C- Political Globalization-b) The\u00a0\u00a0 First\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nations of\u00a0\u00a0 North\u00a0 America\u00a0 and\u00a0 Afro-Americans,\u00a0 under\u00a0 American\u00a0 Imperialism!!!<\/p>\n
1)The\u00a0\u00a0 First\u00a0 Nations of\u00a0 North\u00a0 America- the\u00a0 Indian tribes<\/p>\n
We\u00a0 shall now examine in a general context, how the indigenous\u00a0 Indians\u00a0 and the\u00a0 African\u00a0 American slaves, who much later became \u2018\u2019 second class\u2019\u2019\u00a0 American citizens, were treated by\u00a0 American authorities, whether they represented the\u00a0 Federal\u00a0 Government or\u00a0 State\u00a0 Governments. We shall demonstrate that through official American policy, these two racial groups were treated\u00a0 as\u00a0 \u2018\u2019savages\u2019\u2019 and\u00a0 as \u2018\u2019subhuman\u2019\u2019 social entities, since they were not\u00a0 white, of\u00a0 European ancestry \u00a0and\u00a0 Christian. For\u00a0 almost all\u00a0 American settlers , \u2018\u2019divine destiny\u2019\u2019 dictated that these \u2018\u2019peoples\u2019\u2019\u00a0 were assigned to service in a\u00a0 servile\u00a0 and subservient way , the long term\u00a0 expectations\u00a0 of the\u00a0 American governments to create a\u00a0 \u2018\u2019benevolent\u00a0 empire\u2019\u2019, popularized by\u00a0 Benjamin Franklin(1706-1790)\u00a0 and\u00a0 Thomas\u00a0 Paine(1737-1809), major architects of\u00a0 America\u2019s political\u00a0 culture , or an \u2018\u2019empire of liberty\u2019\u2019 as\u00a0 President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) espoused as political axiom. Therefore we see, that\u00a0 the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States was founded on a\u00a0 political environment\u00a0 of\u00a0 \u2018\u2019virtual reality\u2019\u2019, both politically and ideologically!!!(www.americanforeignrelations.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n By\u00a0 observing the\u00a0 socio-economic circumstances\u00a0 under which these two distinct but major social communities of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States evolved\u00a0 during the last 250 years approximately, we will be able to once again substantiate our position in classifying this Nation as authoritarian, racist and imperialistic, demonstrating very few ideological commonalities with the political concepts of liberalism and republicanism, as well as with the socio-cultural\u00a0 tenets of\u00a0 Jesus Christ as described in the Christian Gospel!!!<\/p>\n We shall begin by analysing the historical evolution of the native American Indians, before and after American\u00a0 Independence.<\/p>\n Before we go into detail concerning the plight of the Indian Nations of North America under the \u2018\u2019colonialist governance\u2019\u2019 of the white European settlers, before and after\u00a0 American Independence in 1776, I would like to present a statement from the introduction of a study, undertaken by the University of Vienna in 2006, addressing the \u2018\u2019genocide\u2019\u2019 of the Cherokee Indian Nation(whose territory covered most of the south-eastern United States) under official government policy at all levels(federal, state, local), utilizing\u00a0 American military forces and the American Judicial System to weaken, to dismantle and to eventually displace its peoples from their ancestral land.<\/p>\n The\u00a0\u00a0 introduction of the article, entitled \u2018\u2019The\u00a0 Trail of\u00a0 Tears across the Mississippi Valley\u2019\u2019, emphasizes the fact that, \u2018\u2019\u2026There were ten million Native Americans on the American continent when the first non-Indians\u00a0 arrived. Over the next 300 years, 90% of all\u00a0 Native American original population was either wiped out by disease, famine, or warfare, imported by the whites\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.univie.ac.at\/Anglistik\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The\u00a0 Thirteen American Colonies under\u00a0 British Rule and the American Central Government afterwards, considered the indigenous Indians as a physical and a cultural obstacle to their expansionist policies throughout the North American Continent. They used \u2018\u2019every trick in the book\u2019\u2019, not only to remove the Indians from their \u2018\u2019homelands\u2019\u2019 as \u00a0Independent Nations, not as \u2018\u2019tribes\u2019\u2019 as many refer to them even today, but through time, to eliminate them physically so that they would not be able to participate in the nation building of\u00a0 the\u00a0 United States, socially, economically, politically and culturally. For those American white settlers, before and after American Independence in 1776, the indigenous Indians were considered as \u2018\u2019savages\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019social non-entities\u2019\u2019, who could\u00a0 not function as constructive social participants in the\u00a0 creation of the\u00a0 American Empire!!!<\/p>\n From\u00a0 the\u00a0 text\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 American\u00a0 Declaration of\u00a0 Independence\u00a0 of 1776, one\u00a0 in the list of grievances of the\u00a0 American settlers against\u00a0 England\u2019s king George III was that \u2018\u2019\u2026 he has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/progressive.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Similarly, in 1830, just a year after\u00a0 Andrew Jackson became President of the United States(1829-1837),he adopted an aggressive policy to eliminate Indian land tithes and relocate the\u00a0 Indian populations in the wide expanses West of the\u00a0 Mississippi River, far from American settlements. Under President\u00a0 Jackson, the American Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which stated that \u2018\u2019\u2026no state could achieve proper culture, civilization, and progress, as long as Indians remained within its boundaries\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.univie.ac.at\/Anglistik\/<\/span><\/a>). Nevertheless, the American Central Government , America\u2019s\u00a0 Congress and the American Judiciary,\u00a0\u00a0 representing America\u2019s Constitutional Republic, knew very well that under American Constitutional Law, the Indian Nations maintained legally their inherent and legitimate rights to their own territories and their own socio-political institutions, as the First Nations of the Continent historically.(www.americanforeignrelations.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Therefore, if we were to qualify American\u00a0 Governance over the\u00a0 Indian Nations residing in the North American Continent, we would have to address\u00a0 ourselves to three socio-political terms which are, Imperialism, Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide.<\/p>\n Their definitions are the following:<\/p>\n Imperialism-state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political or economic control over other areas.(https:\/\/www.britannica.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Ethnic Cleansing-the systematic elimination of an ethnic group or groups, from a region or society, as by deportation, forced emigration or genocide.(https:\/\/www.thefreedictionary<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Genocide-the deliberate killing of a large\u00a0 group\u00a0 of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.(https:\/\/en.oxforddictionaries.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Since the founding of\u00a0 the\u00a0 United States of\u00a0 America in 1776, the\u00a0 white American settlers and their political representatives, recognized the indigenous Indians not as members of tribes, but as \u2018\u2019sovereign independent nations\u2019\u2019 , and as such they were treated in the beginning of American history, politically and constitutionally!!! This took place, not because the white American settlers considered the Indians as equal political entities to be respected as equal political allies or neighbours, but because at that historical time, it was the most practical and pragmatic policy to adopt; this in order to stabilize and reinforce politically and territorially their newly founded nation or\u00a0 Empire!!!<\/p>\n First of all, during\u00a0 America\u2019s War of Independence(1775-1781), the\u00a0 American settlers wanted\u00a0 the\u00a0 Indian Nations as\u00a0 allies against the British forces they were trying to defeat and expel. Second, the white American inhabitants at first , did not\u00a0 possess the military capacities in weaponry and in manpower to fight the British forces and at the same time initiate an expansionist strategy to conquer territories held by various Indian Nations for hundreds ,or\u00a0 even for thousands of years.<\/p>\n Finally, the treaties that the American government signed with the Indian Nations early on, represented a legal and binding agreement\u00a0 protected\u00a0 under international law and the American Constitution, since they were between two sovereign states.\u2019\u2019\u2026Indian tribes are also referred to , but are not expressly designated in Article VI of the\u00a0 Constitution, where it is made clear that all treaties entered by the United States, \u2018shall be the supreme Law of the Land\u2019. In 1789, the United States had only entered a few treaties with\u00a0 European countries , while it had already entered nine treaties with different Indian tribes. Consequently, this treaty\u00a0 provision of the U.S. Constitution states that the federal government\u2019s treaties with Indian tribes are the supreme law of the United States\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.flashpointmag.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The\u00a0 treaties between\u00a0 the\u00a0 Indian Nations and the American government concerning commercial transactions for the ownership of\u00a0 Indian territory had a precedence during British colonial rule of\u00a0 North America with the\u00a0 Doctrine of\u00a0 Discovery from 1492 onward. European colonial powers and the United States, legitimized their agreements with the indigenous Indian Nations of North and South America using this \u2018\u2019imperialistic doctrine\u2019\u2019. Under this \u2018\u2019artificial\u2019\u2019 legal code , the first European country that first discovered a new territory where Christian Europeans had not yet arrived, could claim this area for their own country!!!<\/p>\n What this whole \u2018\u2019 colonialist legal trickery\u2019\u2019 involved was , that\u00a0 under the Doctrine of\u00a0 Discovery, the indigenous people did not lose in \u2018\u2019principle\u2019\u2019 or \u2018\u2019theoretically\u2019\u2019 their right to live, to farm and to hunt on this land, but they could only sell their land(mostly under duress and force) to that European country that\u00a0 had \u2018\u2019discovered\u2019\u2019 this territory, and that they could deal politically and commercially only with this particular European Power. In a sense, the European Colonial Powers usurped or annexed these indigenous territories in North and South America \u2018\u2019through the back door\u2019\u2019, which they all agreed upon\u00a0 during the height of\u00a0 European colonial expansion in\u00a0 the 16th\u00a0 , the 17th\u00a0\u00a0 and\u00a0 18th\u00a0 centuries.(http:\/\/www.flashpointmag.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The\u00a0 United States as a \u2018\u2019newly founded\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019innovative\u2019\u2019 colonial\u00a0 power, took the\u00a0 Doctrine of Discovery to a higher level with the acquisition of territories owned and governed by the Indian Nations of\u00a0 North\u00a0 America, giving the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States government the\u00a0 sole and absolute right to buy lands from the various governments of the Indian Nations. More importantly, no Indian Nation could sell land to any other buyer representing private financial interests or the financial and political interests of a country. Therefore, in 1823, the United States Supreme Court, by enforcing the Doctrine of Discovery, the American government\u2019\u2019\u2026acquired the sole right to buy lands from tribal governments\u2026thus, sales of land that Indians had made to persons other than the\u00a0 United States government were invalid. Tribes continued to have the right to use and occupy their lands but their governmental sovereign powers were restricted in that\u00a0 they could only sell lands to the United\u00a0 States\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.flashpointmag.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Similarly, as related to land transactions between the white American settlers and the Indian Nations of North America, there was another very effective \u2018\u2019dirty trick\u2019\u2019 or \u2018\u2019dirty formula\u2019\u2019 which was initiated at the expense of Indian territorial and political sovereignty, by taking\u00a0 advantage of the distinctive socio-economic traditions or institutions of the indigenous Indians.<\/p>\n A\u00a0 very important socio-economic institution prevalent in the everyday life of the European settlers\u00a0 and which was completely foreign to the indigenous Indians,\u00a0 was the concept of \u2018\u2019private land property\u2019\u2019 .\u00a0 The Indian Nations in their political culture had\u00a0 never developed a system of \u2018\u2019private land ownership\u2019\u2019 as had the Europeans during the various stages of European Capitalism in past centuries. The socio-economic institutions of the native Indians in North\u00a0 America prescribed that no one member of a tribe\u00a0 could be the owner of land, and as a consequence, sell it for a profit to another party. The land belonged to the whole community, tribe or Nation, whose members could reside, farm or hunt there freely. Nevertheless, there were boundaries which determined the territory belonging to the individual community,\u00a0 tribe or Nation.(https:\/\/www.warpaths2peacepipes.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Therefore in the \u2018\u2019economic mind set\u2019\u2019 of an indigenous\u00a0 Indian or an\u00a0 Indian tribal government, the selling of land for goods or money, meant that the person buying the land could benefit by residing on it , by exploiting it through husbandry, farming or hunting, but the land belonged exclusively to the Indian Nation or the tribal community, and could not be sold as \u2018\u2019private land property\u2019\u2019. In essence, the indigenous Indians were not selling their land but renting it or leasing it , similar to\u00a0 what had been\u00a0\u00a0 practiced\u00a0 in Western European\u00a0 Feudalism!!!