaved, kidnapped, and indoctrinated them.

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Andrew Jackson played a huge role in the genocide of Native Americans. The book describes this with intense language. "Jackson was a veteran Indian killer." (96).

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The Indigenous populations west of the Mississippi (known as "Indian Country") were the most impacted following the Civil War as new waves of settlers made the move for cheap land and the gold rush. It was during this time that some of the greatest atrocities occurred upon these indigenous populations in the name of "Manifest Destiny" such as the Sand Creek massacre as well as the massacre at Wounded Knee. A member of the Dakota tribe is noted as saying of the American settlers that "the greatest object of their lives seems to be to acquire possessions - to be rich. They desire to possess the whole world" (Dunbar-Ortiz 2014, 136).  Freire notes that for oppressors "having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own effort" versus what it really is, an "egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class" that "dehumanizes others and themselves" (Freire 2014, 59). This sentiment rang true not only for that time period but for the future as the US extended its' reach for more global power and influence to become the most powerful nation in the world. 'Indian Country' is still utilized today as a US military term to denote enemy territory, a pervasive legacy of this shameful time period.

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The ghost dance prophecy is a spiritual movement that came about in the late 1880's when conditions were bad on indian reservations and the Indians needed something to give them hope.  The movement was found by it's orgin named Wovoka.  He declared a vision appeared to him in a dream that by doing the round"ghost dance" continuously the dream would become a reality and the participants would enjoy the new earth.  The dance was claimed it would bring about renewal of the nature society and decline in the influence of the whites.

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The violence and organized racism under the notion of White supremacy in the early 20th century signified the lowest point for Indigenous populations. This time period came after decades of violent military operations and theft by the federal government of treaty-guaranteed funds and allotment of Indigenous lands previously secured through those same treaties. The Indigenous populations were at their lowest numbers and their outlook for survival was grim given the quest for "racial purity" and intolerance of others during this time period. Additionally, corporations under Federal protection were moving in on previously allotted Indigenous lands in the industrialization of the US. It wasn't until the early dawn of the Civil Rights era along with some important legislation that Indigenous leaders were inspired once again to have hope and renew resistance. But by this time, the damage had been done as over 100 indigenous tribes had been completely destroyed and the ones that remained had been left with so little with which to rebuild.

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 Trauma hidden by glorifying money and property 

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 Trauma hidden by glorifying money and property 

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“When we arrived at the mission, they locked me in a room for a week….Every day they lashed me unjustly because I did not finish what I did not know to do, thus I existed for many days until I found a way to escape; but I was tracked and they caught me like a fox.” Franciscan missions have and still hide trauma and abuse of California Indigenous peoples (128). Also, during the gold rush CA Indigenous people were hurt by the forty niners' greed. Greed took over, which left native people’s facing death, rape, starvation and disease. Money, property, status were in control.

There were records recorded in diaries and official records. However, it was not until the 1950’s and 60’s that historians showed interest.

Dunbar- Ortiz state the ones that survived to tell the story are life savers for the population in CA today.

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In 1866, Congress created two all African-American cavalry units that were sent to the West to fight Indigenous resistance. These regiments came to be known as the "Buffalo Soldiers" mostly consisted of disenfranchised African-Americans that had fought in the Civil War with the Union and now had limited options so many turned to the army which at least provided food, shelter and modest pay. These African-American men were often unable to read or write and had little knowledge of the genocide that had been occurring toward the Indigenous populations. The irony of the oppressed becoming oppressors is not ironic at all through the vision of Freire as he notes that in the minds of the oppressed African-Americans "their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity." (Freire 2014, 47). For the US authorities it was just a good way to get rid of the Black soldiers and Indians all at once.

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American Origin Story/Manifest Destiny: A single sided story. "It is wrong or deficient, not in its facts, dates, or details but rather in its essence."
It is perpetuated "not for lack of free speech or poverty of information but rather for an absence of motivation to ask questions that challenge the core of the scripted narrative..."

Despite this Dunbar Ortiz still wrote, with regards to the most populous and prosperous indigenous nations, that native groups gathered peoples on their periphery "gradually incorporating many of the latter into the realms of their civilization" (pg 16). Seems rather biased to me...but she does redeem herself later on on pg 21 when she states that Cortes and his 200 comrades could never have toppled the Aztec Empire without the help of the "peoples on the perihery."

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The Leatherstocking Tales--Fiction turned to Fact

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The Leatherstocking Tales--Fiction turned to Fact

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The Leatherstocking Tales were popular reads in the 19th century--especially by white men. These books are fiction, but were quickly known as facts.

The Last of the Mohicans, one of the 5 novels,  was a story about the “reinvention” of the United States. There were also two Hollywood movies based on the story.

The story depicts that a new American race was born from the best of the both worlds: the white settlers and native americans. The story says that the natives die off, and the last Mohican hands over the continent to Hawkeye. The novel describes Hawkeye as a nativized settler (Dunbar-Ortiz, 104-105).

The story was a myth, but the story also had staying power. This story influenced American Nationalism. This also shows us how the U.S. society used literature and media to a tool for oppression.  This is easily depicted by examining the years popularity of the The Last of the Mohicans.

“Positive twist on genocidal colonialism was based on the reality of invasion, squatting, attacking, and colonizing the Indigenous nations (107).

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The Last of the Mohicans (5/5) Movie CLIP - Chingachgook Battles Magua (1992) HD

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The Last of the Mohicans movie clips: http://j.mp/1Ih2EUQ BUY THE MOVIE: FandangoNOW - https://www.fandangonow.com/details/movie/last-of-the-mohicans-1992/1MV31d2e8be7ff38211510a4ed2d48819e3?cmp=Movieclips_YT_Description iTunes - http://apple.co/1Ka874H Google Play - http://bit.ly/1KEjC2v Amazon - http://amzn.to/1AO9LqH Fox Movies - http://fox.co/2zQzpwW Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Chingachgook (Russell Means) kills Magua (Wes Studi) and then realizes that he is the last of the Mohican tribe.

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Thought process from different group members 

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Thought process from different group members 

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We have all mutually agreed that the stories in this book are devastating. We all come from different backgrounds, and it is interesting to note that Assadeg has not had the same educational background about indigenous people in the U.S. as those of us who went to school in the U.S.

Throughout our readings we have each been reading about different Indigenous nations across the U.S. We can note that abuse and genocide was widespread and indigenous people suffered extreme traumas from settlers trying to colonize their lands.  For example, Sunny mentioned the point about Buffalo soldiers. She has known the Bob Marley song and others agreed, but will now listen to this song with a new lens. ( I actually never heard this song until today). Take a look at the lyrics of the song.
I feel bad bringing up the lyrics because it feels like an oppressive move toward indigenous people today.  How does this song relate historical forms of oppression to modern day examples? To me, this describes how an oppressed person fights for survival, but can also become an oppressor while doing this. There has been a fine line between survival and oppressive actions for many oppressed people for generations. Is this the voice of the indigenous people? Or do they feel like they were not oppressors? I think this book tells us they felt they were not oppressors and only oppressed. I agree with the view point of the book. They are survivors. They endured so much pain, and their story of being oppressed should be believed by all.

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Using Freire's work to understand the Native American Story

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Using Freire's work to understand the Native American Story

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The story of Native American's migration is often a scripted story taught in schools today. This book allows us to reflect on multiple stories. Freire discusses cultural invasion (152-153). This is a concept to consider when discussing ways the story is told today. How have oppressors continued to invade the Native American culture over the generations?