In his Proclamation on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 2022, which the progressive Left is striving to make a federal holiday in lieu of Columbus Day, President Joe Biden proclaimed that “we celebrate indigenous history and our new beginning together, honoring Native Americans for shaping the contours of this country since time immemorial.”
In addition, the Biden administration has embraced the progressive Left’s oppressor versus oppressed paradigm. This means casting “indigenous peoples,” or “Native Americans,” as the completely innocent victims of exploitation by white explorers, colonists, settlers, and government officials. This has all the markings of the infamous 1619 Project, which places slavery at the center of America’s history and claims that its continuing legacy is an America that remains systemically racist.
For example, President Biden referred in his proclamation to centuries during which “Indigenous Peoples were forcibly removed from ancestral lands, displaced, assimilated, and banned from worshiping or performing many sacred ceremonies.”
A year ago, Vice President Kamala Harris blamed “the European explorers who first landed on the shores of the Americas” for ushering in “a wave of devastation for tribal nations, perpetrating violence, stealing land and spreading disease.” Referring to what she characterized as “this shameful past,” the vice president said that we must “do everything we can to address the impact of the past on Native communities today.”
It is true that Native Americans’ ancestors migrated to the lands that became known as the Americas many thousands of years before Europeans began migrating here. But it is complete fiction that the descendants of the migrants who first inhabited lands in the Americas lived in perfect peace and harmony until European explorers and colonizers arrived. It is not true that these white Europeans were the first people to slaughter Native Americans, forcibly remove them from their ancestral lands, and enslave them. Nor is it true that white Americans were the only people in America who engaged in such appalling practices after the United States became an independent nation.
This is not to excuse the serious harms inflicted on some Native Americans by whomever was responsible. But the pursuit of truth requires providing a more complete account that does not single out white people as the fall guys to take all of the blame for all of the bad things that have happened to Native Americans throughout history.
Native Americans fought fiercely amongst themselves for centuries before they saw their first white man, killing each other in a brutal fashion. Conquering tribes displaced the tribes they defeated from their ancestral homelands. And slavery was practiced by Native Americans themselves before and after the arrival of the first Europeans.
Left-wing progressives are not interested in historical truth, however. To the contrary, they regularly distort American history to fit their narrative of white supremacist oppression against blacks, indigenous people, and other people of color.
For example, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a revisionist historian who authored a book entitled An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, wrote that:
“US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twenty-first century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories, and removals of Indigenous children to military-like boarding schools.”
Dunbar-Ortiz added that “[T]he history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism— the founding of a state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft.”
The real history of these “indigenous peoples” tells a vastly different story. Well before the arrival of any European explorers and colonists, there were wars between tribes of Native Americans that led to massacres and land dispossession. White Europeans did not introduce the practice of slavery for the first time to Native Americans. Nor, after the arrival of white Europeans, were Native Americans always the enslaved victims of white slave owners. Some became slave owners themselves, enslaving blacks as their white neighbors were doing.
“Indigenous slavery long predated the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. As far back as we can peer into pre-Contact monuments, codices, and archaeological evidence as well as the earliest European accounts, we learn about Indigenous Americans enslaving one another,” wrote University of California Davis History Professor Andrés Reséndez in a piece entitled “Perspective: The Other Slavery” published by Smithsonian.
According to the curator of the National Museum of the American Indian, Paul Chaat Smith, as quoted in 2018 by Smithsonian Magazine: “[T]he Five Civilized Tribes were deeply committed to slavery.” The Native American tribes known as the Five Civilized Tribes consisted of the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles.
These tribes, Mr. Smith explained, “established their own racialized black codes.” They “rebuilt their nations with slave labor, crushed slave rebellions, and enthusiastically sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War.”
The Cherokees and the other Native Americans making up the Five Civilized Tribes, Mr. Smith added, “were willful and determined oppressors of blacks they owned, enthusiastic participants in a global economy driven by cotton, and believers in the idea that they were equal to whites and superior to blacks.”
Paul Chaat Smith is a Comanche himself. But he refuses to distort history to serve a grossly misleading white oppressor versus oppressed Native American narrative like Ms. Dunbar-Ortiz has done.
