The Marginalization of Native Americans Before and After the 1930s - Literature review Example

The Marginalization of Native Americans Before and After the 1930s: From Manifest Destiny, Wars, and Assimilation Policies to Unjust Laws and MediaPortrayals Student’s name Course name and number Instructor’s name August 12, 2014 When the first European settlers arrived in North America, Indians (nowadays called Native Americans), already lived and thrived in it, but instead of co-existing with the latter, the former largely exterminated them first, and then, they forcibly assimilated Indian survivors. The paper focuses on the means that colonial whites used to conquer and oppress these Indian tribes, particularly from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The timeline that divides these two centuries is the 1930s because it included the election of United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the time of the Great Depression and because it was also the time of World War II. During the nineteenth century, wars between the white settlers and their government and the Indians peaked and ended, while assimilation policies began. The events after the 1930s that reinforce the disempowerment of the Indians are not necessarily specific dates, but a process of continued marginalization through ineffective Indian-centered laws, unjust budgeting and educational policies, and unfair media depictions of early Indian identity and history. Colonial whites marginalized Native Americans through physical extermination and cultural assimilation policies before the 1930s, and subsequently, continued the latter’s disempowerment through failed laws and budgeting policies, specifically the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946 and Reagan’s budget changes, and widespread negative and inaccurate stereotypes of American Indians in American films from the 1930s to the 1980s. The cultural mindset of the Manifest Destiny during the nineteenth century ended centuries of peace treaties with the Indians before this time. Bowles (2011) stated that the Manifest Destiny is an American philosophy that justified American expansion in the West, including those territories that various Indian tribes owned (p. 1.3). John L. OSullivan wrote about America’s Manifest Destiny in 1839: We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can...In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High -- the Sacred and the True. O’Sullivan (1839) promoted, or perhaps he merely reflected what Americans felt during that time, the belief that white Americans were superior to the Indians and deserved their lands and resources more than the latter did. The Manifest Destiny exhibits typical racism against all races that were rendered as inferior simply because they were not white and did not share the same cultural beliefs, practices, and aspirations. The Manifest Destiny philosophy pushed the Indians further to the West, away from their tribal lands that gave them secured livelihood, such as access to buffalos and hunting grounds, as well as their sacred lands (Bowles, 2011, p. 1.3). This philosophy nourished racist ideologies that created unfair narratives of Indians as savages who must be killed and defeated. It is a philosophy that justified the extermination of the Indian race that did not belong to the white man’s destiny. Unsurprisingly, many of these Indian tribes fought back to protect their lands and their lives. The government and white settlers themselves fought decades of war against the Indians that significantly decimated their race during the 1800s. Some of these wars were against the Plains Indians from the 1850s to the 1890s (Bowles, 2011, p. 1.3). In a diary of an unknown person who sided with the whites against the Indians, he described the latter with stereotypical language. This diary entry refers to the Black Hawk War in 1832: The leading war chief of the Sacs and Foxes at this time, was a warrior known among the whites by the name of Black Hawk, which is only the translation of his name in the Sac dialect. His influence over his fierce people was confirmed by the aid and counsels of his brother, the Prophet, a chief still more insidious, cruel, and revengeful, than Black Hawk himself. Both these chiefs are supposed always to have been in heart decidedly hostile to the Americans. (Flint, 1833, p. 231) The diary does not even mention why Black Hawk partook in the war, which was primarily to regain their lost lands in Illinois (Frank, Wells, & David, 2012, p. 548). These Indians wanted to reclaim their territories that recent treaties ceded to the government and white settlers. Many of these nineteenth-century Indian wars were short-lived because of the superior number and military armaments of the white government, however. In the end, Indians who survived adapted by following the diverse assimilation policies of the government and living in reservation areas. The history of marginalization of the Indians began with the Concentration Policy and the Indian Reservation Policy. The Concentration Policy stemmed from the expansion of American migration into Indian lands. Specifically, big corporations that owned railroads needed to pass through Indian territories in Kansas and Nebraska in the 1850s (Bowles, 2011, p. 1.3). To provide lands for railroad construction and new American towns, the government thrust the Indians into reservation lands (Bowles, 2011, p. 1.3). The government, in addition, gave bounties and lands as gifts to Plains tribes, so that they would accept these new land arrangements (Bowles, 2011, p. 1.3). These arrangements, similar to past treaties, nonetheless, did not last, because white settlement and development required more lands and more precious metals and other resources that were in Indian territories (Bowles, 2011, p. 1.3). See Figure 1 for an example of Indian Cessions. It is an excerpt from the Library of Congress (n.d.), “Schedule of Indian Land Cessions” from A Century Of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 – 1875 U.S. Serial Set, Number 4015, 56th Congress, 1st Session (pp. 648-649). “Cession” means that Indian tribes surrendered their rights of property to these lands to the government. Cession law shows how the Reservation Policy arose from the endless greed