Post by the Scribe on Apr 11, 2022 19:23:21 GMT
All Land is Stolen | The Truth About Whether America Stole the Land from the Native Americans
medium.com/discourse/all-land-is-stolen-the-truth-about-whether-america-stole-the-land-from-the-native-americans-84a8f77be98a
The United States of America stole the land if you define “stolen” as “take without permission,” but then in that case all land has been stolen!
No one I’m aware of came out of the womb holding a deed to the land signed by God. All land was discovered, conquered, conquered, conquered, conquered a thousand times over by a variety of individuals and tribes.
The only reason you can claim to “own” land is because of the implicit threat of military/police force against anyone who might try to take it from you. In the good ol’ prehistoric days, man would have to defend his own cave, but now our self-defense is largely done by our respective governments so that we can worry about other things like what’s on Netflix. In other words, a country is one big cave where the current occupant claims to own the cave by threatening force if you try to “steal” it.
We got there first! The moon is ours forever!!! | Photo by Neil Armstrong
In fact, what makes the United States of America so special is how well we treated the former inhabitants of the land we purchased… relative to how every other nation on Earth had treated conquered people up-till that point, which granted still isn’t saying much because the Trail of Tears definitely wasn’t a walk in the park.
But nonetheless the U.S. Government paid the Native Americans for the land (So if you define “steal” as take “without legal right” then the US did not steal the land. There’s one possible exception I’m aware of where the U.S. government gave land to the Native Americans and then tried to take it back, a war ensued, the U.S. government won, but then tried to pay the Native American’s for damages, but the tribe has refused the money to this day, which amounts to a billion dollars, because the tribe still insists on having their lands returned, but morality aside, the U.S. Government has the “legal right” to reclaim land, even your own home. I will also note here that the United States of America cannot be blamed for the land taken by the Europeans nor for 90% of the indigenous population dying out due to diseases brought over by the Europeans because that predates the existence of the United States by hundreds of years. It would be like blaming a new homeowner for the murders of the previous owner.), so we paid them for the land, albeit at a very low price, and then gave them worse land further west because part of the moral justification, which in part was accurate, is that by giving them their own land further from population centers these indigenous populations would be better able to hold onto their own culture and therefore avoid “cultural extinction” as is often the case for peoples who are conquered for a long period of time as they slowly become assimilated into the general population.
And then who did the Americans “steal” the land from? Because if an American asked a Native American tribe whose land it was they’d say, “Mine!” And then another tribe would say, “Mine!” So when multiple people claim ownership to something who actually owns it?
Screenshot @ native-land.ca/
The Europeans and then the Americans used this disagreement to their advantage by making a deal with whichever tribe was willing to sell the land for less.
But the people who make the argument “America stole the land” usually do so to paint America as a particularly “evil and racist” nation, but if that’s your goal then you have to not only consider how Americans treated Native Americans, but how Native Americans treated Native Americans. They fought wars and battles against each other too! North America was not some utopia before the evil white man came. Do you think when a Native American tribe defeated another tribe in battle that the conquered were given money, supplies, and sent away? No. On the East Coast, women who lost a son could have her tribe capture an individual from a nearby tribe to serve as a replacement. If the captive didn’t appease her grief then the captive would be ritually tortured, sometimes to death if the captive was deemed unfit for adoption into the tribe. Among Plains Indians, scalps were taken from live victims as a badge of honor. The scalp would sometimes then be carried by women in a triumphal scalp dance. Oh, what fun! So given the choice, I’ll take the whiskey, tobacco, and plot of land in Oklahoma thank you very much.
And if you are a racist by thinking white-skin humans are genetically more evil than other shades of human skin then consider that in modern-day one of the best possible places you could be an indigenous person is in the United States of America rather than say Africa…
“As speaker after speaker from Africa’s indigenous groups and civil society told the panel about the indignities they suffered –- from the routine bigotry, forced slavery, and even cannibalism that indigenous Pygmy and Batwa people endured, to the poaching and predation of natural resources that crippled the development of the Maasai people — one Forum expert called on the African Governments to talk to indigenous peoples in their countries.” — United Nations Press Release
So, in other words, in Africa you could be eaten whereas in America you could be just 1/1024 Native American and have a much better chance at getting into Harvard and becoming a U.S. Senator.
The United States of America is far from perfect on indigenous issues, but always put history in context before passing judgement.