To be sure, Mr. Smith does not gloss over the grave injustices committed against Native Americans by white men, including by President Andrew Jackson and other past U.S governmental officials. However, Mr. Smith does not view his own people as being the victims solely of white supremacists. He readily acknowledges the horrific wrongdoing committed by Native Americans themselves, including by his Comanche forbears, against each other and against other people of color.
“The Comanche empire was built on the rape, murder, and enslavement of Indians and Mexicans, and in a very distant third, some whites, who actually were settlers,” Mr. Smith said during a talk he delivered in 2017.
“I know that sounds harsh, but history is harsh and it spares no one,” Mr. Smith added.
“Human beings throughout time and across the world demonstrate pretty much the same measure of brutality and grace. Talking about this part of our histories is a price of seeing Indians as fully human, not New Age forest bunnies. I see it as a powerful blow against white supremacy to insist that vast amounts of post-contact Native history is not a binary struggle between settler and the indigenous. That history is complicated and scary and dense, precisely because it centers around political agendas of Indian peoples rather than a neatly constructed 21st-century fantasy that everything that ever happened to us is about the white man. It wasn’t. It isn’t.”
Providing as truthful an account of history as one can is a complex undertaking because human beings are complex amalgams of good and bad character traits. Left-wing progressives, however, believe that what stands in the way of the perfectibility of human society are rigged institutions and conventions propping up oppressors. These pillars of oppression, left-wing progressives claim, must be dismantled from top to bottom to liberate the oppressed. This bogus morality play requires villains – privileged whites who supposedly control all of the levers of power today. And it requires victims – the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), who must rise up against their oppressors to create a perfectly equitable and inclusive society.
It takes courage for a member of a group identified as an oppressed race, class, or ethnic group to step back and look critically at the mixed historical record of one’s own identity group. Thank goodness for people like Paul Chaat Smith, who was willing to speak the truth about wrongdoing committed by his own Comanche ancestors and by the ancestors of other Native American tribes. The victims of this wrongdoing included blacks and members of defeated Native American tribes.
Leftist ideologues will never acknowledge the truth because they know that to do so will cause their house of cards to come tumbling down.
Same applies to Australian Aboriginals. How they treated their own (especially their women) was brutal to say the least. and yet we are told that they were a ‘peaceful people’ who the colonists slaughtered. Yes, sadly some were ill-treated by the whites, but inter-tribal warfare also existed – and still does today!
Thanks, very interesting article.
Every man woman and child of every stipe ought to get on bent knee and thank the Lord for white Christian men and their Judeo/Christian values that made America.
Really? Innocence is moral power and every group seeks to whitewash their history to paint themselves as Holy Innocents, including Jews and Christians.
Pro-slavery American Christians used Holy Scripture to justify and maintain slavery. And there’s PLENTY of Holy Scripture in the Bible that condones, endorses, and encourages slavery. Pro-Apartheid South African Christians used Holy Scripture to justify and maintain Apartheid.
“When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies.” – Deuteronomy 20:10-14
There is no way to wage war nicely.
Without the long dead white Christian men who wrote the words that protect you to say what you say you would be in the corner somewhere mumbling. Just for you, the New Testament with the words and instruction from Jesus does not give man the right to own another man. People like you ALWAYS conflate the Grace of Christ with the moral trials of the Torah.
“People like you ALWAYS conflate the Grace of Christ with the moral trials of the Torah.”
This directly contradicts your supposed beliefs in “Judeo/Christian value”. Which isn’t surprising since the phrase is nonsense made up to try and paper over the foaming at the mouth anti-Antisemitism of the American right.
No group is more viciously anti-Jew than the American Left.
That was not done in Gaza nor in Judea and Samaria. Maybe Jews should follow God’s words more closely.
How do you view the roles of Black slave and land owners in America/ Anthony Johnson, the first legal American slave owner, a free black. Freed black clave, William April Ellison, who became THE most brutal slave owner in America. MANY freed slaves became slave owners themselves because It.Made.Them.Money. How did the slaves get here? Fellow Africans capturing their countrymen and selling them to black Muslim slave traders.