of the American colonials for properties and resources they did not originally own, but, won through unjust wars, treaties, and laws. American policies for Indians and their lands demonstrate the marginalization of Indians through stealing their lands. Figure 1: Indian Cessions in 1894 Source: Library of Congress (n.d.), “Schedule of Indian Land Cessions” from A Century Of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 – 1875 U.S. Serial Set, Number 4015, 56th Congress, 1st Session (pp. 648-649). After the wars between the U.S. government and the Indians ended, the Reservation Policy intensified with The Dawes Act of 1887. This act terminated the communal ownership practices of Indian tribes. It mandated what was called the “severalty” which divided communal lands to individually-owned properties (Bowles, 2011, p. 1.3). Those who supported the law believed that it assimilated the Indians by destroying their communal land practices and teaching them to adapt the American individualist approach to land ownership (Bowles, 2011, p. 1.3). The effect was not to teach the Indians the American way of farming and living, as originally intended, but further oppressing them because they were not farmers, but hunters, so many only became dependent on the government for rations and other social welfare services to survive (Bowles, 2011, p. 1.3). The severalty severed the cultural ties that bind Indians to one another and to their land. The impact was not gentle assimilation, but the destruction of Indian identity. Many more crucial events happened during the twentieth century, but the first important event is the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946. After World War II, the U.S. wanted to address its indigenous groups’ issues, and one of its ways was through the passing of the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946. This law enabled tribal suits for allegations against the government’s swindling of lands. Wickham (2002) noted that it was America’s way of compensating historical land thefts from the Indians. He argued, however, that this act only provided superficial responses. For instance, it did not apply the “equitable doctrine of ejectment” that enabled Native Americans to eject unlawful occupiers (Wickham, 2002, p. 120). Instead, this Act only provides monetary damages, thereby insulting communal autonomy and culture (Wickham, 2002, p. 120). Native Americans did not reclaim ancestral lands, but were merely financially compensated. In addition, the said law removed previous “preferred legal status” (Wickham, 2002, p. 120). Wickham (2002, p. 120) explained the loopholes of the law: The Indian Claims Act also adversely impacted tribal sovereignty by obliterating any preferred legal status various tribes held based upon the date of their treaty ratification. The act made no distinction in remedies for aggrieved tribes suing under nation-to-nation treaties ratified prior to the discovery doctrine, such as the Oneida, tribes under domestic-dependent nation treaties ratified prior 1871, such as the Sioux, or thereafter as tribes confined to "executive order" reservations, such as the Hopi. With apparently honorable intentions, Congress offered tribes renewal of their land theft claims through peaceful legal means. The law basically worsened tribal land issues instead of resolving them in an incremental or just manner. In other words, the U.S. government did not support Indian sovereignty even after the Second World War. Apart from lasting land ownership issues, President Reagan’s budget changes disempowered Native Americans by decreasing their control over the quality and indigenousness of the public education system. Nixon earlier enacted Title IV, or the Indian Education Act, which supported the self-determination of Indians, including the financing of a community-owned public education system for their children (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2002, p. 293). Reagan began budgetary cuts, however, that affected the funds of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for Native Americans’ basic social welfare services. Kotlowski (2008) described the budget cuts and its effects on available social services for Native Americans. In particular, the budget for the BIA dropped from “$1.5 billion in 1983 to $923 million in 1987” which reduced funding for “education, construction, and the development of natural resources” (Kotlowski, 2008, p. 293). Lomawaima and McCarty (2002) cited the school at Rough Rock, an Indian community-managed school, as an example: “Its funding rate of $3,300 per student per year is two thirds that of students in Arizona public schools-and Arizona ranks 50th in the nation on per-pupil expenditures” (p. 294). They noted that limited funds created competition of tribes, thereby encouraging disunity and conflict. McCarty (2002) depicted these budgetary cuts as racist, which Lomawaima and McCarty (2002) noted when they said that the “constellation of conditions can only be described as institutionalized racism” (p. 294). The paper empathizes with these authors who felt that Native Americans continued to pay for a price that they did not even need to pay- the price of racial and indigenous marginalization that lasted throughout modern times. Education is essential to the promotion of indigenous autonomy and identity, but the budget constraints certainly disabled the Native Americans from achieving greater tribal sovereignty in modern times. Because of Reagan’s budget cuts, Native American employment rates fell too. Funds for developing skills and employability for Native Americans dropped: A slash in funding for the Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA) sent the unemployment rate on reservations soaring between 1980 and 1982, from 38 to 75 percent on the Navajo Reservation and from 40 to 80 percent on reservations overall. (Kotlowski, 2008, p. 627). Even in the 1980s, Native Americans felt the brunt of social and economic exclusion, as funds for their development significantly decreased. These budget cuts were detrimental to the education and economic wellbeing of Native Americans. Besides these unjust policies and budgetary limits, the American society continued the oppression of Native Americans through the depiction of widespread