Last week, Rick Santorum repeated a widely held myth of US exceptionalism. “We came here and created a blank slate, we birthed a nation from nothing, ” the former US senator and CNN commentator told the rightwing Young America’s Foundation’s summit. “It was born of the people who came here. ” His “we” doesn’t include Indigenous people who were already here or African people who were brought in chains. And that “blank slate” required the violent pillaging of two continents – Africa and North America. If the United States was “birthed from nothing”, then the land and enslaved labor that made the wealth of this nation must have fallen from the sky – because it surely didn’t come from Europe.
It’s not the first time a CNN employee has espoused anti-Indigenous racism. Last November during live election night coverage, CNN labeled Native American voters as “something else”. The Native American Journalist Association (NAJA) asked CNN to issue an apology, which it refused to do. And just last week, CNN host Poppy Harlow misidentified the Minnesota lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, as “a white woman”. The network has yet to correct the error. NAJA (of which I’m a member) has since called for the firing of Rick Santorum and its membership to avoid working with CNN for its lack of ethics and accountability around various racist views among its staff.
Racist depictions of Indigenous people in the media, however, points to a deeper issue. The erasure of Native histories and peoples – which existed long before and despite a white supremacist empire – is a founding principle of the United States. In fact, it’s still codified in US law. So when Rick Santorum and his ilk stress that Europeans possess a divine right to take a continent, create a nation from “nothing”, and maintain cultural superiority, they’re not entirely wrong. It’s the default position with a long sordid history.
And maybe Santorum and his kind are right when they position the US as a Christian theocratic nation. After all, the founding principles of land theft, enslavement and dispossession stem from religious justifications. A 1493 papal decree known as the doctrine of discovery, justified the Christian European conquest of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. As secretary of state in 1792, Thomas Jefferson declared the doctrine, implemented by European states, was international law and thus applied to the nascent United States as well.
Those views later inspired the Monroe doctrine, the assertion of US supremacy over the western hemisphere, and manifest destiny, the ideological justification of US westward expansion and colonization. An 1823 US supreme court case, Johnson v M’Intosh, upheld the doctrine, privileging European nations, and successors like the United States, title via “discovery” over Indigenous lands. Indigenous nations and sovereignty, the court ruled, “ were necessarily diminished”.
Such a legal and political reality for Indigenous people is so taken for granted that it is rarely mentioned in history books let alone mainstream commentary. Instead, a culture of amnesia permeates the United Sates. But purposeful forgetting can’t erase intent, it only perpetuates injury. Erasure makes the taking of Indigenous land easier.
Although the United States quickly accuses other nations of genocide, it hasn’t acknowledged its own genocide against Indigenous people. To affirm it would mean to take measures to prevent it from happening again. That would mean halting ongoing theft and destruction of Indigenous lands, cultures and nations. A process of justice would have to follow suit. An entire legal order that underpins the backwards racist views and practices towards Indigenous people would have to be overturned. Indigenous land and political rights would have to be restored. A savage nation built of untold violence would have to be finally civilized and make amends with the people and nations it has attempted to destroy. After all the elimination of Indigenous nations was not only about taking the land, it was also about destroying an alternative – a world based on making and being in good relations versus that of a racialized class system based on property and conquest.
That world still exists, and its stories still need to be told by Indigenous people.
That’s a tall order that takes willpower, courage, and truth-telling we simply don’t see emanating from corporate newsrooms like CNN, to say nothing of political and ruling elite in this country. Firing Rick Santorum won’t solve these deep-seated inequalities and anti-Indigenous racism. But Indigenous genocide denial – the ultimate cancel culture – should have no platform if we are to finally transcend the 15th century racialist views codified in the doctrine of discovery.
Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is an assistant professor in the American studies department at the University of New Mexico. In 2014, he co-founded The Red Nation, an Indigenous resistance organization. He is the author of the book Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019)
Genocide does sort of stomp on the culture, I guess, although we do like to name our shit after them. Tomahawk missile, Apache helicopter etc. Probably the same process they use in naming real estate developments, like Oakview Estates, after all the oaks were long since cut down to make room for more houses.
