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We Americans currently seem to be going through a period when we feel smug about our own democratic impulses and cynical about those of other nations such as Iraq. If there is one thread that seems to run through BOTH Republicans and Democrats about the Iraq War it is that the Iraqis are a sectarian mess seemingly bent on killing each other to the extent that some are even willing to commit suicide to take a few of their enemies with them.
Read the papers, listen to the news and sectarian conflict seems to be occurring on a daily basis somewhere in this globe. The Russians have the Chechens, India has Kashmir, Sri Lanka has the Tamil Tigers. African nations are awash with conflict between tribal and religious groups. Then there are the Basques, Quebec, Scotland. It seems as though everyone but us is going through the equivalent of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
These past few weeks have shown that America is also not immune to internal conflict. We like to believe we are a rational nation tied together by ethical people, but in fact parts of America are as crudely drawn and ill-gotten as some of the nations we like to castigate. If you have read anything about the history of Iraq, sooner or later someone makes it a point to stress that the present state of Iraq never was a nation, but with only slight exaggeration was drawn up by British bureaucrats over tea. Hence the present mess in Iraq.
If you are an indigenous American, one of the tribal peoples that were here before any of the Europeans even knew there was an America, your experience with the drawing of boundaries makes Iraq look positively rational. I was reminded of this by a wonderful, a highly recommended essay “We Shall Never Sell Our Black Hills” by winter rabbit at the Progressive Historians blog.
The essay points out:
The ownership of the Black Hills was contested in the U.S. Courts for sixty years in the twentieth century, eventually awarding the Sioux tribes a monetary sum in 1979 for their loss.
To this day, the money remains unclaimed. Tribal leaders are interested only in the return of their sacred Paha Sapa – and there the matter rests.As of today the amount of the awards are $757,465,288.74 for the Black Hills and $105,821,479.16 for the land taken east of the Black Hills. That brings the total owed to the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation to $863,286,767.90.
In other words, the American government owes the proper owners of the Black Hills, the Lakota people, almost $900 million dollars, plus any activities by non-Lakota people in the Black Hills are essentially trespassing on Lakota land. For those who do not know it, America’s tribal people are recognized as “domestic nations” by law. Some of them such as the Red Lake Anishinabe in my state of Minnesota issue their own license plates and have their own police force that enforces the law on tribal lands.
Also in Minnesota, Winona LaDuke and others founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project which is buying back lands that were unlawfully taken from the White Earth Anishinabe. LaDuke explains:
Our land is Mino-Aki (good land) whose biodiversity is essential to the health and spiritual well-being of our people. For this reason we seek to reclaim the land of White Earth Reservation which was stolen from us through unethical tax foreclosures, treaty abrogations and property thefts in the 1800s and early 1900s.
It would take a lot of posts to detail violations of tribal sovereignty that make the British arrogance in drawing up Iraq seem almost rational. The point is that within the United States are people who have as much reason to quarrel with our government as do the rebellions in other parts of the world.
This brings us to the front page story of the moment: the argument over the immigration bill. Behind this bill also lies some history some Americans would just as soon forget. Much as we rode roughshod over the Cheyenne and Lakota we also rode roughshod over the Mexican parts of the American Southwest. Even those Latinos who participated in fighting for independence from Mexico found themselves deprived of ancestral holdings that in some cases went back long before whites even entered the region.
No we face in essence the first reverse colonization in history, as Latinos are taking back those portions of the West and Southwest that once had been parts of Spain and Mexico. By taking back I mean they are on their way to becoming a majority in many of those states. A 2003 study by Arizona State University Professor Loui Olivas showed that by the end of 2005 Hispanics would compose a majority of high school graduates in Arizona and California, by 2011 in Arizona and by 2012 in Texas.
Currently Hispanics make up about 13% of the nation’s population, but by the year 2050, a quarter of America’s population may be Hispanic. Multicultural Associates, points out:
This market segment currently represents a purchasing power of over $300 Billion and rising to over $1 Trillion in about ten years. Making Hispanics attractive and loyal consumers.
Of course any American who has not been asleep like Rip van Winkle for the last twenty years knows of the growing power of Latinos with in the United States. All we have to do is to refer to the multilingual and bilingual texts that accompany virtually any owners manual.
Both political parties recognize this voting power as Jorge Ramos notes in his important book, The Latino Wave. Ramos notes that the traditionally Democratic Hispanic vote, which went from 72% for Bill Clinton in 1996 to 57% for Al Gore–costing Gore the election. Ramos points out that the Hispanic vote also elected Bush in 2004, stating that the election was essentially decided in states with high percentages of Latino voters.
Finally we come to the most controversial “stolen nation” of all: African Americans. Slave labor essentially built the American South, labor for which no one was ever compensated. The issue of Black reparations is controversial, with most whites dismissing it outright or regarding it as a fringe movement. Yet “The Case for Black Reparations” web site brings together some powerful arguments, including a Robert Westley’s seminal Boston College Law Review article, “Many Billions Gone: Is it Time to Reconsider the Argument for Black Reparations?” Another site is “Reparations Central.” The issue of reparations even attracted the attention of the Public Broadcasting System which posts a discussion of it online.
The point of all these instances of “stolen nations” ranging from Native Americans, to Mexican-Americans and Latinos to African Americans is that America is no more immune from sectarian and cultural divisions than the rest of the world and that many of these people believe this government stole something from them. Nor have we been immune from is the violence that has accompanied similar movements in other parts of the world.
For Native Americans entire nations were wiped from the face of the earth. The Dutch and English paid a bounty for Indian scalps–male or female; adult or child. In 1703, Massachusetts paid 12 pounds for an Indian scalp. By 1723 the price had soared to 100 pounds. During the French and Indian Wars, the English offered their troops a bounty of 200 pounds for the scalp of the chief of the Delaware tribe, Shinngass.
Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, United States Marshalls and other officials could be fined up to $1,000 if they did not diligently pursue escaped slaves. Those who aided escaped slaves or hindered attempts to recover them could also be fined $1,000 along with a six-month jail sentence.
The Handbook of Texas reports that notorious outlaw John Joel Glanton resorted to taking Mexican scalps when Indian scalps became too difficult to obtain. In 1997 the New York Times reported more than 800 descendants of Jose Manuel Balli Villarreal sued the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation–which was founded on the profits of Texas cattle baron Mifflin Kennedy–for stealing their family’s land. The foundation argued that although the land may have once belonged to the Ballis, it had long since come into the Kenedys’ possession under a legal principle known as ”adverse possession,” a rough equivalent of squatter’s rights.
In recent years America has been immune from the violence that came as a backlash from aggrieved people, Whites may take this as a sign of progress or their own reasonableness, but in fact it is the aggrieved peoples who have been reasonable. Thus far they have put their trust in America’s democratic institutions, but if we do not deal with their grievances how long can we expect that to continue?
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