Indian removal act of 1830

How do y’all feel about the Native American experience here?

I think we should have given them more land in the west that were still not using and made it one big Indian state but the big picture was manifest destiny and the problem the Indians had was that they were nomadic and never built cities and stayed there. We also didn’t negotiate with them as a nation bc they had so many tribes making it difficult to negotiate with just 1 nation. There are reports ranging from 3.8 to 60 mil Indians here when the Europeans first landed many of which were wiped out from diseases.There is also the aspect of land or ownership which in European or capitalistic terms meant that “he who finds a useful purpose for land or resources and first occupies it, takes ownership.”
This is from a European viewpoint. The fact that the Indians moved around hurt them in this western idea.The gov tried giving a lot of land to the Indians in Rhode Island / Massachusetts but then the locals complained so it never happened.The slavery issue was bad but the Indian experience might be worse and manifest destiny was too important for us in creating a nation so it’s overlooked.

Ownership of land has always been by who can take it and who can hold it. Until the entity that takes and holds it, establishes laws of ownership for those it is parceled out to, it is up for grabs by the strongest. It’s like the Spanish Land grants given to landowners in America, the Spanish took it so they could parcel it out.

The fact that it was completely unfair to those who had it taken from them and those peoples suffered tremendous injustices and atrocities is irrelevant today. I doubt you will get people that currently own those lands to give it up without a fight. I know I feel like I justly own my home and I will not relinquish it to make someone else feel better about what happened more than a century before I was born.

All attempts to make us feel less guilty about the things our ancestors did actually do nothing but inflame hostilities that should be lessening. The native Americans have their reservations that they choose to keep and have their own nations. In Oklahoma there is the Cherokee nation and others as well.

If any person of native American ancestry wishes to live off the reservations and take part in our society as any other citizen, they have that right as American citizens. They also have favorability in hiring in many circumstances. During the mass layoffs in the '80s, my friend David asked his manager if he would be laid off from his engineering company that had government contracts. His manager told him, “There’s no way we will lay you off David, you’re our Indian.” David is 1/16 Osage.

So basically, the past is the past. We can’t change it, we can only learn from it. All the hand wringing is just wasted energy.

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Good reply. I don’t feel guilt for what happened but was wondering with all stuff going on that our gov wouldn’t recognize it as an injustice thrown in with the other things they seem to care about lately.
I also don’t believe as individuals we should have what’s called “inherited guilt” because unless you were living in that age , you didn’t do it, therefore no guilt. Only the gov can do something if they want but in the case of the Indians, it’s too late because no one is giving up their land.

Glass houses…every human lives in one.

He who conquers takes the land as is always thru out all of civilization. I feel bad for what happened to the Indians but no guilt bc we nor I living now did it. So the can of worms not to be opened is why we should feel guilt for the past when we weren’t living then. Our gov focuses on other injustices too much and my point is that since they do, why not the Indian experience? It’s hypocritical. I’ll stop at that.

Give it time, it will come soon enough. Tribalism is a hardcore human trait.

Personal opinion. The story of the American Indian is possibly the least exceptional thing in American History which is funny because so much of the national mythos came out of that period. And I don’t mean that in a “we’re bad people” way. All countries that have achieved what the US has, and many who haven’t, have chapters like this. They’re an integral part typically of how a country came to be.

Conquest is as old as time itself, I mean really we basically just wrapped up the job the Conquistadors, French, and British started 300 years ago. And the treatment and/or neglect of the conquered is equally not unique.

True for nations ,so my question and I should email the gov and ask if they care about other injustices so much why not push the envelope and care more about the Indian experience here if they truly care about injustices vs political gain. The answer would be they have nothing to gain worrying about the Indian experience but it was bad bc we killed them , locked them up and took their land. So again it’s hypocrisy.The Indian pop has no clout in voting so they don’t care.

And we call them Indians because an Italian explorer had poor navigation skills. The Italian explorer was paid by Spanish despots who had their own serious issues.

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Not sure about poor navigation skills as the goal was eastern passage to India to avoid the dangerous passage around Cape Horn. Since it was uncharted Columbus was flying blind.

