Rise Up Native People Ras Sojie More good reading: Native Americans in the United States Injustice against California Native Nations Hundreds of native peoples made up of millions of individuals occupied the lands that would become the United States of America. During the colonial and independent periods, a long series of Indian Wars were fought with the primary objective of obtaining much of North America as territory of the U.S. Through wars, massacre, forced displacement (such as in the Trail of Tears), restriction of food rights, and the imposition of treaties, land was taken and numerous hardships imposed. Ideologies justifying the context included stereotypes of Native Americans as merciless Indian savages (as described in the United States Declaration of Independence) and the quasi-religious doctrine of Manifest Destiny which asserted divine blessing for U.S. conquest of all lands west of the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific. The most rapid invasion occurred in the California gold rush, the first two years of which saw the deaths of tens of thousands of Indians. Following the 1848 American invasion, Native Californians were enslaved in the new state from statehood in 1850 to 1867. Military and civil resistance by Native Americans has been a constant feature of American history. So too have a variety of debates around issues of sovereignty, the upholding of treaty provisions, and the civil rights of Native Americans under U.S. law. Discrimination, marginalization 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. Many Native Americans were relegated to reservations--constituting just 4% of U.S. territory--and the treaties signed with them violated. Tens of thousands of American Indians and Alaska Natives were forced to attend a residential school system which sought to reeducate them in white settler American values, culture and economy--to kill the Indian, saving the man. Further dispossession continued through concessions for industries such as oil, mining and timber and through division of land through legislation such as the Allotment Act. These concessions have raised problems of consent, exploitation of low royalty rates, environmental injustice, and gross mismanagement of funds held in trust, resulting in the loss of $10-40 billion. The World watch Institute notes that 317 reservations are threatened by environmental hazards, while Western Shoshone land has been subjected to more than 1,000 nuclear explosions cdbaby/sojie
Posted on: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 04:30:21 +0000
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