<\/p>\n The white Christian European settlers took\u00a0 advantage of these traditional socio-economic values of the indigenous Indians, to acquire large expanses of land everywhere in North America, by trading goods and commodities which in relation to their \u2018\u2019real estate values\u2019\u2019 were insignificant!!!<\/p>\n To make this point more clear and objective, we shall refer to two historical cases of land purchases of Indian land by white Christian European settlers, transactions which were repeated in one form or another, hundreds of times in the early stages of\u00a0 American nation building!!!<\/p>\n One of the most famous examples of land transactions between indigenous Indians and European settlers was the sale of Manhattan Island in 1626 to the Dutch, by a tribe of indigenous Indians residing there. Manhattan Island is today a borough of\u00a0 the\u00a0 metropolis\u00a0 of New York, while its land surface is approximately 60 square kilometres. There are primary documents in the Dutch National Archives to substantiate this particular land transaction and some details concerning the financial exchanges. The Dutch then, purchased the land from local Indian tribes by trading \u2018\u2019beads\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019trinkets\u2019\u2019 worth 60 Dutch\u00a0 guilders or 24 American dollars!!!(http:\/\/mentalfloss.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The second known land transaction where there are documents\u00a0 to indicate its execution is once again with Dutch private interests, a few years after the sale of\u00a0 Manhattan Island by Indian tribes residing on the same territory, which today represents the greater city\u00a0 of New York.<\/p>\n This time , the Dutch bought Staten Island from the local Indian tribes living on this great land expanse\u00a0\u00a0 for household utensils, farming tools, clothing and weaponry.\u2019\u2019\u2026The purchase of Staten Island a few decades later (after the sale of Manhattan Island in 1626)\u00a0 has more surviving documentation including the deed which says that the Dutch traded \u2018 10 boxes of shirts, 10 ells of\u00a0 red cloth, 30 pounds of powder, 30 pairs of socks, 2 pieces of duffel, some awls, 10 muskets, 30 kettles, 25 adzes, 10 bars of lead, 50 axes and some knives\u2019\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/mentalfloss.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Today, Staten Island is\u00a0 a borough\u00a0 of\u00a0 New\u00a0 York city and its land surface is 151 square kilometres . By just interpreting and quantifying the previous data related to these early land transactions between the white Christian European settlers and the Indian Nations inhabiting North America, we can easily and objectively conclude that these white European Christian settlers behaved towards the indigenous Indians like \u2018\u2019savage predators\u2019\u2019 and\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018\u2019human\u00a0 scavengers\u2019\u2019 , similar to their white\u00a0 Christian European ancestors during their historical evolution of 2,000 years!!!<\/p>\n The\u00a0 official American\u00a0 policy towards the\u00a0 Indian\u00a0 Nations\u00a0 of\u00a0 North\u00a0\u00a0 America has\u00a0 always\u00a0 been to enforce in a systematic and organized way their \u2018\u2019extermination\u2019\u2019, by utilizing various strategies and policies\u00a0 to gradually lead them to the \u2018\u2019slaughter house\u2019\u2019, metaphorically speaking!!! This \u2018\u2019inhumane\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019immoral\u2019\u2019 government policy to a very large degree succeeded in the end!!!<\/p>\n The\u00a0 evidence for this \u2018\u2019simplistic conclusion\u2019\u2019 , as many American \u2018\u2019knowledgeable\u2019\u2019 historians would declare, is \u2018\u2019first and foremost\u2019\u2019 the proven fact that the\u00a0 Indian population of\u00a0 North America when the first\u00a0 European settlers arrived during the end of the 15th century, was on the whole about 18\u00a0 million people, while the indigenous population of the present\u00a0 territory of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States was approximately 10 million.(http:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Today, it has been estimated that\u00a0 the American Indian and Alaska Native people today represent roughly 1.5 %\u00a0 of the total U.S. population.(https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/<\/span><\/a>) This percentage of the total population of the\u00a0 United States translates into approximately\u00a0 4.5 to 5 million people.<\/p>\n The\u00a0 above data clearly\u00a0 confirm that for the last\u00a0 250\u00a0 years, the\u00a0 American government and its citizens, have executed an effective program of\u00a0 \u2018\u2019ethnic cleansing\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019genocide\u2019\u2019 against\u00a0 North America\u2019s indigenous nations, as well\u00a0 as\u00a0 acting as an \u2018\u2019imperialist power\u2019\u2019 , since through its wars of attrition and colonialist policy of\u00a0 \u2018\u2019political domination\u2019\u2019, it has annexed or usurped almost all of the territory that had\u00a0 rightfully and legally belonged to the sovereign\u00a0 Indian Nations and\u00a0 Indian tribes of this continent!!!<\/p>\n At the present time, there are about 310 Indian reservations, representing the territory that \u2018\u2019theoretically\u2019\u2019 not \u2018\u2019practically\u2019\u2019 or \u2018\u2019legally\u2019\u2019 is controlled by the indigenous Indians of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States, since pragmatically they are not independent or sovereign. The\u00a0 Indian reservations are \u2018\u2019semi-autonomous\u2019\u2019 geo-political entities within the\u00a0 United States of America.\u2019\u2019\u2026 They are ultimately subject to supervisory oversight by the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States Congress and executive regulation through the Bureau of Indian\u00a0 Affairs . The nature and legitimacy of those relationships continue\u00a0 to be a matter of dispute\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org<\/span><\/a>) The totality of the geographical area\u00a0 of all\u00a0 the\u00a0 Indian reservations is\u00a0 55.7 million acres ,or about\u00a0 2.3 %\u00a0 of the land surface of the\u00a0 United States of\u00a0 America.(http:\/\/usdakotawar.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n We\u00a0 have already emphasized the fact that\u00a0 American government policy since the beginning\u00a0 of\u00a0 American\u00a0 Independence in 1776, institutionalized a \u2018\u2019step by step\u2019\u2019 strategy\u00a0 of\u00a0\u00a0 almost eliminating\u00a0 or dismantling the \u2018\u2019physical\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019 socio-cultural\u2019\u2019 presence of the indigenous Indian population of\u00a0 North\u00a0 America. Nevertheless, this \u2018\u2019nihilistic\u2019\u2019 government policy was intensified after the\u00a0 War of 1812\u00a0 with the British, which lasted for almost 3 years, from 1812 to 1814. With\u00a0 the British\u00a0 being\u00a0 defeated, it allowed the\u00a0 American military forces more leeway to confront effectively the various Indian Nations and tribes , which many of them\u00a0 had allied themselves with the\u00a0 British, during the American\u00a0 Revolutionary\u00a0 War(1775-1781) or the War of Independence!!!<\/p>\n Most of the indigenous Indian tribes, had sided to a large extent with the British, becoming their political and military allies, hoping to halt the American colonial expansion onto their own territories. The Revolutionary War is considered the most extensive and destructive\u00a0 Indian war in United States history , while after the War of 1812, the British abandoned their Indian allies to the Americans.\u2019\u2019\u2026This proved to be a major turning point in the Indian Wars, marking the last time that\u00a0 Native Americans would turn to a foreign power for assistance against the United States\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.newworldencyclopedia.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n We shall now examine some parameters defining the history of the Indian Nations in North America, under colonial rule, especially under the \u2018\u2019colonial rule\u2019\u2019 of the United States of America, which has\u00a0 produced\u00a0 the \u2018\u2019precarious\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019ambivalent\u2019\u2019\u00a0 social, economic and political status of these indigenous Indians till\u00a0 the present day.<\/p>\n The historical parameters we shall examine, have been largely ignored by studies undertaken by\u00a0 American historians, by professors in American universities teaching American history, by\u00a0 school texts studied in American schools, and finally, by the\u00a0 American information and entertainment mass media, such as television, the newspapers, radio, the internet and the cinema.<\/p>\n This type of\u00a0 \u2018\u2019filtering\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019self-censorship\u2019\u2019 by American academia\u00a0 and by\u00a0 the information and the entertainment establishments\u00a0 of the United States, have\u00a0\u00a0 always been \u2018\u2019prevalent\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019overpowering\u2019\u2019 , because this American Establishment has\u00a0 never wanted or wished to tarnish the \u2018\u2019virtual historical image\u2019\u2019 of the\u00a0 United States as a democratic, liberal and pluralistic nation!!!<\/p>\n The\u00a0 first historical parameter we shall examine deals with the wars that were waged by the government of the United\u00a0 States as a \u2018\u2019colonial power\u2019\u2019 against the Indian Nations of North America, in order to conquer territories that belonged to these \u2018\u2019sovereign\u2019\u2019\u00a0 geo-political entities, thus expanding the American Empire!!!<\/p>\n I personally believe that\u00a0 few educated people around the world, especially Americans, know that it took almost 150\u00a0 years for the Americans to conquer and defeat the\u00a0 Indian Nations of North America, which means that the indigenous Indians were able to resist militarily and of course politically ( non – assimilation) to American Imperialism on their sovereign territories!!!<\/p>\n Most of the American military campaigns against the indigenous Indians were of\u00a0\u00a0 a small scale and localized, since they were dealing with \u2018\u2019individual tribal resistance\u2019\u2019, but some were of a much larger scale as we will observe later on in our historical descriptions. What we know from historical data is,\u00a0 that because of these military conflicts which have been called \u2018\u2019The Indian Wars\u2019\u2019 in American historiography, there were a large number of casualties , especially between 1850 and 1890. \u2018\u2019\u2026The most reliable figures are derived from collated records of strictly military engagements\u00a0 such as by Gregory Michno , which reveal 21,586 dead, wounded, and captured civilians and soldiers for the period of 1850-1890\u00a0 alone. Other figures are derived from extrapolations of rather cursory and unrelated government accounts such as that by\u00a0 Russell Thornton, who calculated that some 45,000 Indians and 19,000 whites were killed\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.newworldencyclopedia.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Another very\u00a0 important historical indicator of the extent of military and political resistance by the\u00a0 Indian\u00a0 Nations of\u00a0 North\u00a0 America is the constancy and the frequency of those military clashes with American colonial forces , especially during the last half of the 19th\u00a0 century.\u2019\u2019\u2026Yet the\u00a0 Indian Wars were constant. From 1768\u00a0 through 1889, according to\u00a0\u00a0 R. Ernest and Trevor N. Dupuy\u2019s\u00a0 The\u00a0 Encyclopedia of\u00a0 Military History, the army fought \u2018 943 actions in twelve separate campaigns and numerous local incidents\u2019. And as Fairfax Downy notes in his Indian Fighting Army, from 1866 to 1892, there was not a year, and hardly a three months,\u00a0 in which there was not some expedition against\u00a0 the Indians in the vast regions west of the Mississippi, and between the Canadian and\u00a0 Mexican borders\u2019\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/\/\/www.hoover.org\/<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The second parameter we shall now examine concerning the historical evolution of the\u00a0 Indian Nations in North America under the \u2018\u2019political hegemony\u2019\u2019 of the American government deals with the\u00a0 Treaties which were signed between the indigenous Indians and the American central government related to their\u00a0 territorial rights as sovereign political entities.<\/p>\n Since American independence in 1776, there have been 375 treaties signed with Native Americans, and none of these treaties ended well for the Indian tribes. Very often\u00a0 the \u2018\u2019unchecked\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019authoritarian\u2019\u2019 executive powers of the American\u00a0 President, often annulled their\u00a0 constitutional legitimacy in order to promote his own political agenda of \u2018\u2019imperialist conquest\u2019\u2019 and also to satisfy the constant demands of\u00a0 American citizens, who wanted to covet Indian lands \u2018\u2019illegally\u2019\u2019,\u00a0 so as to exploit\u00a0 them economically, whether it was through farming, mining, logging or hunting.(http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n After the War of 1812 and the military defeat of the British by the Americans, the federal and state governments were now able to concentrate their military and political resources on dismantling and removing the\u00a0 Indian tribes from their own territories which were considered vital, economically and strategically, for the establishment and development of\u00a0 American settlements and towns.<\/p>\n We\u00a0 therefore observe, that during the 1820s and 1830s, under the political leadership of\u00a0 General Andrew Jackson, who later became President of the\u00a0 United States(1829-1837), attacking the\u00a0 Seminole Indians in Florida\u00a0 and the Cherokees , and other Indian tribes in the southeast of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States with \u2018\u2019particular ferocity\u2019\u2019. At that time, large reserves of gold had been discovered in the State of Georgia, so in 1831, the state government and its citizens, falling back on an \u2018\u2019unconstitutional\u2019\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 Supreme Court decision, proclaiming that Indians were neither U.S.