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Anthony Peirson Xavier Bothwell
Excerpted from: Anthony Peirson Xavier Bothwell, We Live on Their Land: Implications of
Long-ago Takings of Native American Indian Property
, 6 Annual Survey of International &
Comparative Law 175 - 209 (Spring, 2000)
At the dawn of the white man's millenium, the drums of 15 million ghosts echo silently
across fields and forests, mountains and deserts, lakes and rivers of once proud peoples. While
American society aspires to realize more perfect justice in the twenty-first century, surviving
members of great tribes, heirs of a continent, are the poorest of the poor. Iroquois. Cherokee.
Choctaw. Seminole. Pueblo. Apache. Navajo. Five hundred nations. Nations that were betrayed,
subjugated, plundered and forgotten. We cannot undo that which was done--the breaking of
treaties, the trail of tears, all the sorrows of long-ago years. We cannot bring back to the world of
the living those who perished in the American holocaust. We cannot take away homes and
enterprises of present- day Americans to pay tribute to indigenous people who passed to their
final hunting ground in that apocalypse of more than a century ago. But if justice on this earth can
be imagined, so can a practical way to achieve it. Provided, that is, we are willing to reconcile
ourselves to each other, and to historical truth.
Before the first Europeans landed in what to them was a New World, as many as 15
million indigenous people lived in the area now occupied by the 50 states of the Union. The white
man took their land and, in the doing of it, took their lives. The Native Americans were almost
exterminated. By 1910, only about 200,000 American Indians still lived. Thus it was
"proportionately as if the population of the United States were to decrease from its present level
to the population of Cleveland." The magnitude of mass death was even greater than that of the
Holocaust, in which six million Jews perished. The loss of the land, more than two billion acres
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was so vast that it admits of no comparison in world history.
The taking of the continent occasioned untold deaths due to battles, massacres, forced
marches, starvation, disease and broken hearts. The white settlers brought from Europe "a terrible
collection of poxes and fluxes, flus and fevers for which the reds had little or no natural
immunity." An 1855 Sacramento newspaper editorial said:
The accounts from the North indicate the commencement of a war of
extermination against the Indians .... The intrusion of the white man upon the
Indians' hunting grounds has driven off the game and destroyed their fisheries. The
consequence is ... starvation ... stealing and killing. Had reasonable care been
exercised to see that they were provided with something to eat ... no necessity
would have presented itself for an indiscriminate slaughter of the race.
The destruction of Native American nations is all the more ironic in light of the
contribution Indians made to the formation of our country. Our Founders had extensive and
generally friendly interactions with the Native Americans, who consequently exerted formative
influences on our art, food and culture, our appreciation of nature, and our ideas about
democracy. Their disrespect for authority influenced our own revolutionaries. Their penchant for
helping others set an example for us. So did their thirst for freedom, and their commitment to
participative democracy. Franklin, Jefferson and others internalized Indian political and social
concepts, and embraced ideas of personal liberty that went far beyond anything ever imagined in
England, from which the framework of our law came. Iroquois federalism--with six nations
(Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Tuscaroras and Senecas) in a league, having checks
and balances, separation of civilian and military authority, limited government, protection of
individual rights, and tolerance for all religious views--set a model for our federal system.
. . . .
A high-level, broad-based commission should be established to conduct a serious public
study of the feasibility of restoring Indian nationhood within practical boundaries. The President
of the United States should appoint Indians and non-Indians, lawyers and non-lawyers, lawmakers
and citizens, historians and futurists to the commission. The members should be people of diverse
philosophies and faiths who share a commitment to human rights, an understanding of
international affairs, and an open-minded willingness to seek practical compromise.
The State Department should conduct a review of United States obligations with respect
to Native Americans under international human rights law. In the meantime, responsible agencies
should redouble efforts immediately to improve health, education and welfare standards for Indian
people.
And let all Americans learn the history and treasure the culture of the Indians. Let us
express our remorse for the betrayals of the past, and begin the millenium with a vow to honor the
people of all nations.
Then we shall be reconciled with the descendants of those who welcomed our forebears to
the land of the free.
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