Would this be considered ‘Black washing’ American slave history?
Aren’t you generalizing just as those you are demonizing for doing the same? Don’t ask difficult questions.
There is much more history to corroborate the article above. Slavery was not the most heinous crime in any case. The barbaric brutality, murder and cult sacrifices of the pagan tribes are what is not talked about. The fact that the militias and finally the armies of the Europeans committed atrocities is tragic and, of course, inexcusable crime. But the fact that the European settlers brought the faith in the God of Israel through Jesus the Messiah is wonderful and life-giving. The fact that Europeans are mostly “white” has nothing to do with this historical fact. The same evil forces that brought us the 1619 Project will attempt to rewrite the Native Americans history as well as the others further south, namely the Aztecs and Incas because they hate the One and only true God.
The past is gone. There’s nothing the living can do to bring justice to those that have been dead for centuries. We the living will also one day be dead for centuries, long forgotten, and out of the reach of the hand of justice. The best words I’ve ever read on that sad reality were written by Zora Neale Hurston and she too has now been dead for more than a half century and mostly forgotten:
“The white people held my people in slavery here in America. They had bought us, it is true, and exploited us. But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw was: my people had sold me…. My own people had exterminated whole nations and torn families apart for a profit before the strangers got their chance at a cut. It was a sobering thought. It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory….
From what I can learn, it was sad. Certainly. But my ancestors who lived and died in it are dead. The white men who profited by their labor and lives are dead also. I have no personal memory of those times, and no responsibility for them. Neither has the grandson of the men who held my folks…. I have no intention of beating on old graves…. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negroes who hold that nature somehow has given them a low-down dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it…. Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and that is worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it.”
Hurston’s sanity is a beacon of light and perhaps that’s why people today are unfamiliar with her work. You can’t profit and legally steal if writers like Hurston and others of the prior generation are widely read and understood. It’s a great shame.
Thank you for your honesty. The truth is, it’s still happening in China, Africa & who knows where else. The black South Africans are murdering white farmers(the country’s food source) & have now passed legislation to steal the farmers’ land which has beened settled & farmed for many generations. Several other African countries have resumed ancient tribal warfare & genocide against their historical “enemies” after they drove the white Europeans out. Everybody should watch “Hotel Rwanda”, a factual movie. “Killing Fields” is another factual movie, although about Cambodia, that tells what communists do to their own people who disagree! The Arabs have been & still are forcing people into slavery. They were the brokers between the African tribes & the Europeans throughout history. The reason the U.S. created the Marine Corps was to stop the “Barbary Pirates” from capturing ships & enslaving / ransoming it’s occupants. Just as 1 bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole barrel, 1 bad human doesn’t reflect the on entire population’s character. There will always be evil in the world, just as we see daily in the news!
Would these be the same Jesuits that enslaved the Indians of California? When US citizens from the deep south observed how the Indians were treated by the Catholic missions in California they were appalled at how cruel and savage the monk’s treatment was. They often said things like they had never seen such cruelty even with the worst treatment they had seen of black slaves.
The Navajos (who moved to the Southwest US in about 1400 from Canada) made slaves out of all surrounding tribes up until the 1860’s when the US Calvary put an end to it.
Their behavior was so bad that it was not just the US Cavalry but the Mexican Army as well, acting together, who were poised to basically commit genocide on the Navajos, who had angered all of their neighbors, Gringo, Mexican, and Indian. If not for the tireless work of Kit Carson on their behalf there would probably be no Navajo nation today.
History is all about conquering and being conquered. History is also about cultures that have strengthened through adversity and made fresh starts and others who didn’t.
We are supposed to learn from history and create better and more civilized societies. Unfortunately not many do, as Matthew 15:19 explains, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander…….”. We are living with the consequential chaos.
We are responsible for our own choices. Choosing to be victims or playing the blame game only impedes our progress and keeps us bitter and twisted.
The first pioneers in New England settle on lands that had been abandoned by Native Americans. They did not drive them out. It is history. look it up.
You are correct. Additionally, there still exists recorded land deeds where land was purchased from Indians by English and Dutch settlers. However, some land was confiscated from Indians and white Tories who fought on the British side in the Revolutionary War.
