Ideas For Democracy:  Goal #20

Native States or Tribal Nations have been devastated by the immigration of Europeans and losses of land and cultural life.  Americans need to explore every reasonable possibility for naming the harm done and restoring just relationships between the Americans and the Native States that existed long before the European immigration to the Western Hemisphere. 

 

Citizens who want real democracy will actively support this policy and vote for trustworthy candidates who actively support this policy.

 

IFD - policy:  We need to acknowledge that the European immigration to North America entailed a long process of warfare, culture conflicts and violated treaty agreements.  The two sides to virtually every treaty did not really agree upon the meaning of the treaties.  Private ownership of land was incomprehensible to the tribal societies that had existed here communally for thousands of years.  The "Americans" from Europe were interested in exploiting the land and natural resources for every conceivable economic benefit.  The native civilization had established an entrenched culture that limited exploitation of the land and animal and plant resources, never hunting or fishing beyond the capacity of a food source to regenerate itself naturally.  The Americans were voracious, mindlessly harvesting animals as though each resource were unlimited.  Examples of the American practices, which have been both irreverent and unscientific, include the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and the near extinction of the North American Beaver and the plains Bison or Buffalo.  The native cultures, harmonized with the land and deeply reverent, forbid the kinds of economic exploitation that is central to an industrial society.  They have been overwhelmed, outnumbered, and diminished continually by disease and the poverty forced upon them by unfair treatment from the dominant European-American society.  The American claim to own all of the land and its infinite subdivisions into private plots dismisses the native communal culture as unworthy of respect and essentially prohibited by the dominant industrial culture.

 

If we apply the principles of restorative justice to our history, which fits the definitiona of a crime of theft and violence, we need to ask certain important questions, and then proceed to find realistic answers.  I propose that the solution to this problem must be consistent with the principle that if we want to make the world safe for democracy, we must make the world safe for tribal societies.  Some people choose tribal society and reject the model or paradigm of an industrial nation state.  If they are not free to make that choice, then the world is not safe for democracy. 

1)  What is the harm that was done and who was harmed?

2)  How can we make a sincere and meaningful apology?

3)  How can we restore communal ownership of worthwhile land to the native states?

4) How can we restore a just relationship that includes an acceptable level of independence and safety for the native culture or cultures?

5)  How can we establish territory or territories (not reservations) where the people of the native states can be both economically and culturally secure?

These are obviously very difficult questions to answer.  But the conversation should begin as soon as possible.  It has already begun in part on the basis of a treaty with the Oglala Sioux that has been adjudicated as valid by the Supreme Court and enforceable as established treaty law.  The Sioux reject payment for the land taken, including the Black Hills in the Dakotas.  The native states do not want land of their own to die on; they want land of their own to live on.  That request is reasonable.  What is the harm to us, the American people, if we cannot commit to an honorable resolution of our cultural conflict with the natives who tried to be reconciled with our dominant force?  Many people throughout the world believe that the American behavior toward the native states, including the Trail of Tears imposed upon the law-abiding Cherokee Nation by President Andrew Jackson, is the first occurrence of deliberate genocide in modern times.  That would make modern genocide an American invention.