\u00a0 citizens nor a foreign nation, and with the support of then President\u00a0 Andrew Jackson, expelled the\u00a0 Cherokee Indians from their indigenous lands, despite their \u2018\u2019treaty right\u2019\u2019 to it.(www.americanforeignrelations.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Here we have to mention, that the Cherokee Indians as a well organized Indian Nation, economically, politically and socially, attempted to fight\u00a0 their \u2018\u2019removal\u2019\u2019 legally, by going to the Supreme Court in 1831. This time, the court ruled in favour of the Cherokee\u00a0 Indians, deciding that the\u00a0 Cherokee Nation was sovereign, making the removal laws unconstitutional. The\u00a0 State Government of\u00a0 Georgia refused to respect the decision made by the\u00a0 Supreme Court of the United States, while President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the law.(http:\/\/www.univie.ac.at\/Anglistik\/<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n In the above historical case, as with hundreds other such cases later on, involving the territorial and political integrity and rights of the\u00a0 North American Indians, the average American citizen of the State of Georgia did not respect the legality of the decision taken by\u00a0 America\u2019s Supreme Court, but also the President of the\u00a0 United States himself, representing the\u00a0 American government\u2019s Executive Branch, disregarded the constitutional role of the Supreme Court and the country\u2019s Judicial System; he ignored the American Constitution as a whole!!!<\/p>\n All of the above historical facts, indicate that practically and pragmatically, the United States is not a\u00a0 Constitutional\u00a0 Democracy, since its\u00a0 Executive, its political representatives in\u00a0 federal and state government, or its citizens , demonstrated any respect or obedience to\u00a0 the tenets as\u00a0 prescribed in the American Constitution, putting greater priority on their own private interests and\u00a0 ambitions!!!<\/p>\n This type of \u2018\u2019legalistic anomaly\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019ideological inconsistency\u2019\u2019 related to the\u00a0 \u2018\u2019institutional construct\u2019\u2019 of a\u00a0 Constitutional Republic, has been prevalent and constant in the history of the United States, not only with respect to the civil rights of the indigenous Indians and Afro -Americans , but also in relation to the \u2018\u2019political accountability\u2019\u2019 of the\u00a0 American Central Government towards its own \u2018\u2019white citizens\u2019\u2019. There was no \u2018\u2019political\u2019\u2019 or \u2018\u2019congressional\u2019\u2019 accountability when the\u00a0 American President and his cabinet initiated military campaigns in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos(1955-1975), in Yugoslavia(1991-2001), or in the second invasion of Iraq(2003-2011).<\/p>\n To emphasize the\u00a0 institutional\u00a0 \u2018\u2019disrespect\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019disloyalty\u2019\u2019 shown by America\u2019s Executive Branch and its presidential powers, sworn to protect\u00a0 and abide by the\u00a0 Constitution of\u00a0 the\u00a0 United States concerning the sovereign territorial rights of the Indian Nations of\u00a0 North America, the historian William Weeks points out the instance of\u00a0 the \u2018\u2019foreign invasion\u2019\u2019 of Florida by the American Armed Forces in 1816,defeating the Seminole Indian Nation, whose sovereign territory had been guaranteed by the treaties signed with the American Government. He\u00a0 comments that \u2018\u2019\u2026President Madison and Secretary Adams violated the Constitution when they bypassed Congressional input into the\u00a0 Executive decision to go to war. The Constitution grants war powers to the Congress alone\u2026\u2019\u2019. (www.counterpunch.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n William\u00a0 Weeks\u00a0 continues by\u00a0 accusing\u00a0 President\u00a0 James\u00a0 Madison(1809-1817)\u00a0 and his\u00a0 Secretary of\u00a0 State, John Quincy\u00a0 Adams(1817-1825)[becoming later President of the United States(1825-1829)] of\u00a0 disinformation to U.S. Congress\u00a0 and to the American peoples, in order to defend\u00a0 America\u2019s invasion of Florida, a \u2018\u2019foreign country\u2019\u2019 , a \u2018\u2019sovereign country\u2019\u2019, belonging and governed by the Seminole\u00a0 Indian Nation.<\/p>\n William Weeks notes that ,\u2019\u2019\u2026Adams proclaimed that those\u00a0 Americans who opposed\u00a0 the war were not only wrong but were giving aid and comfort to the nation\u2019s foreign enemies, and covered up atrocities committed under General Jackson\u2019s command\u2026\u2019\u2019. (www.counterpunch.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n That is exactly\u00a0 the \u2018\u2019 unconstitutional political setting\u2019\u2019 which occurred\u00a0 almost 200 years\u00a0 later, during the second invasion of\u00a0\u00a0 Iraq\u00a0 by the American Military Forces in 2003, under President George W. Bush(2001-2009) with his\u00a0 Secretary of State, General Colin Powel(2001-2005).<\/p>\n There were\u00a0 three Seminole Wars.<\/p>\n The\u00a0 First\u00a0 Seminole War(1817-1818)\u00a0 began for the purpose of recapturing \u2018\u2019runaway black\u00a0 slaves\u2019\u2019, who were\u00a0 living among the\u00a0 Seminole tribes in Florida. General Andrew Jackson , a future American President(1829-1837), who was an important slave and land owner, as were President James Madison and Secretary of State Quincy Adams, used American military forces to service their own financial interests by invading this territory, dismantling the Seminole Indian tribes and burning their villages. As a result, in 1819, Spain was forced to cede its colonial\u00a0 Florida territory to the United States.(www.britannica.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The Second Seminole War(1835-1842)\u00a0 was the longest\u00a0 and the costliest for the American government. After the 1830 Indian Removal\u00a0 Act,\u00a0 both houses of Congress agreed\u00a0\u00a0 that the President could negotiate \u2018\u2019removal treaties\u2019\u2019 with the Indian Nations and the Indian tribes, where these\u00a0 Native Americans would give up their\u00a0 \u2018\u2019sovereign territories\u2019\u2019 east of the Mississippi River in exchange for \u2018\u2019virgin\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019unexplored\u2019\u2019 land west of the Mississippi River.<\/p>\n The Seminole Indians with their allies of \u2018\u2019runaway black\u00a0 slaves\u2019\u2019 , did not accept the official American terms and fought back using all their resources. In this prolonged Indian War, the American Military Forces had a large number of casualties. There were more than 2,000 U.S. soldiers dead and thousands of soldiers wounded. Naturally, the Seminole losses and those of their black slave allies were much higher, particularly the civilian casualties!!!<\/p>\n The Second Seminole War cost the American government between 40 and 60 million dollars then, which if we use the \u2018\u2019historical currency conversion method \u2018\u2019 from https:\/\/futureboy.us<\/span><\/a>, this monetary sum represents today, approximately between 600 and\u00a0 900\u00a0 million\u00a0 U.S. dollars; an astronomical amount of money!!!<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Third\u00a0 Seminole War(1855-1858)\u00a0 came about when the\u00a0 American government tried to track down small\u00a0 pockets of\u00a0 Seminole Indians who had chosen not to leave their \u2018\u2019tribal lands\u2019\u2019 in\u00a0 Florida. These remaining Seminole Indians were pursued and\u00a0 taken hostage, but there was very little bloodshed. They were forced to leave Florida and their own territories by the American military forces , while the most resistant Seminole bands were paid off by the government to migrate to their \u2018\u2019government\u00a0 assigned\u2019\u2019 Indian territories west of the Mississippi River.<\/p>\n In order to really comprehend the true impact of \u2018\u2019constitutional disregard\u2019 by the\u00a0 American government, and especially by its\u00a0 Executive, concerning the Indian Treaties and of course the \u2018\u2019sovereign territorial rights\u2019\u2019 of the\u00a0 Indian Nations of North America, we shall quote a commentary made by Bill Cody(1846-1917), better known as\u00a0 \u2018\u2019Buffalo Bill\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n Bill Cody or\u00a0 Buffalo Bill was a very popular personality in American society then, and had worked for many years as a \u2018\u2019frontier\u00a0 scout\u2019\u2019 for the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars. He helped the Army to locate the positions of the Indian tribes , which were always on the move and a military threat. Bill Cody or Buffalo Bill had received the American Medal of Honour in 1872.(http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Bill Cody being a realist and a pragmatist, as well as \u2018\u2019a man of all trades\u2019\u2019 , having lived almost\u00a0 all of his life among the Indians as well as among the American settlers ,he once said that, \u2018\u2019\u2026Every Indian outbreak\u00a0 that I have ever known, has resulted from broken promises and broken treaties by the\u00a0 government\u2026\u2019\u2019!!!(http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The third historical parameter which affected\u00a0 critically the existential evolution of\u00a0 modern North American Indians, dismantling them physically, economically, socio-culturally and politically, was the ideology\u00a0 of the American government and the\u00a0 American\u00a0 settlers to \u2018\u2019displace\u2019\u2019 and\u00a0 to \u2018\u2019relocate\u2019\u2019 the\u00a0 Indian Nations and the Indian tribes from their \u2018\u2019ancestral lands\u2019\u2019 where they had been living for hundreds, if not for thousands of years. Their \u2018\u2019ancestral territories\u2019\u2019 covered all of North America, from the Atlantic to the\u00a0 Pacific\u00a0 oceans, and from the\u00a0 Mexican to the Canadian borders!!!<\/p>\n Before the\u00a0 United States was founded in 1776, there were concrete initiatives being taken by the English and the\u00a0 European settlers, to take over or annex the lands controlled by the indigenous Indians, either through their purchase by exchanging \u2018\u2019cheap commodities\u2019\u2019 as we have already witnessed with the buying of\u00a0 the islands of\u00a0 Manhattan and Staten, or by pure military force.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the British government which\u00a0 ruled over the 13\u00a0 American colonies, exercised to a large degree a policy of\u00a0 \u2018\u2019neutrality\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019diplomacy\u2019\u2019, respecting the territorial rights of the\u00a0 Indian Nations. The British government controlling politically and militarily the\u00a0 American colonies, was not interested in disturbing the equilibriums which were maintained between their colonial government, the European settlers and the indigenous peoples. For the British government, North America represented a very important\u00a0 \u2018\u2019colonial territory\u2019\u2019 which provided the natural resources and the manpower to support its economic and geostrategic interests. The\u00a0 British government, considered the European and English settlers, as well as the native Indians as their own colonial labour and military force. As a consequence, the British government had an interest in keeping the colonists and the Indians at peace, servicing its imperial interests and expectations!!!<\/p>\n The European settlers on the other hand, especially the English settlers who belonged to the 13 American colonies, were there as immigrants\u00a0 ,\u00a0 expecting to eventually establish their own nation-state, even their own Empire as their British masters. In their political schemes , there was no place for any external political and military interference , as well as\u00a0 any internal\u00a0 obstruction\u00a0 to\u00a0 their nation-building by the indigenous peoples. In the case of the Indian Nations there was also the critical factor of\u00a0 the \u2018\u2019sovereignty\u2019\u2019 of\u00a0 Indian territory, starting with the eastern coast of North America, where most of\u00a0 the European colonial settlements were located. For the European, and especially for the English settlers, responding to their own\u00a0 colonial European traditions of 300 years, they had no other choice but to gradually \u2018\u2019remove\u2019\u2019 and eventually \u2018\u2019obliterate\u2019\u2019 the\u00a0 North American\u00a0 Indians, as a peoples, as a culture and as a race!!!<\/p>\n From the standpoint of the\u00a0 European settlers, especially\u00a0 the\u00a0 English\u00a0 settlers, and contrary to\u00a0 British colonial policy, it was imperative not only to undertake the conquest and the annexation of territories belonging to the\u00a0 Indian Nations throughout North America, but to also initiate a process of removal of these Nations from their \u2018\u2019ancestral lands\u2019\u2019 through a\u00a0 \u2018\u2019gradual\u2019\u2019 but \u2018\u2019constant\u2019\u2019 forced migration , which would eventually lead to their \u2018\u2019physical disintegration\u2019\u2019 as a peoples and as a race.\u2019\u2019\u2026Although the earliest English settlers in what would become the United States\u00a0\u00a0 often enjoyed peaceful relations with nearby tribes, as early as the Pequot War of 1637, the colonists were taking sides in military rivalries between Indian nations in order to assure colonial security and open further land for settlement. The wars(Indian Wars), which ranged from the seventeenth-century to the\u00a0 Wounded Knee massacre and \u2018\u2019closing\u2019\u2019 of the American frontier in 1890, generally resulted in the opening of\u00a0 Native American lands to further colonization, the\u00a0 conquest of American Indians and their assimilation, or forced relocation to Indian reservations\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.newworldencyclopedia.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The long and arduous \u2018\u2019forced migration\u2019\u2019 of the indigenous Indians\u00a0 to distant locations, in unchartered territory, under extreme conditions of physical\u00a0 hardship and a lack of\u00a0 adequate subsistence, would eventually lead to their\u00a0 \u2018\u2019existential dismantling\u2019\u2019. The end product of this \u2018\u2019inhumane\u2019\u2019 political strategy would be the \u2018\u2019ethnic\u00a0 cleansing\u2019\u2019 or the \u2018\u2019genocide\u2019\u2019 of the\u00a0 Indian Nations, or in one simple phrase ,the \u2018\u2019disintegration\u2019\u2019 of the indigenous races of\u00a0 North America. This\u00a0 American colonial strategy responds absolutely to the definitions we have already presented related to these\u00a0 terms, which are:<\/p>\n Ethnic cleansing- the systematic elimination of an\u00a0 ethnic group or groups from a region or a society, as by deportation, forced emigration or genocide.