我曾经跟白人嘲笑过感恩节，本来应该感谢印第安人，结果感谢上帝了。结果他们都笑笑走开了。 我觉得白人的反应很正常，肯定guilty，然而那是他们祖上干的。比土工正在进行时干坏事不但不guilty还四处甩锅倒打一耙要好得多。 【 在 beijingren3 () 的大作中提到: 】 : 只有种族主义的无知才让Rick Santorum 认为美国是“一无所有” : Only racist ignorance lets Rick Santorum think America was ‘birthed from : nothing’ : Although the United States quickly accuses other nations of genocide, it : hasn’t acknowledged its own genocide against Indigenous people : http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/27/only-racist-ignorance-lets-rick-santorum-think-america-was-birthed-from-nothing : 然而，种族主义在媒体上对原住民的描写指出了一个更深层次的问题。消灭土著历史和 : 民族-尽管存在白人至上主义帝国，但很久以前就存在-这是美国的一项成立原则。实际 : 上，它仍被编入美国法律。因此，当里克·桑托勒姆（Rick Santorum）和他的同僚强 : 调欧洲人拥有神圣的权利，可以占领一个大陆，从“一无所有”创建一个国家，并保持 : ...................
【 在 beijingren3 () 的大作中提到: 】 : 只有种族主义的无知才让Rick Santorum 认为美国是“一无所有” : Only racist ignorance lets Rick Santorum think America was ‘birthed from : nothing’ : Although the United States quickly accuses other nations of genocide, it : hasn’t acknowledged its own genocide against Indigenous people : http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/27/only-racist-ignorance-lets-rick-santorum-think-america-was-birthed-from-nothing : 然而，种族主义在媒体上对原住民的描写指出了一个更深层次的问题。消灭土著历史和 : 民族-尽管存在白人至上主义帝国，但很久以前就存在-这是美国的一项成立原则。实际 : 上，它仍被编入美国法律。因此，当里克·桑托勒姆（Rick Santorum）和他的同僚强 : 调欧洲人拥有神圣的权利，可以占领一个大陆，从“一无所有”创建一个国家，并保持 : ...................
只有种族主义的无知才让Rick Santorum 认为美国是“一无所有”
Only racist ignorance lets Rick Santorum think America was ‘birthed from
nothing’
Although the United States quickly accuses other nations of genocide, it
hasn’t acknowledged its own genocide against Indigenous people
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/27/only-racist-ignorance-lets-rick-santorum-think-america-was-birthed-from-nothing
然而，种族主义在媒体上对原住民的描写指出了一个更深层次的问题。消灭土著历史和民族-尽管存在白人至上主义帝国，但很久以前就存在-这是美国的一项成立原则。实际上，它仍被编入美国法律。因此，当里克·桑托勒姆（Rick Santorum）和他的同僚强
调欧洲人拥有神圣的权利，可以占领一个大陆，从“一无所有”创建一个国家，并保持文化优势，但这并不是完全错误的。这是具有悠久历史的默认职位。
当圣托伦和他的同类将美国定位为基督教神权国家时，也许是正确的。毕竟，盗窃，奴役和剥夺土地的基本原则源于宗教理由。 1493年的一项教皇法令即发现论，证明了基
督教欧洲人征服非洲，亚洲，大洋洲和美洲的理由。在1792年担任国务卿时，托马斯·杰斐逊（Thomas Jefferson）宣布，由欧洲国家实施的这一学说是国际法，因此也适用于新生的美国。
Last week, Rick Santorum repeated a widely held myth of US exceptionalism.
“We came here and created a blank slate, we birthed a nation from nothing,
” the former US senator and CNN commentator told the rightwing Young
America’s Foundation’s summit. “It was born of the people who came here.
” His “we” doesn’t include Indigenous people who were already here or
African people who were brought in chains. And that “blank slate” required the violent pillaging of two continents – Africa and North America. If the United States was “birthed from nothing”, then the land and enslaved
labor that made the wealth of this nation must have fallen from the sky –
because it surely didn’t come from Europe.
It’s not the first time a CNN employee has espoused anti-Indigenous racism. Last November during live election night coverage, CNN labeled Native
American voters as “something else”. The Native American Journalist
Association (NAJA) asked CNN to issue an apology, which it refused to do.