To do what he did takes brass balls the size of grapefruit

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IMO this is the taboo subject that no one wants to talk about, debate about or trying to better the current situation. Our failure to at least make current daily life better for native tribes is either intended or needs to be at least seriously studied. I am on Native land almost weekly particularly on AZ Phoenix area tribes as well as Navajo, Hopi and Apache land. In the 1900 to 1930 a constant effort from our government was to suppress Native tribes from speaking their own language. Fast forward to 2022 only about 20% of Navajo speak their own language. Suppressing native tribes from speaking their own language had one hidden agenda. Reject their own culture so they/native tribes could assimilate faster. The results are devastating. Native tribes are now in a psychological state of mind to be proud and ashamed of themselves. For decades we/Federal government has promoted this mind set.
Now he is the ironic part of this. Some of you have heard of the “Code talkers”

I invite you to visit the minute Code Talkers museum in Tuba City.
https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x8733d183d019b45b:0x9a190cbd44a3a0ed!3m1!7e115!4shttps://lh5.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipN4DkfCrZItVV8vxblplWDJY5kr39v6zpyvq6g7%3Dw213-h160-k-no!5scode+talkers+museum+-+Google+Search!15zQ2dJZ0FRPT0&imagekey=!1e10!2sAF1QipN4DkfCrZItVV8vxblplWDJY5kr39v6zpyvq6g7&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjnz6qH9M_1AhXUI0QIHS4wAhAQoip6BAg1EAM
https://discovernavajo.com/discover-the-navajo-nation/museums/
Our own government put the Hopi tribe against the Navajo tribe until the 80’s resulting in land disputes with little to no infrastructure to better of the communities.
Parts of the Navajo nation did not have electricity until the 80’s. Industrial plants are built on sites that often disfigure the natural habitat when there is plenty of space to “hide” these plants. Quite often building contracts are awarded through the BIA or BIE. Contractors build infrastructures with almost no oversight. Native Americans will be the first ones to defend our country, our land. Make no mistakes about it. We conveniently rarely hear about Native Americans. We can 100% improve the status-quo.

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One of my graduate school alma maters, Central Michigan U., is located right next to the Saginaw Chippewa Reservation, and their Soaring Eagle gaming resort.

The school and the tribe hold a big annual Pow-Wow on campus every year, and cooperate on Native American Studies programs, including for credit classes in the Ojibwa (Chippewa) language.

In return, the school is allowed to use the mascot “Chippewas,” with the Tribe’s express written permission. When the NCAA expressed a beef with that, the Tribe’s leadership went before the NCAA and told them to back off, saying that they were PROUD to have the school use their name.

FYI:
There has not been one Native tribe member that I know that has been against the Washington Redskins or Redskins logo. In fact…the Red Mesa High Scholl uses.
image
Personally I do not like it but this is just me.

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It is bad what happened to the native Indians here but it’s mostly too late to do anything to correct it. The gov should have done it right in the 1800s in giving them more land before we settled the west. We now have land ownership issues and no one will give up the land they bought and rightfully so. I just brought up the subject bc it’s the forgotten injustice in light of how our gov goes out of it’s way to correct other injustices so it speaks of hypocrisy on their part.

There have been plenty of Native American protests against that.

And the former “Cleveland Indians.”

Query: are the Chicago Blackhawks next?

We can start by making contractors accountable for what they build. That is a start. We can have incentives to build factories on Native land.
The monthly jobs report ignores Native Americans. How are they faring economically?.
28% vs 18% in 2021 are “official” numbers. Just from interacting on Native land it seems much higher than that.
Native lands are under “Sovereign Nation” rules so it makes it even “trickier” to do so.

I saw the netflix movie Geronimo this weekend so it got me thinking on what happened again.

How was it?

When HISD was replacing names on schools, it was obvious they had a list and didn’t actually know anything about history. If they were cognizant of Texas history, they would have removed Lamar. I always thought is was quite the joke, Lamar Redskins.

Lamar was, perhaps, the greatest genocidal maniac towards the Indians in Texas in Texas history.

That guy’s name is also on a nearby university as well.