Racism against Native Americans in the United States
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Native Americans in the United States |
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Both during and after the
The dehumanization and demonization of Native Americans, epitomized in the United States Declaration of Independence, underscored a pervasive attitude that underpinned colonial and post-colonial policies. Historical events such as the California genocide, American Indian Wars, and the forced removal of the Navajos reflected the deep-seated racism and violence which were both ingrained in American expansionism, perpetuating a legacy of suffering, forced displacement, and death among indigenous peoples.
Today, despite legal recognition of their formal equality, American Indians,
Background
Ethnic cleansing
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During the 19th century, the desire to forcibly remove certain Native American nations gained momentum. However, some Native Americans either chose to or were allowed to remain on their land and as a result, they avoided removal but thereafter, the federal government treated them in a racist manner. The Choctaws in Mississippi described their situation in 1849, "we have had our habitations torn down and burned, our fences destroyed, cattle turned into our fields and we ourselves have been scourged, manacled, fettered and otherwise personally abused, until by such treatment some of our best men have died."[4] According to Charles Hudson, Joseph B. Cobb, who moved to Mississippi from Georgia, described the Choctaws as having "no nobility or virtue at all, and in some respects he found blacks, especially native Africans, to be more interesting and admirable, the red man's superior in every way. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, the tribes he knew best, were beneath contempt; that is, even worse than black slaves."[5]
Manifest Destiny
In the 1800s, ideologies such as manifest destiny, which held the view that the United States was destined to expand from coast to coast on the North American continent, fueled U.S. attacks against, and maltreatment of, Native Americans. In the years leading up to the Indian Removal Act of 1830 there were many armed conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans.[6] A justification for the conquest and subjugation of indigenous people emanated from the stereotyped perception that Native Americans were "merciless Indian savages" (as described in the United States Declaration of Independence).[7] Sam Wolfson in The Guardian writes, "The declaration’s passage has often been cited as an encapsulation of the dehumanizing attitude toward indigenous Americans that the US was founded on."[8]
Simon Moya-Smith, culture editor at Indian Country Today, states, "Any holiday that would refer to my people in such a repugnant, racist manner is certainly not worth celebrating. [July Fourth] is a day when we celebrate our resiliency, our culture, our languages, our children and we mourn the millions – literally millions – of indigenous people who have died as a consequence of American imperialism."[9]
Genocide
Stacie Martin states that the United States has not been legally admonished by the international community for genocidal acts against its Indigenous population, but many historians and academics describe events such as the Mystic massacre, the Trail of Tears, the Sand Creek massacre and the Mendocino War as genocidal in nature.[10]
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz states that U.S. history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twentieth century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories via Indian removal policies, forced removal of Native American children to boarding schools, allotment, and a policy of termination.[11]
The letters exchanged between Bouquet and Amherst during the
The United States has to date not undertaken any truth commission nor built a memorial for the genocide of Indigenous people.[21] It does not acknowledge nor compensate for the historical violence against Native Americans that occurred during territorial expansion to the West Coast.[21] American museums such as the Smithsonian Institution do not dedicate a section to the genocide.[21] In 2013, the National Congress of American Indians passed a resolution to create a space for the National American Indian Holocaust Museum inside the Smithsonian, but it was ignored by the latter.[21]
Acts of genocide
In 1861, residents of
American Indian Wars
Native American nations on the plains in the west continued armed conflicts with the U.S. throughout the 19th century, through what were called generally Indian Wars.[24] Jeffrey Ostler, the Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon, stated the American Indian War "was genocidal war."[25] Xabier Irujo, professor of genocide studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, stated, "the toll on human lives in the wars against the native nations between 1848 and 1881 was horrific."[26] Notable conflicts in this period include the Dakota War, Great Sioux War, Snake War and Colorado War. These conflicts occurred in the United States from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the end of the 19th century. The various wars resulted from a wide variety of factors, the most common being the desire of settlers and governments for Indian tribes' lands.
Massacres
In the years leading up to the
During the period surrounding the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, author L. Frank Baum wrote two editorials about Native Americans. Five days after the killing of the Lakota Sioux holy man, Sitting Bull, Baum wrote, "The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by the law of conquest, by a justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are."[30] Following the December 29, 1890, massacre, Baum wrote, "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."[30][31]
Cultural genocide
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American Indian boarding schools, were established in the United States during the 19th and lasted through the mid-20th centuries with the primary objective of assimilating Native Americans into the dominant White American culture. The effect of these schools has been described as forced assimilation against Native peoples.[33][34] In these schools, Native children were prohibited from participating in any of their cultures' traditions, including speaking their own languages. Instead, they were required to speak English at all times and learn geography, science, and history (among other disciplines) as white Americans saw fit.[33][34] This meant learning a version of history that upheld whites' superiority and rightful "inheritance" of the lands of the United States, while Natives were relegated to a position of having to assimilate to white culture without ever truly being considered equals.[33]
Reservation system
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Once their territories were incorporated into the United States, surviving Native Americans were denied equality before the law and often treated as wards of the state.