And just last week, CNN host Poppy Harlow misidentified the Minnesota
lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of
Ojibwe, as “a white woman”. The network has yet to correct the error. NAJA (of which I’m a member) has since called for the firing of Rick Santorum
and its membership to avoid working with CNN for its lack of ethics and
accountability around various racist views among its staff.
Racist depictions of Indigenous people in the media, however, points to a
deeper issue. The erasure of Native histories and peoples – which existed
long before and despite a white supremacist empire – is a founding
principle of the United States. In fact, it’s still codified in US law. So when Rick Santorum and his ilk stress that Europeans possess a divine right to take a continent, create a nation from “nothing”, and maintain cultural superiority, they’re not entirely wrong. It’s the default position with a long sordid history.
And maybe Santorum and his kind are right when they position the US as a
Christian theocratic nation. After all, the founding principles of land
theft, enslavement and dispossession stem from religious justifications. A
1493 papal decree known as the doctrine of discovery, justified the
Christian European conquest of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. As
secretary of state in 1792, Thomas Jefferson declared the doctrine,
implemented by European states, was international law and thus applied to
the nascent United States as well.
Those views later inspired the Monroe doctrine, the assertion of US
supremacy over the western hemisphere, and manifest destiny, the ideological justification of US westward expansion and colonization. An 1823 US supreme court case, Johnson v M’Intosh, upheld the doctrine, privileging European nations, and successors like the United States, title via “discovery” over Indigenous lands. Indigenous nations and sovereignty, the court ruled, “
were necessarily diminished”.
Such a legal and political reality for Indigenous people is so taken for
granted that it is rarely mentioned in history books let alone mainstream
commentary. Instead, a culture of amnesia permeates the United Sates. But
purposeful forgetting can’t erase intent, it only perpetuates injury.
Erasure makes the taking of Indigenous land easier.
Although the United States quickly accuses other nations of genocide, it
hasn’t acknowledged its own genocide against Indigenous people. To affirm
it would mean to take measures to prevent it from happening again. That
would mean halting ongoing theft and destruction of Indigenous lands,
cultures and nations. A process of justice would have to follow suit. An
entire legal order that underpins the backwards racist views and practices
towards Indigenous people would have to be overturned. Indigenous land and
political rights would have to be restored. A savage nation built of untold violence would have to be finally civilized and make amends with the people and nations it has attempted to destroy. After all the elimination of
Indigenous nations was not only about taking the land, it was also about
destroying an alternative – a world based on making and being in good
relations versus that of a racialized class system based on property and
conquest.
That world still exists, and its stories still need to be told by Indigenous people.
That’s a tall order that takes willpower, courage, and truth-telling we
simply don’t see emanating from corporate newsrooms like CNN, to say
nothing of political and ruling elite in this country. Firing Rick Santorum won’t solve these deep-seated inequalities and anti-Indigenous racism. But Indigenous genocide denial – the ultimate cancel culture – should have no platform if we are to finally transcend the 15th century racialist views
codified in the doctrine of discovery.
Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is an assistant
professor in the American studies department at the University of New Mexico. In 2014, he co-founded The Red Nation, an Indigenous resistance
organization. He is the author of the book Our History Is the Future:
Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of
Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019)
尽管美国迅速指责其他国家实行种族灭绝，但尚未承认自己针对土著人民的种族灭绝。确认这将意味着采取措施防止其再次发生。这将意味着停止正在进行的对土著土地，文化和民族的盗窃和破坏。正义的过程将必须随之而来。必须推翻支撑落后的种族主义观点和做法的整个法律秩序。必须恢复土著土地和政治权利。一个由无法形容的暴力建立的野蛮国家必须最终文明起来，并对其试图摧毁的人民和国家进行修正。消灭土著民族毕竟不仅仅在于占领土地，而且还在于摧毁另一种选择-一个基于建立和保持良好关系
的世界，而不是一个基于财产和征服的种族阶级制度的世界。
这个世界仍然存在，它的故事仍然需要土著人民讲述。
这是一项艰巨的任务，需要毅力，勇气和讲真相，我们根本看不到像CNN这样的公司新
闻编辑室发出的消息，更不用说这个国家的政治和统治精英了。解雇里克·桑托勒姆（Rick Santorum）无法解决这些根深蒂固的不平等现象和反土著种族主义。但是，如果
我们要最终超越在发现学说中编纂的15世纪种族主义观点，那么土著种族灭绝的否认-
最终的消灭文化-应该没有平台。
Does hanging on to the notion of American exceptionalism just mean you’re
stupid? Because it really does come off like that.