(https:\/\/www.thefreedictionary<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Genocide- the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a\u00a0 particular nation or ethnic group.(https:\/\/en.oxforddictionaries.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n From the\u00a0 American government and the American citizens as a whole, there was a \u2018\u2019long term\u2019\u2019 and\u00a0 \u2018\u2019premeditated\u2019\u2019 program for the annihilation of the\u00a0 Indian\u00a0 Nations and the Indian tribes of North America, utilizing \u2018\u2019constant forced emigration\u2019\u2019 to\u00a0 the central, and later on, to the\u00a0 western regions of\u00a0 the United States. This American government strategy of \u2018\u2019forced mass relocation\u2019\u2019 of\u00a0 a large societal group in order to \u2018\u2019dismember\u2019\u2019 it socially, politically, economically and culturally, has taken place many times in modern Western history.<\/p>\n Historically, there were the expulsions of\u00a0 Jewish communities from many European countries, from the 13th to the 16th\u00a0 centuries. We also witness the confiscation of land and expulsion of native Irish people from their homeland, seized by the\u00a0 English Crown and colonized with English settlers between 1556 and 1620. During the 20th\u00a0 and 21st\u00a0 century we\u00a0 see\u00a0 \u2018\u2019genocide\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019ethnic cleansing\u2019\u2019 being activated through official government policy in the cases of the indigenous populations of the\u00a0 Amazon region and central America, the Aborigines\u00a0 of\u00a0 Australia and\u00a0 the Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka during the 1980s and the 1990s , in Asia. Finally we have the \u2018\u2019genocide\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019ethnic cleansing\u2019\u2019 of the\u00a0 Palestinians living on\u00a0 their \u2018\u2019ancestral lands\u2019\u2019 in the\u00a0 Middle East, throughout the 20th\u00a0 century , and until today, in the 21st century.(http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n Andrew Jackson(1767-1845)\u00a0 as\u00a0 commander in chief of the\u00a0 American military forces(1802-1818)\u00a0 and later on as\u00a0 President of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States(1829-1837), was a strong proponent of\u00a0 moving the native\u00a0 Indians from their \u2018\u2019ancestral territories\u2019\u2019 which were legally theirs as \u2018\u2019autonomous geopolitical entities\u2019\u2019 and in accordance with the American Constitution, which proclaimed the Indian Nations as \u2018\u2019sovereign states\u2019\u2019!!!<\/p>\n Andrew Jackson as a military commander initiated brutal military campaigns\u00a0 against the Indian Nation of\u00a0 the Creeks\u00a0 in\u00a0 Georgia and Alabama, and against the Seminole Indians in Florida, during the 1820s and 1830s. As\u00a0 a consequence, the\u00a0 Creek Indians lost 22 million acres of land in southern Georgia and central\u00a0 Alabama. From 1814 to 1824, Andrew Jackson was the politician responsible for the signing of nine out of eleven treaties with the Indian Nations, annexing the eastern lands of the southern tribes, in exchange for lands in the west. The Indian Nations agreed to the treaties because they wanted to be on good\u00a0 terms with the American government, expecting to keep some of their land, while also ensuring government protection from the vandalism and\u00a0 the physical harassment caused\u00a0 by the white settlers. Through these treaties, the United States\u2019\u2019\u2026gained control of over three quarters of Alabama and Florida, as well as parts of\u00a0 Georgia, Tennessee , Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n As\u00a0 President of the United States, in 1830, Andrew Jackson introduced and signed the \u2018\u2019Indian Removal Act\u2019\u2019, which gave the federal government, especially its Executive branch, represented by the President and his Cabinet, the powers to exchange \u2018\u2019ancestral territories\u2019\u2019 controlled by the\u00a0 Indian Nations east of the Mississippi River, which had a rich agricultural cotton economy, to land west of the\u00a0 Mississippi River, legally identified as the \u2018\u2019Indian colonization zone\u2019\u2019 or as \u2018\u2019Indian territory\u2019\u2019, that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase.<\/p>\n At that time, the\u00a0 American government had assigned as \u2018\u2019Indian territory\u2019\u2019 the land encompassed by the present-day state of\u00a0 Oklahoma. This government arrangement would soon be revoked as more American settlers gradually moved westwards, taking over or settling on land which had been officially\u00a0 classified as \u2018\u2019Indian colonization zones\u2019\u2019. The Indian Nations and the Indian tribes which had been relocated there by the \u2018\u2019Indian Removal\u00a0 Act\u2019\u2019 of 1830, had to once again migrate further west, always on the move, under very harsh and inhuman conditions, complying \u2018\u2019under duress\u2019\u2019 to the hegemonic whims of the American government and the American settlers.(http:\/\/www.history.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The\u00a0\u00a0 Louisiana\u00a0 Purchase was a land\u00a0 acquisition made by\u00a0 the\u00a0 United States government in 1803 from France, whose land surface encompassed 2,140,000 square kilometres , while the price paid by the American government was approximately 15 million American dollars. This American land acquisition was undertaken by\u00a0 President\u00a0 Thomas Jefferson(1801-1809) himself, which \u2018\u2019doubled\u2019\u2019 the surface area of the United States, providing\u00a0 Thomas Jefferson with the political opportunity to allow slavery in the acquired territory as he was an important slave\u00a0 owner and land holder, as were most of his cabinet ministers!!! This land purchase by the government of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States also provided a vast territory where the Indian Nations could migrate or escape to, confronting the violent incursions made on their\u00a0 \u2018\u2019ancestral lands\u2019\u2019 in the\u00a0 south-eastern United States by\u00a0 government military forces and by vigilante armed bands of white settlers, thus avoiding direct violent confrontations!!!(http:\/\/www.americanforeighrelations.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The Louisiana American Purchase of 1803, had doubled the size of the territory of the United States, because it\u00a0 added to it most of the north-central, central and south-central sections of\u00a0 present-day\u00a0 America. At this point we have to mention , that all of the Indian Nations and the\u00a0 Indian tribes living on this vast territory for many generations, were not consulted or accounted for by the American government, since they were considered as \u2018\u2019irrelevant\u2019\u2019\u00a0 socio-political\u00a0 actors!!!\u2019\u2019\u2026 The land purchased contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; most of North Dakota; nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, northern Texas; the portions of\u00a0 Montana, Wyoming and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; and Louisiana west of\u00a0 the \u00a0Mississippi\u00a0 River, including the city of\u00a0 New Orleans\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.americanforeignrelations.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The\u00a0 \u2018\u2019 Indian Removal Act\u2019\u2019 of\u00a0 1830, which the\u00a0 American\u00a0 Congress had passed\u00a0 under the political\u00a0 pressures\u00a0 coming from President Andrew Jackson and\u00a0 his\u00a0 Cabinet ministers, proved to be very \u2018\u2019effective\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019efficient\u2019\u2019, not only\u00a0 in removing the\u00a0 Indian\u00a0 Nations from their rich agricultural lands in southeastern United\u00a0 States, but also in\u00a0 forcing them to travel long distances to their assigned \u2018\u2019Indian Territory\u2019\u2019, under detrimental\u00a0 conditions to their physical and mental health.<\/p>\n Under\u00a0 American Law, it was required for the\u00a0 American\u00a0 government to negotiate \u2018\u2019removal treaties\u2019\u2019 in a voluntary, fair and peaceful manner, while at the same time, it did not permit the president or any other government official to force the\u00a0 Indian\u00a0 Nations to give up their \u2018\u2019sovereign lands\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.history.com<\/span><\/a>)\u00a0 One could say that \u2018\u2019in principle\u2019\u2019 or \u2018\u2019theoretically\u2019\u2019, American Law protected the \u2018\u2019virtual reality\u2019\u2019 of\u00a0 its\u00a0 Constitutional Republic. Nevertheless, in practice, the autocratic governance of\u00a0 the\u00a0 President and his\u00a0 Cabinet, who essentially protected the interests of the economic establishment of the country, ignored to a large degree \u2018\u2019the rule of law\u2019\u2019 , forcing the indigenous Indians to vacate the land they had lived on for many generations.<\/p>\n The\u00a0 American government applied this oligarchic imperialist policy many times in relation to\u00a0 Indian territorial rights, as well as in relation to the \u2018\u2019civil rights\u2019\u2019 of the indigenous Indians as\u00a0 America\u2019s First\u00a0 Nations!!!<\/p>\n For\u00a0\u00a0 example, in the winter of 1831, under military threat , the Choctaw Indians of the southeastern regions of the\u00a0 United States, became the first\u00a0 Indian Nation to be expelled from its \u2018\u2019ancestral lands\u2019\u2019 altogether.\u2019\u2019\u2026They(the Choctaw Indians)\u00a0 made the journey to\u00a0 Indian territory on foot, some \u2018bound in chains and marched double file\u2019\u00a0 one historian writes, and without any food, supplies , or other help from the government. Thousands of people died\u00a0 along the way\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.history.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n By\u00a0 1838, only about 2,000\u00a0 Cherokee\u00a0 Indians\u00a0 had left their homelands in\u00a0 Georgia, to migrate to \u2018\u2019Indian Territory\u2019\u2019 in\u00a0 Oklahoma. Now, the\u00a0 American government under\u00a0 President\u00a0 Van Buren(1837-1841), whose political mentor was Andrew Jackson, sent an\u00a0 American military force of\u00a0 7,000 soldiers, under the command of\u00a0 General\u00a0 Scott, to implement the final removal of the\u00a0 Cherokee Indians from their \u2018\u2019ancestral lands\u2019\u2019 in\u00a0 Georgia and escort them by force to their \u2018\u2019government assigned\u2019\u2019 land in Oklahoma.\u2019\u2019\u2026Scott and his troops\u00a0 forced the Cherokees into stockades at bayonet point, while whites looted\u00a0 their homes and belongings. Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to\u00a0 Indian territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way, and historians estimate that more than 5,000 (of approximately 16,000)\u00a0 Cherokees died as a result of the journey\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.history.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Through the general indifference of the army commanders who were responsible for escorting the\u00a0 Cherokee Indians to their final destination in Oklahoma, and being conducive to the \u2018\u2019racist\u2019\u2019 political policy of\u00a0 the\u00a0 American Central Government\u00a0 against the\u00a0 indigenous Indians, as well as the American African slaves, human losses for the\u00a0 Cherokee Indians were very high, especially among the children. More than 30 percent did not survive the long and strenuous voyage to Oklahoma, and half of those were children.\u2019\u2019\u2026Some of the Cherokees left almost naked and without shoes or only in moccasins, and refused government clothing because they felt it would be taken as an acceptance of being removed from their homes. Some refused government food; others were given food that they were not normally part of their diet, such as wheat flour, which they did not know how to use\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.univic.ac.at\/Anglistik\/<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n At the beginning of the 1830s, there were approximately 125,000 indigenous Indians living\u00a0 on the vast\u00a0 land-areas of\u00a0 Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida. These were lands that the\u00a0 Indian Nations had occupied and cultivated for hundreds of years. By the end of the 1830s , there were very few indigenous Indians living anywhere in the\u00a0 southeastern United States.(http:\/\/www.history.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n What\u00a0 we have\u00a0 just\u00a0 described as the dire consequences of\u00a0 the\u00a0 \u2018\u2019Indian\u00a0 Removal\u00a0 Act\u2019\u2019 of 1830, for\u00a0 the\u00a0 Nations of\u00a0 the\u00a0 Choctaw and\u00a0 Cherokee Indians, was repeated many times with\u00a0 other Indian Nations throughout the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States, during the 19th century. This government\u00a0 policy of\u00a0 dislocating\u00a0 Indian communities, eventually isolating them within\u00a0 Indian Reservations, was further reinforced\u00a0 during the second half of the 19th century, when\u00a0 American settlers began to migrate westwards , in order to settle on the lands west of the\u00a0 Mississippi River and exploit \u2018\u2019Indian Territories\u2019\u2019 through agriculture, husbandry, mining, logging and hunting.<\/p>\n We witness Indian removal taking place in the northern American states of\u00a0 Illinois and\u00a0 Wisconsin, where from 1832 to 1837, 7,000 U.S. military troops and state militias were recruited to defeat and remove the\u00a0 Sauk, Fox and Kickapoo Indian tribes\u00a0 from their \u2018\u2019ancestral territories\u2019\u2019, in the northern regions of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States. That\u00a0 Indian War\u00a0 was called the Black Hawk War, because\u00a0 Black Hawk was the Sauk Indian Chief who had organised the military resistance\u00a0 of the Indian tribes living on these lands. By 1837, all\u00a0 surrounding tribes fled to the West, leaving millions of acres of land to white settlement.