Further dispossession of various kinds continues into the present, although these current dispossessions, especially in terms of land, rarely make major news headlines in the country (e.g., the
The Worldwatch Institute notes that 317 reservations are threatened by environmental hazards, while Western Shoshone land has been subjected to more than 1,000 nuclear explosions.[39] However, the last known nuclear explosion testing in the United States occurred in September 1992.[40]
Racial stereotypes
In early colonial writings, the most common portrayal of Native men came in the form of what Robert Berkhofer calls "savage images of the Indian as not only hostile but depraved.".[41] In later times, particularly under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea of the noble savage. Native American and First Nations women, meanwhile, are frequently sexually objectified and are often stereotyped as being promiscuous.[42] Such misconceptions lead to murder, rape, and violence against Native American or First Nations people by non-Natives.[43] An Algonquin word, the term "squaw" is now widely deemed offensive due to its use for hundreds of years in a derogatory context. However, there remain more than a thousand locations in the U.S. that incorporate the term in its name.[44]
Red Power movement
![A group of NIYC demonstrators holding signs in front of the BIA office.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Bia-sit-in.jpg/220px-Bia-sit-in.jpg)
The
Inspired by the Black power movement, the Red Power movement was a social movement which was led by Native American youth who demanded self-determination for Native Americans in the United States. Organizations that were affiliated with the Red Power Movement included the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC).[48] This movement sought the rights for Native Americans to make policies and programs for themselves while maintaining and controlling their own land and resources.[48] The Red Power movement took a confrontational and civil disobedience approach to inciting change in United States to Native American affairs[49] compared to using negotiations and settlements, which national Native American groups such as National Congress of American Indians had before.[48] Red Power centered around mass action, militant action, and unified action.[50]
Current issues
While formal equality has been legally recognized,
Criminal justice system
Native Americans are disproportionately represented in state and federal criminal justice systems. Native Americans are incarcerated at a rate 38% higher than the national average and were overrepresented in the prison population in 19 states compared to any other race and ethnicity. The National Prisoner Statistics series of 2016 reported 22,744 Native Americans were incarcerated in state and federal facilities and represented 2.1 to 3.7% of the federal offender population during 2019 despite only accounting for 1.7% of the United States population. In states with higher Native American populations such as North Dakota, incarceration rates are up to 7 times that of their White counterparts. A study analyzing federal sentencing data found that Native Americans are sentenced more harshly than White, African American, and Hispanic offenders. In fact, further analysis showed that young Native American males receive the most punitive sentences, surpassing punishment imposed upon young, African American or Hispanic males.[54]
Healthcare
The healthcare system also demonstrates disregard for Native American lives by creating additional barriers to accessing care in the state system, which places a higher burden on the Indian Health Service that is already chronically underfunded and understaffed. Native Americans experience a higher rate of violent hate crime victimizations than any other race or ethnicity.[55] Overall, Native Americans continue to experience racism, oppression, discrimination, microaggressions, mockery, and misunderstandings of current day Nativeness. The tandem exoticization and devaluation of Native American lives contributes to the epidemic of disappearances and murders of Native Americans, paired with delayed or poor investigations of these occurrences.[54]
See also
- Indigenous peoples of the Americas
- Cultural genocide
- Denial of genocides of Indigenous peoples
- Genocide of indigenous peoples
- Genocide recognition politics
- Genocides in history
- American Indian Wars
- List of ethnic cleansing campaigns
- List of genocides
- List of Indian massacres in North America
- List of massacres in the United States
- Mass racial violence in the United States
- Population history of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas
- Discrimination in the United States
- Discrimination based on skin color#United States
- Racism in the United States#Native Americans
- Religious discrimination in the United States
- Stereotypes of groups within the United States#Native Americans and Alaskan Natives
- Stereotypes of indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States
- Thomas Jefferson and Native Americans
- Indian Removal Act
- Choctaw Trail of Tears
- California Genocide
- Long Walk of the Navajo
- Comanche campaign
- Northern Cheyenne Exodus
- Potawatomi Trail of Death
- Sand Creek massacre
- Trail of Tears
- Timeline of Cherokee removal
- Yavapai Wars
- Indian removals in Indiana
- Indian removals in Ohio
- Wounded Knee massacre
References
- ^ Mann, Charles C., 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Vintage Books, 2006, c.2005, p. 18
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- ^ Boime, Albert (2004), A Social History of Modern Art, Volume 2: Art in an Age of Counterrevolution, 1815–1848, (Series: Social History of Modern Art); University of Chicago Press, pg 527.