Well, that was a consequence of war. As you say, it was both Indians and Whites who fought for the British whose lands were confiscated. Unfortunate, but it’s what happens.
Solid article, just starting it but something already occurred to me, about 1/5 of the way in, so I wanted to mention it before I forgot.
“…assimilated, and banned from worshiping or performing many sacred ceremonies.”
Isn’t that exactly what dems and too many Republicans did in ’20, and ’21, for a flu with a 99.87% recovery rate? First, everyone was supposed to assimilate, take a knee, and proclaim their support of marxist, racist, and pro-crime blm. Then there was the ban on church, schule, and even funerals for the flu.
“Human beings throughout time and across the world demonstrate pretty much the same measure of brutality and grace. Talking about this part of our histories is a price of seeing Indians as fully human, not New Age forest bunnies. I see it as a powerful blow against white supremacy to insist that vast amounts of post-contact Native history is not a binary struggle between settler and the indigenous. That history is complicated and scary and dense, precisely because it centers around political agendas of Indian peoples rather than a neatly constructed 21st-century fantasy that everything that ever happened to us is about the white man. It wasn’t. It isn’t.”
One of the most eloquently put and insightful comments I’ve read, and I thank Mr. Smith, and Mr. Klein, one for stating it, and the other for sharing it and bringing it to my attention. Real power does consist in accepting full human nature, with both its power and weakness, its cruelty and kindness.
The Europeans did not steal land from the Indians, they conquered them as you cannot steal something from a person if they dont own it and Indians did not believe in owning land, plus they were nomads, moving all the time, with the Seasons.
Conquering has been done by every Race of people,.
Indians were into Tribal Wars and the Europeans ended that.
Africans were into Tribal Wars as well as selling other Africans to the Europeans, but the Europeans ended that also.
islamic Warriors conquered the lands from Istanbul to Kabul slaughtering all the Jews,Christians,Sikhs,Hindus and Buddhists on the way.. Did they steal the land?… Yes because such people that lived there before muhamad,may piss be upon him, met his fallen angel in a Cave.
However Saudi Arabia also ended slavery… In 1962….Not a typo… 1962…
According to professor Donald Harris, the ho’ Kamala “Heels Up” Harris’s dad said that Heels Up is descended from slave holders. Apparently she owned over 200 slaves on 5 plantations according to daddy Harris.
There was no mention of the torture, human sacrifice, and cannibalism practiced by many indigenous groups.
The Aztecs sacrificed around 8,000 members of other indigenous groups during one festival and are them too.
A Miami chieftain, as told by a British officer, during a treaty signing regretted that he would not be able to torture and eat his group’s enemies.
I remember reading that a Maryland colonists and his family were captured during the French and Indian War. He witnessed another captive who attempted to escape po e, but was caught buried up to his head and a fire built around his head. The Maryland man eventually escaped, but it took him years to get his wife back.
The democratic/socialist/communist left MUST demonize and destroy whites and their culture in every possible way in order to achieve their agenda of enslaving the world.
“Always accuse your enemies of that which you are guilty”
Joseph Goebbels
Nazi propaganda minister
Does that cover the ones going east as well as west? Because very few of those who were kidnapped for use in the Ottoman Empire survived their trip there.
1. You admit whites were instrumental and a driving force behind the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
2. Your making the crimes committed by everyone involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Your attempt to absolve whites has not only utterly failed you’ve made them look even worse.
Research Anthony Johnson and William April Ellison, >for starters<. You have utterly failed to point out the crimes of free blacks/freed slaves in American history who ALSO owned slaves. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Used slaves to make themselves money, just. like. the. white. man.
It was actually a socialistic system, not communist, since communism wasn’t created unti the 1840s by Engels & Marx.
Why did the indian tribes stop keeping slaves? The white man forced them to after the Civil War. This made the indian tribes the last slave owners in Canada/US
The Aztecs, Incans and Mynas who practiced Human Sacrifice of uncounted many and they erect a false idol to the Aztecs false god Quetzalcoatl
The Aztecs were noted for raiding other tribes for Sacrifice maybe of the tribes here in America were at war many times