It’s no secret that the Trump administration and ICE are on the prowl to deport undocumented individuals, resulting in the deaths of both undocumented immigrants and American citizens. While individuals are being forcibly removed from American soil, the current administration and ICE forget that they were not the original inhabitants of this land – they fail to recognize that their ancestors were also immigrants in the past.
The original inhabitants were the Indigenous people who thrived in the Americas for thousands of years before they were forced off their lands.
I chose the word indigenous on purpose; it has deep cultural and sovereign implications. Compared to the word native, which refers to the birthplace of an individual, indigenous insinuates that the people referred to are the original inhabitants of the land, in this case, the United States of America.
Despite it being a requirement to graduate from high school, many forget the history of the U.S., both before and after European colonization. It’s commonly accepted in the scientific community that human life originated in Africa over 300,000 years ago; Humans then migrated from the southern continent to Europe and Asia.
But their ventures didn’t stop there; one theory is that many of the individuals who migrated to Asia found themselves in current-day Russia, where they crossed into current-day Alaska – assuming that the two pieces of land were connected by a temporary piece of ice.
Another similar theory is that these early humans sailed from Asia to the Americas. Nonetheless, the earliest humans to arrive in the Americas came from the early Eurasian continent.
These ancient humans grew villages, cities and empires all over the American continent in many well-known Mesoamerican civilizations like the Olmec, Mayan and Aztec. These societies built great agricultural and labor organization systems for their people. They remain influential to many South American cultures in terms of customs and traditions as well.
And at this point, people start to think about how Christopher Columbus came to the Americas and saved the Indigenous people from themselves. While the idea of Columbus as a savior is slowly fading, it remains in the American consciousness.
Many students are and were taught that thanks to Columbus, America was able to become what it is today. Although this is proven false, the idea of Columbus’s greatness doesn’t erase itself: it lingers. To be clear, Mesoamericans were living in structured and successful societies before Columbus arrived and, in short, killed many, both through disease and enslavement.
And while there are theories of other civilizations landing in the Americas prior to Columbus, this was only the beginning of the displacement and stolen land in the Americas.
In the United States of America, established in 1776, the issue of displacement is more focused on tribes living near the East Coast, and then later focused on tribes living west of the Mississippi. Most know that the first British settlers came as pilgrims who were seeking religious freedom, but they also had many land disputes with the Indigenous people already there. As British colonies became more populated, they began to take up more and more land.
A common narrative to excuse the land takeover was that it was a result of treaties between the colonists and the tribes. The truth was that the Removal Act of 1830 forced tribes to sign treaties, give up their land and move westward. Through manifest destiny, the idea that it was the colonists’ god-given right to expand westward and colonize, they were able to obtain ‘ownership’ of the current-day, mainland U.S.
Even today, Indigenous people are treated as second-class citizens in their homeland. Many Indigenous persons from current-day, mainland U.S. live in reservations that allow them to govern their communities, but this is only a compromise that allows the U.S. to remain on the land it has robbed. Every day, ICE agents are attempting to remove Mexicans and South Americans from the lands that they inhabited before European colonization.
Although the U.S. is sovereign in this land, it should not be violent, cruel or inhumane toward any individual, especially the original people who owned this land. To be so insistent that immigrants don’t belong in the U.S. when the people claiming that are descendants of immigrants is pure irony. The mistreatment of immigrants should not be tolerated by Americans, as they themselves are immigrants or descendants of immigrants as well.
