Sunday, February 5, 2023

Indian Removal Act

 


It is now the first week of Black History Month, so it’s time for a history lesson.

 

Due in large part to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Black History Month has been celebrated in America since 1976, but its origins go back a lot further in history.

Negro History Week was started by Dr. Carter G. Woodson in 1926. Although it’s impossible to know his motivation for doing so, it’s likely that the 
1921 Tulsa Race Riot and the 1924 meeting of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey may have influenced his actions.

Long before the first slaves came from Africa in 1619, the land that is now the United States was occupied by its original inhabitants, who we now call Native Americans. In spite of the fact that they spend hundreds of years living here before the first white settlers arrived here from Europe, it was not until 1990 that the government finally declared a Native American Heritage month. That month is November.

On August 3, 1990, President of the United States George H. W. Bush declared the month of November as National American Indian Heritage Month, thereafter commonly referred to as Native American Heritage Month. The bill read in part that "the President has authorized and requested to call upon Federal, State and local Governments, groups and organizations and the people of the United States to observe such month with appropriate programs, ceremonies and activities". This landmark bill honoring America's tribal people represented a major step in the establishment of this celebration which began in 1976 when a Cherokee/Osage Indian named Jerry C. Elliott-High Eagle authored Native American Awareness Week legislation the first historical week of recognition in the nation for native peoples. This led to 1986 with then President Ronald Reagan proclaiming November 23–30, 1986, as "American Indian Week".

This commemorative month aims to provide a platform for Native people in the United States of America to share their culture, traditions, music, crafts, dance, and ways and concepts of life. This gives Native people the opportunity to express to their community, both city, county and state officials their concerns and solutions for building bridges of understanding and friendship in their local area. Federal Agencies are encouraged to provide educational programs for their employees regarding Native American history, rights, culture and contemporary issues, to better assist them in their jobs and for overall awareness.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_Indian_Heritage_Month

The list of events occurring during that month can be found in the link below:

https://www.nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov/

 

The 1619 Project is a long-form journalism endeavor developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine which "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States' national narrative." The first publication from the project was in The New York Times Magazine of August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colony of Virginia These were also the first Africans in mainland British America, though Africans had been in other parts of North America since the 1500s. The project also developed an educational curriculum, supported by the Pulitzer Center, later accompanied by a broadsheet article, live events, and a podcast. Historians, journalists, and commentators have described the 1619 Project as a revisionist historiographical work that takes a negative view of traditionally reverenced events and people in American history, including the Patriots in the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers, along with later figures such as Abraham Lincoln and the Union during the Civil War. On May 4, 2020, the Pulitzer Prize board announced that they were awarding the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary to project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones for her introductory essay.

 

In essence, the 1619 Project looks at what effect systematic racism has had on our society.

About 30 years prior to the publication of the 1619 Project, a workshop was started to study racism in America, and it was called critical race theory.

Critical race theory (CRT)is an intellectual and social movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color. Critical race theorists hold that racism is inherent in the law and legal institutions of the United States insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans. Critical race theorists are generally dedicated to applying their understanding of the institutional or structural nature of racism to the concrete (if distant) goal of eliminating all race-based and other unjust hierarchies.

The link below goes into much detail about critical race theory (which is now taught as a COLLEGE LEVEL course. It is NOT taught at the k-12 level in schools, although numerous Republican officials (Glenn Youngkin, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Ron DeSantis) have prohibited it from being discussed in colleges and schools.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory  

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Andrew Jackson was president when the Indian Removal Act was enacted in 1830. This is what he had to say a few years later:

 “If give me great pleasure to announce to Congress that the Government’s benevolent policy of Indian removal has almost been achieved.

We have wept over the fate of the natives of this country, as one by one many tribes have disappeared from the earth. However, we must accept this, the way we accept when an older generation dies and makes room for the younger.

 We would not want to see this continent restored to the condition in which our forefathers found it. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and occupied by a few thousand savages to our great Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, decorated with art and industry, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?

 The United States will pay to send the natives to a land where they may live longer and possible survive as a people.

 Can it be cruel when this government offers to purchase the Indian’s land, give him new and extensive territory, pay the expense o his removal, and support him for the first year in his new home? How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of moving West under such conditions!

 The policy of the Government towards the red man is generous. The Indian is unwilling to follow the laws of the State and mingle with the population. To save him from utter annihilation, the Government kindly offers him a new home, an proposed to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.

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 Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as a general in the U.S. Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. Although often praised as an advocate for ordinary Americans and for his work in preserving the union of states, Jackson has also been criticized for his racial policies, particularly his treatment of Native Americans.

The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law, as described by Congress, provided "for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi." During the Presidency of Jackson (1829-1837) and his successor Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) more than 60,000 Indians from at least 18 tribes were forced to move west of the Mississippi River where they were allocated new lands. The southern tribes were resettled mostly in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). The northern tribes were resettled initially in Kansas. With a few exceptions the United States east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes was emptied of its Indian population. The movement westward of the Indian tribes was characterized by a large number of deaths occasioned by the hardships of the journey, which is now called “the trail of tears”.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal_Act

 Once settled in their new territory, life was not easy for the natives. The land they were moved to was largely barren landscape. When rich deposits of oil were discovered in Oklahoma, white Americans murdered numerous members of the Osage County tribe that controlled the new wealth.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killers_of_the_Flower_Moon

Although hundreds of treaties were signed by the government and the natives, they were frequently violated by the government, which led to the Indian wars. Although they officially started in 1609, the peak years were between 1850 and 1890, and the massacre at Wounded Knee in 190 was the culmination of decades of strife. The majority of the battles took place in what is now present-day Arizona.

 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars


https://www.britannica.com/place/Wounded-Knee

 

There are politicians today (are you listening, Ron DeSantis?) who claim that racism does not exist in our country – but that is simply not true.

For a period of time, Indian boarding schools existed in this country, and their purpose was to eradicate native culture and replace it with white culture Their motto was “kill the Indian, and save the man.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/12/indian-boarding-schools.html

 There are states today where you could not read about the information that I have shown above. In fact, Florida just killed an AP program that is related to African-Americans because “it had no educational value”. It was the very first time that ANY AP course in the country had been banned.

 The Indian Removal Act is still an unfamiliar topic for many American citizens, but it’s part of history that should be more widely known.

 

 

 

 


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