negative and inaccurate stereotypes of American Indians in American films from the 1930s to the 1960s. Nolley (1993) described the films that John Ford directed, which may not always seem outright to be about Native Americans, but, by including historical allusions, generates unfair Indian stereotypes. He noted that Ford made attempts in his later films to portray Native Americans in less stereotypical ways. In many of his movies, however, he stereotyped Indians, by ascribing more violence to them than white settlers in his films, Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Nolley, 1993, p. 49). These films show Indians as brutal savages without the proper contextualization of the sources of violence or balance in showing the violent sides of the whites and the Indians. In Ford’s other films, Indians are incapable of speaking fluent English and appear less civilized because they practice animalism beliefs (Nolley, 1993, p. 49). Liu and Zhang (2011) affirmed that many twentieth-century American films portrayed Native Americans in extremes without respecting their individual and tribal differences. They stressed: The film, Dances with Wolves; the radio and TV Western, The Lone Ranger; and the novel, by Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, to name just a few, present negative or romanticized images of American Indians, either nasty or cruel, or subservient and laconic, but all disappearing… (Liu & Zhang, 2011, p.105) These are films that marginalize Native Americans by diminishing the vibrancy of their identities into mere stereotyped anecdotes and by underlining the unavoidable ends of their weak race. These films represent how traditional media diminish Indian identity through removing their own voices in telling their own stories. The marginalization of Native Americans did not produce passive Indians, however, because they developed and continue to develop vigorous movements that fight for genuine racial equality and tribal sovereignty. Frank et al. (2012) described the Indian wars that aimed to reclaim lost Indian territories. In the media, Liu and Zhang (2011) talked about the efforts of Native American writers and directors in producing their own images of Indian identities and histories in films. Nolley (1993) added how American directors showed some evolution in depicting Native Americans through more balanced and deep roles and personalities. In education, Lomawaima and McCarty (2002) asserted the initiatives of Native Americans in fighting for community-controlled schools that allowed bilingual education, the teaching and use of Native American languages, and the promotion of local beliefs and practices. These are only some of the efforts of Native Americans in correcting historical oppression in various fields. They indicate how American society is changing to become more responsive to Native American issues. The marginalization of Native Americans intensified during the nineteenth century through the systematic eradication of their tribes as land ownership issues arose, and later on became less discreet with assimilation, and later on, racist policies and media depictions. Apparently, the Manifest Destiny lived on until the 1980s through cultural and legislative changes that signified that Native Americans, including their history and future development, were still less important than whites to the government and the media. The history of Indians is a history of lasting oppression that Native Americans fought with courage and dynamism. Their disempowerment will never fully end, however, until American society recognizes and responds to their need for sovereignty in their lands and the protection and promotion of Native American cultures. Hence, their struggle continues for self-determination and for a just treatment of their history and destiny as a people. References Bowles, M. (2011). American history: 1865 to present. California: Bridgepoint Education. Flint, T. (1833). Indian Wars of the West; Containing biographical sketches of those pioneers who headed the western settlers in repelling the attacks of the savages, together with a view of the character, manners, monuments, and antiquities of the Western Indians. Cincinnati: E. H. Flint. Northern Illinois University Libraries Digitization Projects, Retrieved from http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/contextualize.pl?p.73.lincoln.507411.507417 Frank, A., Wells, J., & David, W. (2012). The Black Hawk War of 1832. Journal of the Early Republic, 32(3), 547-549. Retrieved from Academic OneFile. Kotlowski, D.J. (2008). From Backlash to Bingo: Ronald Reagan and Federal Indian Policy. Pacific Historical Review, 77(4), 617-652. Retrieved from FindIt@AU. Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, The. (2014). Native Americans. Civil Rights 101. civilrights.org. Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, The. Retrieved from http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/native.html Library of Congress. (n.d.). Schedule of Indian Land Cessions. A century of lawmaking for a new nation: U.S. Congressional documents and debates, 1774 – 1875 U.S. Serial Set, Number 4015, 56th Congress, 1st Session, 648-649. Retrieved from http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llss&fileName=4000/4015/llss4015.db&recNum=129 Liu, K., & Zhang, H. (2011). Self- and counter-representations of Native Americans: Stereotypical images of and new images by Native Americans in popular media. Intercultural Communication Studies, 20(2), 105-118. Retrieved from FindIt@AU. Lomawaima, K., & McCarty, L. (2002, June 1). When tribal sovereignty challenges democracy: American Indian education and the democratic ideal. American Educational Research Journal, 39(2), 279-305. Retrieved from ProQuest. Nolley, K. (1993). John Ford and the Hollywood Indian. Film & History, 23(1-4), 44-56. Retrieved from Communication & Mass Media Complete. O’Sullivan, J. (1839). Excerpted from “The Great Nation of Futurity,” The United States Democratic Review, 6(23), 426-430. Retrieved from https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/osulliva.htm Wickham, J.A. (2002). September 11 and Americas War on Terrorism: A New Manifest Destiny? American Indian Quarterly, 26(1), 116-144. Retrieved from MasterFILE Premier. Read More