Ten minutes later: hey, about that land we gave you…
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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I know it's just memes, but, if anyone is interested in more perspective on this, I heartily recommend the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It tells the history of the latter parts of the Indian Wars using primary sources (and Native American sources, wherever possible). The result is the story of American expansion from the Native perspective and, while depressing, is also really important to understand.
No you can't have running water. Yes we did promise it to you in a treaty back in 1868
Source: Colorado v. Navajo nation supreme court ruling.
One judge whispers to the other "we didn't even pinky swear, so.."
Yeah just like we told them they could keep South Dakota
To this day nicknamed "The Sooner State" after a bunch of white colonizers who cheated to get lands already stolen from Native Americans before other white colonizers had a chance to steal them "fairly".
White people stealing land is also the origin of the “I’m 1/64th Native American” thing that white people always parrot. The federal government was giving land away to natives, but they had to have a certain percentage of ancestry. Off the top of my head, I think it was 1/8? So one native ancestor three generations ago. But there wasn’t any sort of checks or confirmations for this. So a lot of white people just started lying, and telling the feds that they had the minimum required lineage to claim the land.
And every time the feds came to check in, the white people would start saying it again, so their land didn’t get clawed back from them. And their kids heard them say this, and got told to tell the authorities this whenever asked. And those kids actually believed the lie, because why wouldn’t they? Over time it got watered down even further, and eventually turned into the modern day “oh yeah I’m like 1/64th native, from a Navajo princess” line that white people like to use. All because their 100% white great-great-great-grandparents wanted free land.
The Governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, has been pretty open about the fact that his family did this. People gave Warren shit, but Stitt is so much worse especially considering the way he fucks with the tribes while claiming their heritage. (Stitt was also involved in lots of real estate scams - I believe there’s several states he’s barred from conducting business in)
What makes it even worse is that being “too” indigenous - having too much indigenous heritage - meant that you were too incompetent to manage your own land. It needed to be managed by a white conservator. If you want to see how fucked this situation was, Flowers of the Killer Moon is great.
See also: one of several reasons why Elizabeth Warren isn't president right now.
I believe that she honestly believed it and had no fraudulent or otherwise malicious intent but not to make absolutely sure it wasn't one of those cases was stupid and unwittingly offensive as fuck!
Yup. I honestly think that she could have been president - but for that. She's a firecracker though, still.
I agree. I'd have preferred Bernie and have some reservations about her cozy relationship with the corrupt party establishment, but policy-wise she was definitely the second-best choice in the 2020 primaries.
"unless if there happen to be some natural resources that we don't know about yet"
Neil Gorsuch says that Oklahoma is Native American property? Lets see him enforce it.
"Oklahoma is OK"
Never has been, never will be.
Let me out :(
It's the terror of knowing what this world is about..
:)
Next panel on the bottom: those that survive the trip...
:-(
Most tribes didn't have a concept of land ownership, so they wouldn't say "that we own".
Most tribes today are Christian and we still hate them
I'm assuming by "we" you mean the US Government. Is that right?
The Cherokee, famously, were perfectly happy to leave Georgia and Florida on the grounds that "Hey its not like we really recognize a claim to the land you guys can just have it" and never once contested the confiscation of land, much less by taking it all the way to the Supreme Court and winning an unenforceable injunction against their forced removal.
Each tribe was/is an independent nation, with their own ideals, beliefs, social structures, etc.. There's a reason why I said "most" and not "all".
The differences are heavily overstated, primarily as a means of dismissing native people as "primitive" and necessarily subservient to the arriving colonists. The main difference with the Cherokee was simply geographic. They lived in land not heavily settled until later in the colonization process and had more time to acclimate to western legal norms. It didn't save them, but it gave them these neat little anecdotes that we can pretend made them "some of the good ones".
Well I hope it was clear that I wasn't even remotely implying they/we are primitive and should be subservient. I am Cherokee, and Choctaw. My great grandmother, and great grandfather are on the final rolls of the Dawes Act.
Psych!
Reserved seating for all!