Genocide does sort of stomp on the culture, I guess, although we do like to name our shit after them. Tomahawk missile, Apache helicopter etc. Probably the same process they use in naming real estate developments, like Oakview
Estates, after all the oaks were long since cut down to make room for more
houses.
Genocide is why there isn't much indigenous culture in American culture
except for the names of a lot of states, rivers, land features etc.
Europeans killed millions of Native Indians and occupied. that is the
original history.
It was called the Right of Conquest. I suppose you want to return Texas to
Mexico??? Hell let us just give the US back to the British.
我曾经跟白人嘲笑过感恩节，本来应该感谢印第安人，结果感谢上帝了。结果他们都笑笑走开了。
我觉得白人的反应很正常，肯定guilty，然而那是他们祖上干的。比土工正在进行时干坏事不但不guilty还四处甩锅倒打一耙要好得多。
【 在 beijingren3 () 的大作中提到: 】
: 只有种族主义的无知才让Rick Santorum 认为美国是“一无所有”
: Only racist ignorance lets Rick Santorum think America was ‘birthed from : nothing’
: Although the United States quickly accuses other nations of genocide, it
: hasn’t acknowledged its own genocide against Indigenous people
: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/27/only-racist-ignorance-lets-rick-santorum-think-america-was-birthed-from-nothing
: 然而，种族主义在媒体上对原住民的描写指出了一个更深层次的问题。消灭土著历史和
: 民族-尽管存在白人至上主义帝国，但很久以前就存在-这是美国的一项成立原则。实际
: 上，它仍被编入美国法律。因此，当里克·桑托勒姆（Rick Santorum）和他的同僚强
: 调欧洲人拥有神圣的权利，可以占领一个大陆，从“一无所有”创建一个国家，并保持
: ...................
我刚才对他说了，“土工最怕有人提genocide. 你怎么老提这事？你是反共积极分子吗？“ 哈哈
【 在 Tianzi (偷月亮的人) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我曾经跟白人嘲笑过感恩节，本来应该感谢印第安人，结果感谢上帝了。结果他们都笑
: 笑走开了。
: 我觉得白人的反应很正常，肯定guilty，然而那是他们祖上干的。比土工正在进行时干
: 坏事不但不guilty还四处甩锅倒打一耙要好得多。
"然而那是他们祖上干的"
越南，老挝，柬埔寨，南美，中东，阿富汗人民发来贺电
【 在 Tianzi (偷月亮的人) 的大作中提到: 】
: 我曾经跟白人嘲笑过感恩节，本来应该感谢印第安人，结果感谢上帝了。结果他们都笑
: 笑走开了。
: 我觉得白人的反应很正常，肯定guilty，然而那是他们祖上干的。比土工正在进行时干
: 坏事不但不guilty还四处甩锅倒打一耙要好得多。
都祖上干的了,为啥还不承认?最虚伪了.
【 在 beijingren3 () 的大作中提到: 】
: 只有种族主义的无知才让Rick Santorum 认为美国是“一无所有”
: Only racist ignorance lets Rick Santorum think America was ‘birthed from : nothing’
: Although the United States quickly accuses other nations of genocide, it
: hasn’t acknowledged its own genocide against Indigenous people
: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/27/only-racist-ignorance-lets-rick-santorum-think-america-was-birthed-from-nothing
: 然而，种族主义在媒体上对原住民的描写指出了一个更深层次的问题。消灭土著历史和
: 民族-尽管存在白人至上主义帝国，但很久以前就存在-这是美国的一项成立原则。实际
: 上，它仍被编入美国法律。因此，当里克·桑托勒姆（Rick Santorum）和他的同僚强
: 调欧洲人拥有神圣的权利，可以占领一个大陆，从“一无所有”创建一个国家，并保持
: ...................
承认个鸟毛
先不说你爷爷杀人了你是不是有原罪
麻痹的当年和印第安人打的最厉害的是欧洲各国，那时候美国都还没成立
白皮不是一向这么无耻吗