<\/p>\n Before the\u00a0 American government started this war against these northern Indian Nations, because they had not accepted to migrate to the west after signing the \u2018\u2019removal treaties\u2019\u2019, ceding their \u2018\u2019sovereign territories\u2019\u2019 within the regions of Illinois and Wisconsin, the new governor of the\u00a0 state of\u00a0 Illinois, John Reynolds,\u00a0 declared on\u00a0 July 1831, that,\u2019\u2019\u2026If I am again compelled to call on the Militia of the\u00a0 State, I will place in the field such a force as will exterminate all Indians, who will not let us\u00a0 alone\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.britannica<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Blackfoot Indian\u00a0 Nation\u00a0 which controlled a vast\u00a0 American territory, from the\u00a0 Rocky\u00a0 Mountains in the west to what is now the\u00a0 Montana-Dakota border in the east, during the mid to late 19th century , were forced to abandon their \u2018\u2019ancestral lands\u2019\u2019 since white settlers\u00a0 with the official\u00a0 permission of the\u00a0 American government, had eliminated through \u2018\u2019intensive hunting\u2019\u2019, the large herds of bison or buffalo on their territories .The buffalos\u00a0 represented for the Blackfoot Indians their \u2018\u2019primary source\u2019\u2019 of food, imposing\u00a0 on them everyday\u00a0 conditions of\u00a0 starvation and deprivation!!!<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Blackfoot\u00a0 Indians were considered among the most powerful and aristocratic\u00a0 tribes who lived in the\u00a0 United States, who\u00a0 other Indian tribes feared due to their military skills. The\u00a0 Blackfoot Indians had become respected and feared as an aggressive and effective military force, by destroying several trading posts within their domain. The American white settlers moving west, terrified of\u00a0 Blackfoot military resistance and\u00a0 wanting to acquire\u00a0 Blackfoot \u2018\u2019sovereign land\u2019\u2019 , demanded government protection and direct government action.<\/p>\n Through the overpowering military campaigns of the\u00a0 American Army\u00a0 against the Blackfoot Indians, with the destruction by the white settlers of the buffalo herds, the Blackfoot\u2019s main food source, as well as by the terrible effects of a smallpox epidemic imported by the\u00a0 white settlers and the American soldiers, devastating\u00a0 the\u00a0 Blackfoot Indian population in the 1870s,this proud Indian Nation was forced to sign a number of \u2018\u2019removal treaties\u2019\u2019 , ceding much of their \u2018\u2019sovereign lands\u2019\u2019!!!<\/p>\n These aristocratic and powerful warrior Indian tribes, were assigned to\u00a0 Indian Reservations in exchange for\u00a0 annuities of food and medical aid, as well as government aid in learning to farm. The Indian Reservations of the\u00a0 Blackfoot tribes were located within the territory which\u00a0 today comprises the state of\u00a0 Montana.(http:\/\/www.columbia.edu\/<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n In 1875, the United\u00a0 States Army imposed the \u2018\u2019removal\u2019\u2019 of the\u00a0 Apache Indians from the Rio Verde Reservation in southwest\u00a0 Arizona which had been established by the American government in 1872, removing\u00a0 the\u00a0 Apache Indians from their \u2018\u2019sovereign territories\u2019\u2019 in\u00a0 Arizona and in New Mexico. The\u00a0 American government closed the Camp\u00a0 Verde Reservation and marched its\u00a0 Indian residents,\u00a0 180 miles to the San Carlos\u00a0 Apache Indian Reservation in southeastern Arizona. The\u00a0 American\u00a0 government\u00a0 took this drastic\u00a0 action because the\u00a0 Apache\u00a0 Indians living in the Rio Verde Reservation had revolted against\u00a0 the deplorable living\u00a0 conditions which existed there under U.S. government administration, which were killing them!!!<\/p>\n The\u00a0\u00a0 Apache\u00a0 Indians from the Rio Verde Indian Reservation were marched to the San\u00a0 Carlos Indian Reservation, 180\u00a0 miles away, during wintertime, resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives. The\u00a0 Apache Indians were held there in internment\u00a0 for 25\u00a0 years, while\u00a0 \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 took over their land. Only a few hundred of these\u00a0 Apache Indians returned to their land in the Rio Verde Reservation!!!(http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n We shall now\u00a0 analyse three very critical everyday factors introduced directly or indirectly by the\u00a0 American administration and by the \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 as a whole, making the process of the \u2018\u2019genocide\u2019\u2019 or the \u2018\u2019ethnic cleansing\u2019\u2019 of the\u00a0 Indian Nations of the United\u00a0 States, that much more effective and complete. All three factors are related directly to the everyday lifestyle and the particular genetic makeup of the\u00a0 North American indigenous Indians. One could say that the \u2018\u2019extermination\u2019\u2019 of the indigenous Indians\u00a0 took on a more scientific and\u00a0 empirical\u00a0 form, similar to what occurred with the\u00a0 European Jewish communities under the well organised official policy of Nazi Germany, during the 1930s and early 1940s in Europe, resulting in the\u00a0 Jewish Holocaust!!!<\/p>\n The first everyday factor involves the dissemination of\u00a0 highly\u00a0 contagious\u00a0 diseases which were introduced by the white\u00a0 European settlers for which the genetic makeup of the indigenous Indians had absolutely no immunity. Some of the then killer contagious diseases introduced by the incoming European settlers to North America were the measles, the influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, the bubonic plague, cholera and scarlet fever; yet the most deadly of these contagious diseases was smallpox.\u2019\u2019\u2026The most lethal of the pathogens introduced by the Europeans was small pox, which sometimes incapacitated so many adults at once, that deaths from hunger and starvation ran as high as deaths from disease; in several cases, entire tribes were rendered extinct\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The\u00a0 physiological resistance to these contagious diseases by the indigenous Indians was even made worse when we take into account the physical hardships they had to endure due to the \u2018\u2019expansionist colonialist program\u2019\u2019 of the Central and State governments of the United States.<\/p>\n First of all, the Indian Nations of the\u00a0 United States had to cope with\u00a0 the armed attacks against them coming from the\u00a0 American armies, the state militias and from the armed vigilante groups of \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019, who wanted to confiscate\u00a0 forcefully\u00a0 their land and material possessions.<\/p>\n Second, through the American \u2018\u2019Indian Removal Act\u2019\u2019 of 1830, almost all \u00a0Indian tribes, wherever they were located, were forced to migrate from place to place, always further and further away from their \u2018\u2019ancestral territories\u2019\u2019 , from their \u2018\u2019natural habitat\u2019\u2019, and naturally from their food sources. Therefore, due to their continuous relocations, travelling very long distances with very little adequate nutrition, their physical and mental stamina were decimated\u00a0 , making the\u00a0 indigenous Indians more vulnerable to these contagious diseases. At this point we have to add, that the indigenous Indians received very little medical care from the government\u2019s health authorities , compared to what the \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 were getting in the various towns, villages or settlements.<\/p>\n Not\u00a0 only did the American government\u00a0 and its administrators directly undermine the\u00a0 physiological\u00a0 resistance of the indigenous\u00a0 Indians to contagious diseases due to their physical and mental exhaustion through forced emigration and a lack of\u00a0 medical assistance from government medical personnel , but they\u00a0 went as far as to transfer directly\u00a0 these contagious diseases to the indigenous Indians using \u2018\u2019official subversive means\u2019\u2019, similar to what\u00a0 American Multinational\u00a0 Biochemical\u00a0 Companies like\u00a0 DuPont\u00a0 and\u00a0 Monsanto\u00a0 are involved with today, when they produce , promote and\u00a0 sell\u00a0 \u2018\u2019genetically modified agricultural products\u2019\u2019(GMOs) to Third World Countries,\u00a0 affecting negatively the long term general health of\u00a0 the indigenous populations.<\/p>\n One historical example of transferring a contagious disease\u00a0\u00a0 through official administrative practice is the one which occurred in June 20, 1837, when the U.S. Army distributed infected blankets to the Mandan Indians at Fort Clark, on the Missouri River, in the present day state of North Dakota.<\/p>\n These infected blankets had been taken from a military infirmary in the city\u00a0 of\u00a0 Saint Louis which had been quarantined for a smallpox epidemic. When the first\u00a0 Mandan\u00a0 Indians showed symptoms of this disease on July 14, 1837, the medical administrator of the Fort, advised all the \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 who had been stationed\u00a0 there , to leave and to seek immediately \u2018\u2019refuge\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019treatment\u2019\u2019 in the villages of healthy relatives, while leaving the Mandan Indians to their fate.\u2019\u2019\u2026In this way, the disease\u00a0 was spread, the Mandan Indians were \u2018\u2019virtually exterminated\u2019\u2019 , and other tribes suffered similar devastating losses. Citing a figure of \u2018\u2019100,000 or more fatalities\u2019\u2019 caused by the\u00a0 U.S. Army in the 1836-1840 smallpox pandemic, Churchill refers the reader to Thornton\u2019s\u00a0 \u2018American\u00a0 Indian\u00a0 Holocaust and Survival\u2019\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The second everyday\u00a0 factor which also ensured the \u2018\u2019genocide\u2019\u2019 and the \u2018\u2019ethnic cleansing\u2019\u2019 of the\u00a0 Indian Nations of the United States, introduced by the \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 from\u00a0 Europe and encouraged and supported both by the\u00a0 British Colonial Government and later on , by\u00a0 the\u00a0 American Government, was the extensive selling of\u00a0 \u2018\u2019alcoholic beverages\u2019\u2019 to all indigenous Indians.<\/p>\n Alcoholic beverages were used as a trade commodity with the\u00a0 indigenous Indians\u00a0 because it was very profitable, while alcohol was also used by the\u00a0 American administration as a\u00a0 \u2018\u2019strategic tool\u2019\u2019 of diplomacy in official dealings with the Indian Nations. These were government initiatives which dealt with the buying of Indian \u2018\u2019sovereign territories\u2019\u2019 or in signing \u2018\u2019Indian Removal Treaties\u2019\u2019 , whereby Indian tribes were provided with \u2018\u2019Indian Territory\u2019\u2019 west of the Mississippi River\u00a0 for their own \u2018\u2019ancestral lands\u2019\u2019 east of the Mississippi\u00a0 River.<\/p>\n Alcohol as an important trade commodity of the \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 with the\u00a0 indigenous Indians was a\u00a0 way \u2018\u2019to kill two birds with one stone\u2019\u2019!!! The\u00a0 European settlers were able to acquire from the Indians \u2018\u2019very good quality\u2019\u2019 furs and animal hides \u2018\u2019cheaply\u2019\u2019 , while also gradually\u00a0 installing an Indian \u2018\u2019chemical dependency\u2019\u2019 on alcohol, since alcohol is an addictive chemical substance which modern medicine classifies it as \u2018\u2019alcoholism\u2019\u2019. \u2018\u2019\u2026To put it\u00a0 bluntly, the\u00a0 British and\u00a0 American fur traders lured the\u00a0 Indians into the cash trade by offering them whiskey, the one thing that was not available on the open range. They used whiskey in the same way that the British used opium in\u00a0 China. It was a way of breaking down the doors of a local economy that had little use for the lure of imported goods. One of the most notable things about opium and alcohol is that they are addictive\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.columbia.edu\/<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Socio-culturally, the\u00a0 indigenous Indians in their everyday lives, tried to\u00a0 imitate the drinking habits of\u00a0 the \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 , especially those of the\u00a0 White frontiersmen, who were heavy drinkers due to their harsh living conditions and also as a\u00a0 social demonstration of their \u2018\u2019toughness\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019manliness\u2019\u2019!!! Yet, there was a very critical difference between the heavy alcohol consumption of the \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 and that of the indigenous Indians. Unlike the \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 , whose\u00a0 European ancestors had consumed \u2018\u2019alcoholic beverages\u2019\u2019 for thousands of\u00a0 years, developing a physical tolerance to it , the\u00a0 indigenous Indians did not have a similar evolutionary experience , since alcohol was never an ingredient in their diet!!!<\/p>\n Therefore, if we add the lack of a genetic disposition to alcohol\u00a0 due to their \u2018\u2019particular metabolism\u2019\u2019, as well as all of the\u00a0 physical, mental and spiritual distress suffered by the Indians under\u00a0\u00a0 European colonialist hegemony, it is obvious that\u00a0 all of these \u2018\u2019detrimental existential inputs\u2019\u2019 would result in the\u00a0 \u2018\u2019physiological dismantling\u2019\u2019 of the indigenous\u00a0 Indians.\u2019\u2019\u2026The majority of the\u00a0 United States will never understand how damaging alcohol has been for\u00a0 Native\u00a0 Americans, perhaps more devastating than any disease , gun, massacre, or policy. The\u00a0 perfect colonizer , alcohol has no conscience. It\u00a0 feels no remorse or regret for the modern holocaust it has caused\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/blog.nativepartnership.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Today, within the\u00a0 indigenous American Indians and\u00a0 the\u00a0 Alaska Native populations of the\u00a0 United States, deaths from alcoholism is 7\u00a0 times more than the\u00a0 U.S. all-races rate!!!