- ^ Walter, Williams (1979). "Three Efforts at Development among the Choctaws of Mississippi". Southeastern Indians: Since the Removal Era. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.
- ^ Hudson, Charles (1971). "The Ante-Bellum Elite". Red, White, and Black; Symposium on Indians in the Old South. University of Georgia Press. p. 80. SBN 820303089.
- ^ Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, Robert Tignor, Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron, Stephen Kotkin, Suzanne Marchand, Gyan Prakash, Michael Tsin, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2000, p. 274.
- ^ Out West. University of Nebraska Press. 2000. p. 96.
- ^ "Facebook labels declaration of independence as 'hate speech'". The Guardian. Retrieved August 7, 2019.
- ^ "Millions of Americans Have Nothing to Celebrate on the Fourth of July". Mic. Retrieved August 20, 2017
- ^ Martin, Stacie E. (2004). "Native Americans". In Shelton, Dinah (ed.). Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity. Macmillan Library Reference. pp. 740–746.
- ^ Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne (12 May 2016). "Yes, Native Americans Were the Victims of Genocide". History News Network. Archived from the original on 3 November 2017.
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- ^ Washburn, Kevin K. (February 2006). "American Indians, Crime, and the Law". Michigan Law Review. 104: 709, 735.
- ^ Valencia-Weber, Gloria (January 2003). "The Supreme Court's Indian Law Decisions: Deviations from Constitutional Principles and the Crafting of Judicial Smallpox Blankets". University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. 5: 405, 408–09.
- ^ a b c d d'Errico, Peter (10 January 2017). "Native American Genocide or Holocaust?". Indian Country Today. Archived from the original on 24 March 2022.
- ^ Castillo, Edward D. (1998). "Short Overview of California Indian History" Archived December 14, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, California Native American Heritage Commission.
- ^ a b M. Annette Jaimes (1992). The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance. p. 34. South End Press
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- ^ "Historian Examines Native American Genoci→de, its Legacy, and Survivors". University of Oregon. 20 January 2021. Retrieved 18 November 2023.
- ^ Irujo, Xabier. "Genocide, kill the Indian and save the man". Nevada Today. University of Nevada, Reno. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
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- ^ "Plains Humanities: Wounded Knee Massacre". Retrieved August 4, 2017.
- ^ "Plains Humanities: Wounded Knee Massacre". Retrieved August 9, 2016.
- ^ a b "L. Frank Baum's Editorials on the Sioux Nation". Archived from the original on December 9, 2007. Retrieved December 9, 2007. Full text of both, with commentary by professor A. Waller Hastings
- ^ Professor Robert Venables, Senior Lecturer Rural Sociology Department, Cornell University, "Looking Back at Wounded Knee 1890", Northeast Indian Quarterly, Spring 1990
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- ^ "Our Daily Bleed..." Archived from the original on July 1, 2016. Retrieved January 28, 2008.
- mental illness. Further, these individuals were often either totally unemployable or only marginally employed, as it was sensed by those around them that on the one hand, they had not successfully assimilated into 'white society', nor were they any longer acceptable to the Indian societies from which they had originated.
- ^ Strasser, Franz; Carpenter, Sharon (November 22, 2010). "Native Americans battle teenage suicide". BBC News.
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- ^ Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life, 1999, p. 2-3.
- ^ "Nuclear Tests Have Changed, but They Never Really Stopped". Wired. July 16, 2020. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
- ^ Berkhofer, Robert F. The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. Vintage Press. p. 7.
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- ^ a b Perdue, Theda (October 28, 2011). "Legacy of Jim Crow for Southern Native Americans". C-SPAN. Retrieved November 27, 2018.
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- ^ Lannon, Valerie (2014-01-03). "From the Red Power Movement to Idle No More". Red Power Media. Retrieved 2017-04-10.
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- ^ a b c Over-Incarceration of Native Americans: Roots, Inequities, and Solutions (Report). Safety and Justice Challenge. 2023.
- ^ Hate Crime Victimization, 2005–2019 (Report). Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2021.
Externals links
Media related to Racism against Native Americans in the United States at Wikimedia Commons