Elizabeth Cook-Lynn: American has long been oppressive to anyone who is not white and male

Friday, March 29, 2019  

Most of America’s discussion concerning Race in the last century has been about black people, i.e., Race Matters by Cornel West, The Autobiography of Frederick Douglas, etc.

Even Howard Zinn, the major radical historian of our time, goes there when he writes about disobedience and democracy, with little reference to the First People and the First Nations, i.e., Indians. It seems his thrust toward disobedience, though, is worth considering.

It seems that much of the catastrophe that polarizes all of us these days as it concerns Race in our part of the country, starts with history, i.e., “the frontier” as symbol of the traditions western Americans want to embrace, or, on the other hand, the “frontier” as an ugly metaphor of domination and exploitation of those first peoples in America.

The “frontier” is what the Republican Party/Trump WALL to keep out Mexicans is about. White invaders? Black slaves? Brown indigenes? Well, maybe it is not the “frontier”…..maybe it is the modern obsession bout which we are now calling “people of COLOR.”

Whatever the case, a fortress against what is outside has always been the struggle of “the west”. Even Indians can tell you that story, about which there is much ambiguity.

Steps taken early on in America’s history seemed to be steps taken in the right direction. After all, the American invaders of Mexico signed many treaties after the Spanish left the continent, i.e, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, and other agreements.

Didn’t the U.S. sign with The Great Sioux Nation the Peace Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 after 30 years of conflict?

Historians often ask about what happened next. The 19th century was oppressive to anyone who was not white and male. Hidalgo, though, by some miracle stopped America, ever the aggressor in the need of land and power and Christianity, from annexing ALL of Mexico. And that was a good thing. The Fort Laramie agreement stopped America from completing its drive toward genocide of an entire people and it slowed its attempt to curtail the occupation of everything in sight, still making beggars of their neighbors through racist laws.

What happened next is Ulysses S. Grant who destroyed the Creeks and wanted to send black people to the Dominican Republic, and Teddy Roosevelt, who ran around North Dakota in buckskins and invaded Panama and Cuba. And now, what is happening is: Trump.

But, even before all of this, there was no room for American Indians and other “people of color” to live and thrive here. Even Thomas Jefferson promoted his early theory that as the U. S. Sovereignty increased, Indigenous Sovereignty decreased so that a policy of dispossession and land acquisition could follow.

That theory is not dead, but it leaves a resentment that we all contend with in our time as we witness the rise of State Government power across the land. Some of us remember the 20th century “State Jurisdiction” laws in this state passed to accompany federal mandates. State power is again on the rise through America’s awful need for religiosity in Government.

Contact Elizabeth Cook-Lynn at ecooklynn@gmail.com

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