(https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The third everyday factor which\u00a0 decimated the\u00a0 Indian\u00a0 Nations of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States was the lack of food during their constant forced displacements, from location to\u00a0 location, west\u00a0 of the\u00a0 Mississippi\u00a0 River, always moving further and further away from their natural habitat and of course their everyday food sources, like their farms, their hunting grounds and\u00a0 their fisheries .<\/p>\n The\u00a0 direct\u00a0 involvement of the\u00a0 American government\u00a0 and the \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 in\u00a0 limiting or even in eliminating the food supply\u00a0 channels of the\u00a0 American\u00a0 Indian Nations becomes more evident and\u00a0 concrete when we observe the defeat of the\u00a0 Indian tribes of the\u00a0 Great\u00a0 Plains ,located in the central regions of the United\u00a0 States; Indian tribes like the Blackfoot, the Apache and the Comanche\u00a0 Indians. These Indian tribes or\u00a0 Indian Nations were not only dismantled through the\u00a0 Indian Wars they waged against the American Military Forces during the 1860s and the 1870s, it also came about essentially because of the elimination of their main food supply, which were the vast numbers of herds of buffaloes of the\u00a0 Great\u00a0 Plains!!!<\/p>\n This destructive feat of the \u2018\u2019buffalo extinction\u2019\u2019\u00a0 in\u00a0 the Great\u00a0 American Plains, was accomplished through a well-planned but indiscriminate\u00a0 procedure by\u00a0 the \u2018\u2019white settler\u2019\u2019 hunters, under the \u2018\u2019direct auspices\u2019\u2019 of the\u00a0 American\u00a0 Central\u00a0 Government, since for the European settlers, the buffalo did not represent a valuable economic commodity. Buffalo meat was not part of their food diet , while the animal\u2019s hide had very little value for them, since it could not be treated\u00a0 into \u2018\u2019fine pelts\u2019\u2019 due to its coarseness. The \u2018\u2019white settlers\u2019\u2019 then, killed millions of buffaloes, so that the\u00a0 Indian tribes of the\u00a0 Great Plains would not be able to survive physiologically and socio-economically!!!<\/p>\n We have already described the destructive effects on the Blackfoot Indians due to the \u2018\u2019drastic elimination\u2019\u2019 of the buffalo herds of the\u00a0 Great\u00a0 Plains. The\u00a0 Blackfoot Indians from being one of the most powerful and aristocratic Indian Nations\u00a0 in the United States, dominating the\u00a0 American Great\u00a0 Plains,\u00a0 ended up at becoming a \u2018\u2019hostage\u2019\u2019 Indian Nation, surviving within\u00a0 Indian Reservations ,spread out throughout\u00a0 the vast territory of\u00a0 today\u2019s\u00a0 state of\u00a0 Montana!!!(http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The political support for the destruction of the buffalo herds by the \u2018\u2019white settler\u2019\u2019 hunters, sometimes came directly from the\u00a0 American President himself, even contrary to the efforts made by the\u00a0 American\u00a0 Congress to provide legal provisions for the protection of the\u00a0 American bison or the buffalo of the Great\u00a0 Plains. This had occurred under the political\u00a0 initiatives of President Ulysses S. Grant(1869-1877)\u00a0 in 1874,when he vetoed a bill\u00a0 protecting the\u00a0 American bison.\u2019\u2019\u2026Grant pocket-vetoed a bill in 1874, protecting the\u00a0 bison and supporting Interior\u00a0 Secretary Columbus Delano, who believed correctly the killing of bison would force Plains Indians to abandon their nomadic lifestyle\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n How\u00a0 significant a strategic tool was the decimation of the\u00a0 American bison or buffalo herds , not only in defeating the Indian tribes of the Great Plains militarily, but also in degrading their long -term physical\u00a0 and mental health is best explained by\u00a0 General Philip\u00a0 Sheridan when he testified to the\u00a0 Texas legislature in 1873, saying that,\u2019\u2019\u2026These men have done more in the last two years, and will do more in the next year, to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular Army has done in the last 40 years. They are\u00a0 destroying the Indians\u2019 commissary. And it is a well-known fact that an\u00a0 army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you will; but for a lasting peace, let them kill, skin and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Finally, we shall examine and\u00a0 analyse the socio-political status of the Indian Nations of the United States during their historical evolution , under the political\u00a0 hegemony of the American government and within the institutional context of a Constitutional Republic, which the United States claims to represent.<\/p>\n We shall begin with the Meriam Report of 1928, which made observations in a methodical and empirical way\u00a0 relative to the socio-political status of the\u00a0 Native Indians at that time, authorized by the Secretary of the Interior of the American government.<\/p>\n Mr. Lewis Meriam was the person responsible for this study, undertaken under the auspices of the\u00a0 Institute for Government Research, a privately endowed foundation, while Meriam\u2019s research team was composed of social scientists, including some Native Americans.\u2019\u2019\u2026The report revealed to the government that its policies had oppressed Native Americans and destroyed their culture and society\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.americaslibrary.gov<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n By then, the great majority of the indigenous Indian population of the United States\u00a0 was living in government administered Indian Reservations, a policy which was initiated after the 1850s, to accommodate the indigenous\u00a0 Indian tribes that had been forced to abandon\u00a0 their \u2018\u2019ancestral territories\u2019\u2019 under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. By the 1920s, it was apparent to the American government, even to the average American citizen, that there existed serious\u00a0 economic, social and health problems on the Indian Reservations which endangered the survival of the indigenous Indians as a peoples and as a society.<\/p>\n One of the major weaknesses of American government policy towards the indigenous Indians had been their one-dimensional colonialist ideology which had as its \u2018\u2019first priority\u2019\u2019 the socio-cultural and the socio-economic assimilation of its native Indians to the American way of life. This American way of life was based on the theology of Christianity, but more importantly it was derived from the socio-economic concepts of \u2018\u2019private property\u2019\u2019\u00a0 and \u2018\u2019wealth accumulation\u2019\u2019, which the modern Christian dogmas defended, especially the Protestant Christian dogmas , like\u00a0 those\u00a0 of the Lutherans, the Anglicans and the Calvinists.<\/p>\n The\u00a0 social\u00a0 ideals of the average American citizen were \u2018\u2019individualism\u2019\u2019, \u2019\u2019private property\u2019\u2019 , the \u2018\u2019 law of\u00a0 Accumulation \u00a0of\u00a0 Wealth\u2019\u2019, and\u00a0 the \u2019\u2019law\u00a0 of\u00a0 Competition\u2019\u2019 as\u00a0 Andrew\u00a0 Carnegie, the most powerful American Industrialist then, had emphasized in his article entitled\u00a0 \u2018Wealth\u2019. This famous article by Andrew Carnegie had been published in \u2018the North American Review\u2019 in\u00a0 June of\u00a0 1889. For\u00a0 Andrew Carnegie all of human civilization was based on the socio-economic institution of property.\u2019\u2019\u2026 One who studies this subject will soon be brought face to face with the conclusion, that upon the sacredness of property, civilization itself depends-the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.swarthmore.edu<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n These were the dominant societal institutional criteria that formulated American government policy in general as a \u2018\u2019capitalist nation\u2019\u2019 and as a \u2018\u2019colonialist political power\u2019\u2019,\u00a0\u00a0 ideological\u00a0\u00a0 criteria which\u00a0 were\u00a0 also directed towards its\u00a0 indigenous Indian inhabitants, whose culture had very little in common with the \u2018\u2019dominant\u2019\u2019 European culture,\u00a0 in almost\u00a0 every\u00a0\u00a0 respect.<\/p>\n Therefore, American policy makers were not interested in comprehending the various institutional components of\u00a0 Native American\u00a0 Society , when prescribing a policy or a law directed to the socio-political status of\u00a0 their Native Population. The\u00a0 goal of the American administrators and politicians\u00a0 was to assimilate the indigenous Indians to their own Western political culture, by imposing those societal circumstances and those laws which would eventually disrupt and weaken their\u00a0 unity, their\u00a0 integrity and their\u00a0 vitality\u00a0\u00a0 to such an extent,\u00a0 that they\u00a0 would have no other choice\u00a0 than\u00a0\u00a0 to either assimilate or disintegrate!!!<\/p>\n We shall now examine the critical points and conclusions presented by the\u00a0 Meriam Report of\u00a0 1928,concerning the socio-political status and the living conditions of the\u00a0 Native Americans living in Indian Reservations during the period when the study had been undertaken. We shall also identify the laws and the policies which were implemented after the 1850s , producing these disastrous consequences for the indigenous Indians\u00a0 related to\u00a0 every aspect of their everyday existence.<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Meriam Report was entitled \u2018The Problem of\u00a0 Indian Administration\u2019, which from the start indicates the main culprit or the main cause for the \u2018\u2019unstable\u2019\u2019 living conditions of the\u00a0 indigenous Indians, residing\u00a0 within the government administered Indian Reservations. Essentially, the\u00a0 Meriam Report put most of the blame for these dire living\u00a0 conditions in the reservations on a \u2018\u2019dis functional\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019inefficient\u2019\u2019 government administration but also government policies whose main goals were\u00a0 not to \u2018\u2019alleviate\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019improve\u2019\u2019 the everyday life of the Native\u00a0 Americans, but to \u2018\u2019disrupt\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019destabilize\u2019\u2019 it , for the sake of\u00a0 the \u2018\u2019colonialist program\u2019\u2019 of the Central government and the \u2018\u2019expansionist ambitions\u2019\u2019 of the white settlers.<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Meriam Report\u00a0 examined the socio-economic and the socio-political conditions of the\u00a0 Native Americans residing in\u00a0 Indian reservations since the early 1870s, first of all because by that time , the great\u00a0 majority of the indigenous Indians were living in government reservations, but more importantly, it was the period when the\u00a0 American government had decided to implement a universal policy of \u2018\u2019Indian assimilation\u2019\u2019, in a methodical and\u00a0\u00a0 forceful way!!!<\/p>\n This government policy of\u00a0 Indian assimilation would be based to a large degree on the introduction in\u00a0 \u2018\u2019native political culture\u2019\u2019 the all-pervasive socio-economic institution of \u2018\u2019private property\u2019\u2019!!! Private property was\u00a0 \u2018\u2019in theory\u2019\u2019 the foundation of all of human civilization as Andrew Carnegie had defended, as the most powerful\u00a0 American entrepreneur at that time, which meant that the native Indians had to abandon their traditional socio-economic institutions of\u00a0 \u2018\u2019collective property\u2019\u2019 and the \u2018\u2019collective economy\u2019\u2019 of their own society!!!<\/p>\n This societal transition from the \u2018\u2019collective\u2019\u2019 to the \u2018\u2019private\u2019\u2019, for the American government and its administration translated into a procedure whereby their native inhabitants would have to accommodate themselves with small privately owned family farms, whose produce would be privately consumed or sold in the market place, thus adopting a \u2018\u2019market capitalist economy\u2019\u2019 in their everyday existence and economic evolution!!!<\/p>\n The government scheme of Indian assimilation to the\u00a0 American way of life, was enforced in various ways ,always benefitting economically and politically the American Central Government and especially the \u2018\u2019hungry for land\u2019\u2019 white settlers , all at the expense of the general welfare and the socio-political integrity of the Indian tribes, the First Nations of North America, as\u00a0 a distinct\u00a0 culture and race!!!<\/p>\n This\u00a0 government policy\u00a0 of \u2018\u2019universal Indian assimilation\u2019\u2019 was\u00a0 enacted by the Dawes Severalty\u00a0 Act\u00a0 passed on February 8, 1887, and was\u00a0 advertised at that time by the\u00a0 American government as\u00a0 a \u2018\u2019humanitarian reform\u2019\u2019, with the intent to help\u00a0 Native\u00a0 Americans to achieve U.S. citizenship and become active members of\u00a0 White American Society.<\/p>\n \u2019\u2019\u2026The Dawes Act of 1887, sometimes referred to as the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 or the General Allotment Act, was signed\u00a0 into law on\u00a0 January 8, 1887, by\u00a0 U.S. President Grover Cleveland. The act authorized the president to confiscate and redistribute tribal lands in the\u00a0 American West. It\u00a0 explicitly sought to destroy the social cohesion of\u00a0 Indian tribes and to thereby eliminate the remaining vestiges of\u00a0 Indian\u00a0 culture and society. Only by disavowing their own traditions, it was believed, could the Indians ever become truly\u00a0 American\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.khanacademy.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n In\u00a0 1887, the\u00a0 American government had instituted the\u00a0 Dawes Act\u00a0 to accelerate\u00a0 Indian assimilation by essentially dissolving the\u00a0 Indian reservation system and by distributing land to individual\u00a0 Indians. This government Act entailed\u00a0 many benefits for the\u00a0 central government and the white settlers, while at the same time, destroying the \u2018\u2019traditional societal\u00a0 fabric\u2019\u2019 of the\u00a0 Indian Nations!!!<\/p>\n First of all , by discarding the\u00a0 Indian reservations, the\u00a0 American government did not have to spend money for their administration and upkeep. Secondly, by allotting small parcels of land to individual Indians, it\u00a0 allowed for the confiscation of land belonging to the Indian reservations and the\u00a0 Indian tribes, as set out in government treaties or executive orders, but which had not been allocated to individual\u00a0 Indian\u00a0 families.\u2019\u2019\u2026The Act\u00a0 divided tribal property into 160-acre(65-hectare) and 180-acre(73-hectare) land grants that were distributed to members of the tribe. After twenty-five years of cultivating the land as responsible farmers and a certification of competence, the Native Americans would receive full\u00a0 ownership\u00a0 of\u00a0 the land\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n With respect to the land that was distributed by the government to individual Indian families, there are three very important facts that have to be\u00a0 taken into consideration.<\/p>\n First of all, all the land under the legal\u00a0 control of the\u00a0 Indian reservations belonged \u2018\u2019constitutionally\u2019\u2019 to the Native American tribes, through \u2018\u2019governmental\u00a0 negotiated treaties\u2019\u2019 as\u00a0 sovereign political entities.<\/p>\n Second, through these \u2018\u2019forged\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019illegal\u2019\u2019 land allotments, most of the land belonging to the Indian tribes or the Indian nations was confiscated \u2018\u2019unconstitutionally\u2019\u2019 and sold to the white settlers.\u2019\u2019\u2026In 1887, tribes owned 138 million acres (56 million hectares)\u00a0 of land. By 1900, that amount had been reduced to 78 million acres (31.5 million hectares). Lands not allotted to tribe members were sold\u00a0 to homesteaders and other western expansionists\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The third very important fact\u00a0 related to the land allotted to individual Indians which legally belonged to them, was\u00a0 that this land was of a \u2018\u2019very poor quality\u2019\u2019\u00a0 ,which\u00a0 made their economic sustainability even more problematic, since farming was not traditionally an important\u00a0 economic\u00a0 occupation for the indigenous Indians, especially those living in the Great Plains , who were mostly hunters.<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Meriam Report of 1928, almost 40\u00a0 years after the\u00a0 Dawes\u00a0 Act of 1887, described the quality of the land that had been allocated to the\u00a0 Indians then, and were still farming it, as being \u2018\u2019highly inadequate\u2019\u2019 for farming. The Report states that,\u2019\u2019\u2026In justice to the Indians, it should be said that many of them are living on land from which a trained and experienced white man could scarcely wrest a reasonable living. In some instances the land originally set apart for the Indians was of little value for agricultural operations other than grazing\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/nativeamericannetroots.net<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n With the Dawes Act of 1887, to complete the government\u2019s program of Indian assimilation and of course the dissolution of the \u2018\u2019collective\u2019\u2019 socio-economic structure of traditional Indian society, the official administrators initiated and enforced other government policies affecting the everyday life of Indians. Many Indian children were removed forcefully from their own reservations and families, and were sent to Indian boarding schools, far away, to learn there the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic, and adapt themselves to Western social values and attitudes!!!(www.americanforeignrelations.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Yet, in these \u2018\u2019civilizing\u2019\u2019 government\u00a0 boarding schools, there was child kidnapping, child labour, emotional and physical abuse, and a lack of proper child hygiene and medical care. Similarly , other\u00a0 goals of Indian child education were to convert them to the Christian religion, to give them Christian names, and to train them to become daily laborers and household workers.(https:\/\/nativeamericannetroots.net<\/span><\/a>) \u2018\u2019\u2026Native Americans were taught English and discouraged from speaking their tribal language. They were expected to cut their hair and also adopt\u00a0\u00a0 Christianity\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Meriam Report of 1928, recognized the damaging societal effects that had been caused by the government policies of\u00a0 Indian assimilation\u00a0 during the last 40 years, beginning with the Dawes Act of 1887. The Report concluded that if these same policies continued to be applied, then the Indian tribes would not be able to survive as distinct and independent socio-political entities, especially economically.\u2019\u2019\u2026Several past policies adopted by the government in dealing with the Indians, have been of a type which, if long continued , would tend to pauperize any race\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/nativeamericannetroots.net<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The Meriam Report was also very critical of the means chosen by the\u00a0 American government to impose its policies of Indian assimilation , especially within the context of the type of education provided to Indian children in Indian boarding schools. The Report maintained that this school education ought to infuse the Indian children with the proper knowledge and skills to prepare them for higher academic studies in colleges and universities. In these state educational centers , the young Indians could acquire the required knowhow for professional , scientific and technical careers.(https:\/\/nativeamericannetroots.net<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Similarly, the Report expressed many reservations concerning the authoritarian attitudes and\u00a0 procedures of government administrators and missionaries\u00a0 alike , in trying to pressure the indigenous Indians to adapt\u00a0 Western social and religious institutions to their own traditional political culture of hundreds of years.\u2019\u2019\u2026The missionaries need to have a better understanding of the Indian point of view of\u00a0 the Indian\u2019s religion and ethics, in order to start from what is good in them as a foundation. Too frequently , they have made the mistake of attempting to destroy the existing structure and to substitute something else without apparently realizing that much in the old has its place in the new\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/nativeamericannetroots.net<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Finally, the Meriam Report of 1928\u00a0 put great emphasis on the general health situation of the indigenous Indians and the medical care they were receiving from the various governmental medical services and institutions. The Report\u00a0 took\u00a0 notice and fully recognized that the physiological condition of the Native Indians was in a bad state compared to that of the rest\u00a0 of the American population, while government administered health and medical centers did not provide proper care for their\u00a0 Indian patients.\u2019\u2019\u2026The hospitals, sanatoria, and sanatorium schools maintained by the Service, despite a few exceptions , must generally be characterized as lacking in personnel, equipment, management, and design\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/nativeamericannetroots.net<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Under the social and political pressures from the findings of the\u00a0 Meriam Report of 1928, the American\u00a0 government of\u00a0 Franklin D. Roosevelt(1933-1945), the most \u2018\u2019progressive\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019enlightened\u2019\u2019 American president in the history of the United States, signed the Indian Reorganization Act\u00a0 on June 18,1934, which legally superseded the Dawes Act of 1887. This Law was specifically and officially designed ,\u2019\u2019\u2026To conserve and develop Indian lands and resources; to extend to Indians the right to form businesses and other organizations; to establish a credit system for Indians; to grant certain rights of home rule to Indians; to provide for vocational education for Indians; and other purposes\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/livingnewdeal.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, was a substantial political effort by the government of\u00a0 Franklin D. Roosevelt to reverse the devastating social, economic and cultural effects the\u00a0 Dawes Act of 1887 had inflicted on the Indian tribes of the United States. By substituting the Dawes Act with the Indian Reorganization Act, the American government of\u00a0 Franklin D. Roosevelt essentially changed its policy towards its indigenous population, providing it with the means and the opportunities to ensure their \u2018\u2019existential survival\u2019\u2019 as independent socio-political entities.<\/p>\n The main architect in the creation and in the implementation of the Indian Reorganization Act was John Collier(1884-1968), an ideological and political ally of President Franklin D. Roosevelt(1933-1945), and head of the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1934 until 1945. John Collier representing the American Central Government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, improved concretely the political, economic and social conditions of the indigenous Indian tribes of his country by implementing effectively and pragmatically various \u2018\u2019progressive\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019democratic\u2019\u2019 government policies.<\/p>\n John Collier terminated the privatization of land belonging to Indian reservations and returned some of the land that was taken \u2018\u2019unconstitutionally\u2019\u2019 from the reservations after the Dawes Act of 1887 and\u00a0 had been\u00a0 sold to white homesteaders. He prohibited land being annexed from Indian tribes or Indian reservations without their permission, a legal prerogative that did not exist in the Dawes Act. He also extended the trust period for\u00a0 existing allotments to individual Indians. New land could be purchased by Indian tribes through\u00a0 federal funds, while\u00a0 the federal government provided very low interest loans to the tribes to buy livestock animals and farm equipment.(https:\/\/livingnewdeal.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The\u00a0 American government recognized Indian tribal governments and encouraged the Indian tribes to draw up\u00a0 and adopt constitutions using as model the American Constitution. The Indian tribes were allowed to incorporate businesses and organizations, giving them the powers to manage their assets, which at that time consisted mainly of land property. Finally, the government invested considerable amounts of money on the education and the employment opportunities of the indigenous Indians. John Collier founded himself the Emergency Conservation Work federal agency which by the time it was dissolved in 1943, had trained and employed 85,000 Native Americans, in\u00a0 order to utilize their land and resources, working in their tribal homelands.(http:\/\/blog.nativepartnership.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Responding to the \u2018\u2019socialist\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019democratic\u2019\u2019 political ideals of\u00a0 President Franklin D. Roosevelt\u00a0 in his New Economic Deal , which tried to cope with the Economic Depression affecting the \u2018\u2019standard of life\u2019\u2019 of most\u00a0 Americans in the 1920s and 1930s, John Collier in his administrative capacities came to champion the social, economic and political cause of the\u00a0 Native Americans as a distinct peoples and race.\u2019\u2019\u2026He saw that no effort was being made to give Native Americans a chance to improve their own situation. And he believed that giving them the power to govern themselves locally and to manage their resources and assets would further the self-sufficiency (and all people) needed to maintain economic, physical and spiritual well-being\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/blog.nativepartnership.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, greatly\u00a0 improved the living conditions of the indigenous Indians of the United States, especially the ones who belonged to tribes that had voted to endorse the Act, since these were the tribes which were eligible to receive federal financial and other benefits as stipulated in the clauses of the Act.\u2019\u2019\u2026Crucially, Indians were allowed to vote on whether the law would apply to their tribe. After the voting period was over ,\u00a0 266 tribes had accepted the Indian Reorganization Act and 77 had rejected it. For some tribes there were negative consequences for rejecting it. For example, the Colville Tribe of Washington State voted against the Act(under suspicious circumstances), losing valuable land to non-Indians and putting its sovereignty in jeopardy with the state\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/livingnewdeal.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n From the information just quoted , we can immediately identify two negative factors which can be assigned\u00a0 to the Indian Reorganization Act as it relates to its enforcement and application pragmatically.<\/p>\n The first negative component is that the\u00a0 American government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, pressured or even \u2018\u2019blackmailed\u2019\u2019 the Indian tribes to endorse\u00a0 the\u00a0 Act by utilizing the threat of exclusion to federal benefits and even non-recognition of their constitutional status as \u2018\u2019semi-independent political entities\u2019\u2019 and of course legal protection by the American government!!!<\/p>\n The second institutional handicap concerning the legal\u00a0 and constitutional status of the\u00a0 Indian Reorganization Act was the fact that it was not endorsed by a substantial number of\u00a0 Indian tribes , which meant not a universal Indian acceptance of the Act.<\/p>\n This non-consensual stance by the Indian tribes concerning the legal validity of the Act, created a political divergence or a political dichotomy with respect to the constitutional socio-political status of the Indian tribes within the Constitutional Republic of the United States. This anomaly produced political uncertainties and \u2018\u2019grey areas\u2019\u2019 in the official relations between the American federal government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the many Indian tribes throughout the United\u00a0 States!!! \u2018\u2019Grey areas\u2019\u2019 which still persist today!!!<\/p>\n An essential weakness in the formulation of the Indian Reorganization Act is the fact that many\u00a0 congresses were arranged throughout the country, meetings between the federal administrators and the various Indian tribes,\u00a0 to consult them about the critical clauses of the Act , so as\u00a0 to make it\u00a0 more effective in accordance with their particular societal priorities and traditional institutions. In those government congresses , the federal representatives finally never discussed with the Indian chiefs about the\u00a0 main articles\u00a0 of the Act , nor consulted them about their substance, they only provided explanations to\u00a0 the \u2018\u2019legal\u2019\u2019 and\u00a0 \u2018\u2019constitutional\u2019\u2019 parameters of the Act!!!(https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n A similar \u2018\u2019authoritarian\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019paternalistic\u2019\u2019 attitude was demonstrated by the\u00a0 American federal administrators when they\u00a0 prescribed to the Indian tribes the basic legal framework that had to incorporated when they were drawing up their own tribal constitutions, this\u00a0 in order to become political partners with the American federal government. Although there were variations between the individual\u00a0 Indian constitutions, their basic legal tenets corresponded to the Anglo-American system of organizing a human community.<\/p>\n Most Indian tribes strongly objected to this type of legalistic societal\u00a0 organization, accusing the American federal government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs of \u2018\u2019deepening\u2019\u2019 Indian socio-political assimilation to a white American political culture. Nevertheless, some Indian tribes were able to protect some of their traditional political institutions by insisting that their tribal governments should also include their more ancient forms of\u00a0 governance !!!\u00a0 (https:\/\/www.nlm.nih.gov<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n As we have already mentioned, the\u00a0 Indian tribes had\u00a0 no real\u00a0 input in the format of their\u00a0 own\u00a0 constitution and for that matter in the tenets of\u00a0 the Indian\u00a0 Reorganization Act(IRA) of 1934, these were the creations to a large degree of the\u00a0 legal advisors of the\u00a0 American federal government and the Bureau of\u00a0 Indian Affairs. This exclusion of any concrete participation by the\u00a0 indigenous Indians in the formulation of these \u2018\u2019vital legal constructs\u2019\u2019 involving their own socio-political status , had very negative consequences which have affected their\u00a0 progressive and stable historical evolution until the present day!!!<\/p>\n A major destabilizing\u00a0 political\u00a0 element on the indigenous Indians of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States is the fact that they considered\u00a0 the policies as exercised by the federal government and as related to their own political status\u00a0 as \u2018\u2019paternalistic\u2019\u2019, \u2018\u2019authoritarian\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2019ethnocentric\u2019\u2019, not really flexible and accommodating towards their proper traditional societal institutions.\u2019\u2019\u2026It (IRA) was put into effect too rapidly. Neither the\u00a0 Congress nor the Indians were adequately informed concerning it nor prepared for it. Bureau(Bureau of Indian Affairs) personnel needed better training for application of provisions contained in\u00a0 IRA, some of which were quite foreign to their past experience and to their personal philosophy concerning the Indians. The philosophy of the IRA itself was violated in that the Indians did not play\u00a0 a truly significant part in preparing tribal constitutions. As a result, some also felt that many good tribal governments were replaced with less capable ones\u2026\u2019\u2019.(http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Another very effective government strategy or policy for\u00a0 Indian assimilation was that with the passage and the adoption of the Indian Reorganization Act by the Indian tribes, there were efforts made to redefine the socio-political identity of\u00a0 the\u00a0 indigenous Indians within the tribe and also within the state apparatus of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States. Gradually , Indian \u2018\u2019kinship\u2019\u2019 which had prevailed long before the Indian Treaties, the Dawes Act of 1887, and the\u00a0 Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, and which had defined the socio-economic and the socio-cultural identity of\u00a0 every\u00a0 Indian tribe, was\u00a0 displaced by \u2018\u2019membership\u2019\u2019 in a tribe, replacing the traditional \u2018\u2019kinship\u2019\u2019 social structure of the tribe.<\/p>\n This \u2018\u2019membership\u2019\u2019 societal\u00a0 concept did not correspond to the traditional understanding of membership as kinship, but now that almost all the tribes had adopted a constitution modeled after the\u00a0 American Constitution with its federalist state organization, membership\u00a0 now meant\u00a0 \u2018\u2019federal\u00a0 membership\u2019\u2019, subordinate to the\u00a0 American Central\u00a0 Government, while the tribes had to use blood degree as a measure for belonging to an\u00a0 Indian tribe. Today, nearly two-thirds of the\u00a0 567 federally recognized tribes, use Indian blood degree\u00a0 or DNA degree\u00a0 as a legal\u00a0 metric\u00a0 reference for belonging to an\u00a0 Indian tribe.(https:\/\/newsmaven.io<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Finally, the term \u2018\u2019member\u2019\u2019 has been used in defining the socio-political status\u00a0 of a\u00a0 Native Indian within the tribe instead of\u00a0 \u2018\u2019citizen\u2019\u2019 , because legally and constitutionally the American\u00a0 Federal Government and the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs has never treated or considered the Indian Constitutions as legal charters for \u2018\u2019independent sovereign governments\u2019\u2019, but legal charters for \u2018\u2019state agencies\u2019\u2019 of the federal government.\u2019\u2019\u2026Goldberg further maintains that the\u00a0 Bureau of Indian Affairs has taken a dim view of the\u00a0 Indian Reorganization Act constitutions \u2018as some variation on private associations or student councils, designed to instruct people in self-government rather than to facilitate genuine self-determination\u2019\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/newsmaven.io<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n When the European settlers came to North America in the 16th\u00a0 century , the European governments wanted to legitimize their commercial transactions with the\u00a0 Indian tribes, especially in their acquisitions of tribal land. In order to make these transactions official and legal, they formulated government treaties so that other\u00a0 European powers would not contest their commercial\u00a0 initiatives. The United States adopted this European legal tradition of dealing with Indian tribes as \u2018\u2019sovereign governments\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Indian tribes of North America were powerful militarily in the 1700s and the early 1800s, therefore the government of the\u00a0 United States made great political and diplomatic efforts to negotiate and deal with tribal governments on a variety of\u00a0 issues that directly affected everyone. The United States government on the whole, negotiated\u00a0 signed and ratified almost 390 treaties with\u00a0 the American Indian tribes, and most of these treaties are still\u00a0 valid today!!!<\/p>\n These Indian treaties were mostly formal government to government negotiations related to sales of land and property rights,\u00a0 which\u00a0 the Indian tribes owned and the United States wanted to buy. The\u00a0 United States Supreme Court has defined these Indian treaties as contracts between \u2018\u2019two sovereign nations\u2019\u2019. Therefore, during the first 150 years of\u00a0 American history, the indigenous Indians were treated as citizens of\u00a0 Indian Nations, not as citizens of the United States!!!(http:\/\/www.flashpointmag.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The\u00a0 \u2018Fourteenth Amendment\u2019 to the American Constitution , which was adopted by the\u00a0 American Congress in 1868, states that ,\u2019\u2019\u2026all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof , are citizens of the United States, and of the state wherein they reside\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/nativeamericannetroots.net<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The \u2018Fourteenth Amendment\u2019 did not grant\u00a0 American citizenship to\u00a0 indigenous Indians, because under the American Constitution and the Supreme Court\u2019s interpretation of the\u00a0 Constitution, Indian tribes are classified as \u2018domestic dependent nations\u2019 ,\u00a0 and as a consequence , Indians are tribal citizenships, not American citizens.\u201d\u2026In 1870, the Senate Judicial Committee inquired into the effect of the Fourteenth Amendment on Indian tribes. The Committee declared that the Amendment was\u00a0 intended to eliminate the phrase \u2018three-fifths of all other persons\u2019 which had described slaves in the Constitution and therefore did not change the status of\u00a0 Indians\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/nativeamericannetroots.net<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Until 1924, Native Americans were not considered legally or constitutionally to be citizens of the United\u00a0 States, therefore they could not vote. There were some Native Americans\u00a0 who were granted American citizenship under very exceptional\u00a0 circumstances, such as marrying a\u00a0 U.S. citizen , serving in the military, or through treaties.(https:\/\/civilrights.findlaw.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n On June 2, 1924, American President Calvin Coolidge(1923-1929), signed into law the Indian Citizenship Act, declaring that \u2018\u2019\u2026all non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the\u00a0 United States be, and they are hereby , declared to be citizens of the\u00a0 United\u00a0 States: Providing\u00a0 that the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any\u00a0 Indian to tribal or other property\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/legallegacy.wordpress.com<\/span><\/a>) The indigenous Indians who were not included in citizenship members had already become citizens by other means such as entering the armed forces, abandoning tribal affiliations, and assimilating into American society.<\/p>\n The Indian Citizenship Act granted citizenship to about 125,000 of the 300,000 indigenous Indians in the United States, but even those who were granted citizenship rights under the 1924\u00a0 Act, did not necessarily achieve full citizenship and suffrage rights. There were American states which refused to let Indians go to the polls and vote. There were three main arguments for not\u00a0 permitting\u00a0 Indians to vote. There was the Indian exemption from real estate taxes, continuing to maintain tribal affiliation, and the view that Indians were under government guardianship , therefore politically subservient , and that they lived on lands which were controlled by federal trusteeship or the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.(https:\/\/legallegacy.wordpress.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n In 1940, the\u00a0 Arizona Supreme\u00a0 Court annulled a provision of its state constitution which did not allow Native American Citizens to vote, while gradually more state governments\u00a0 were obliged to\u00a0 obey the federal\u00a0 directives coming from the\u00a0 Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, the last one being the State of New Mexico in 1962!!!<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Voting\u00a0 Right\u00a0 Act of 1965, prohibited discrimination on the basis\u00a0 of race and colour, and the extension of this\u00a0 Act in 1975, provided additional defenses and assistance to language minorities of the\u00a0 United States. This last legislation was critical politically , because many\u00a0 American states\u00a0 were using literacy tests and poll taxes as obstacles for\u00a0 Native Indians to vote, despite their eligibility under the Indian Citizenship Act!!!(https:\/\/civilrights.findlaw.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, was an effort made by the\u00a0 American government to \u2018democratize\u2019 its political culture and legitimize its Constitutional\u00a0 Republic, but there was also the question of reinforcing Indian assimilation to its\u00a0 own White American Political Culture, as the Nebraska Studies Organization emphasized when it reported that, \u2018\u2019\u2026No doubt, Indian participation in World War I\u00a0\u00a0 accelerated granting citizenship to all\u00a0 Indians, but it seems more likely to have been the logical extension and culmination of the assimilation policy\u2026\u2019\u2019.(https:\/\/legallegacy.wordpress.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n Finally there is the Indian\u00a0 Civil Rights Act(ICRA) of 1968 or the Indian Bill of Rights, where Native\u00a0 Americans\u00a0 were guaranteed many civil rights that they had been fighting for , many of which\u00a0 are included in the Bill of Rights in the\u00a0 American Constitution. These include the right to free speech, press and assembly, the protection from unreasonable search and seizure, the right\u00a0 to hire an attorney in a criminal case and the right to jury trial for offences punishable by imprisonment . Some of the unresolved issues which still continue today related to the civil rights of the Native Americans are the question of sovereignty, hunting and fishing rights, and lastly, voting rights for all indigenous Americans.(https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n We shall now refer to a study undertaken by Michelle Sarche and Paul Spicer on behalf of the University of Colorado Denver, through its American Indian and Alaska Native Programs. This study was published and made available on the Internet, on June 2009. The title of the report is \u2018\u2019Poverty and\u00a0 Health Disparities for American Indian and\u00a0 Alaska Native Children: Current Knowledge and Future Prospects.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n The study \u2018\u2019\u2026explores the current state of knowledge regarding inequalities and their effect on\u00a0 American Indian and Alaska Native children\u2026.This overview documents demographic, social, health and health care disparities as they affect American Indian and Alaska Native children\u2026\u2019\u2019.(