Quantum Note

The Plight of the Original Americans

Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal

By all accounts, the United States of America is a unique experiment in human history. Built on grand proportions, blessed by enormous natural resources, this “land of opportunity” was opened up to Europe at a critical time in its history through voyages of discovery in the late fifteenth century. These voyages were soon to become missions of killing and plunder as the local inhabitants of the new world were systematically eliminated by the Europeans arriving on this vast continent with superior arms. It is said that the first Native American group encountered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 numbered 250,000 to 1,000,000; by 1550, only 500 were left and by 1650, this group was considered “extinct”. The same fate fell to other tribes and nations of North America. By the time the American constitution was written, the aboriginal people of North America had been thoroughly dispossessed.

Yet, no one could have imagined the scale of the American enterprise in the late 1780s when a federation was being carved out of the various states which had emerged during the preceding two centuries of westward European expansion into the ancient lands of North America. Not withstanding the lofty idealism of the text of American Constitution (completed on September 17, 1787, and adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), it is a document that deserves close scrutiny as it sets the initial framework for an idealized notion of America that actually never existed. The preamble of the US constitution states: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”.

Noteworthy words in this preamble are: justice, tranquility, general welfare, blessings of liberty. Historical accuracy demands that all of these words must be read as applying to White Americans only. This historical correction needs to be considered seriously because these so-called “American ideals” have now turned into the framework for the rise of a new fascism that knows no bounds. The rhetoric of the new ideologues of America is based on this original version, which, in fact, has never existed.

The Constitution of the United States, ratified by special conventions in each of the nine states of the then thirteen states, marks the creation of a union of sovereign states, and a federal government to operate that union. In reality, it is a turning point in the history of the original people of North America, for henceforth, a “legal” basis was provided for their total elimination. Yet, this elimination of tribes, races, and cultures is not considered a crime. In fact, there are strange ways of circumventing the brutalities inflicted on the aboriginal people of America. One such sophistication is the official recognition of the native peoples. On paper, there are now 563 Federally recognized tribal governments in the United States. In theory, these tribes possess the right to form their own government, to enforce laws (both civil and criminal), to tax, to establish membership, to license and regulate activities, to zone and to exclude persons from tribal territories. Aboriginal people of America are counted as distinct group by the Census Bureau (according to 2003 Census estimates, there are 2.78 million of them), but in reality these are the most dispossessed people in the world. Whether they be from the Navajo, Cherokee, Choctaw, Sioux, Chippewa, Apache, Lumbee, Blackfeet, Iroquois,  Pueblo, or other tribes, they are all lumped together as “natives”; this is a sophisticated way of linguistically destroying these distinct tribes.

This linguistic sophistication is not granted to many tribal nations like Muwekma Ohlone the Miami tribe of Indiana, and many smaller eastern tribes; they simply do not exist in the legal documents of the United States of America. Shrewd white lawyers who wrote these rules demanded that in order to be recognized as a distinct tribal group, members have to submit extensive genealogical proof of tribal descent. Of course, they knew that illiterate, poor, and dispossessed people have no way of fulfilling this requirement.

Social, political, and economic dispossession, confinement on reserves (read concentration camps), forced cultural assimilation, and outlawing of their languages have reduced the original people of America to such a state of despair that now whatever remains of them survives in a perpetual state of poverty, alcoholism, and disease. There is a Bureau of Indian Affairs which actively pursues “assimilation” of these distinct people into the dominant culture. In July 2000 the state of Washington adopted a resolution of “termination” for tribal governments.

The state of Virginia has no federally recognized tribes, because a white racist by the name of Walter Ashby Plecker, who was the first registrar of the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics (from 1912 to 1946) believed that the state's Native Americans had been “mongrelized” with its African American population. A law passed by the state's General Assembly recognized only two races, “white” and “colored”. Plecker forced local governments to reclassify all Native Americans in the state as “colored”, leading to the destruction of records on the state's Native American community.

These are well-documented crimes against humanity, yet there is little recognition of  the plight of the original people of America. They are not as vocal as the Afro-Americans. They have no means to form pressure groups. There are very few leaders among them who have not given up. Those who still have a sense of their ancient heritage, find no forums, no means to pursue a path of recovery of their lost heritage. It seems that the total disappearance of these tribes and nations is now merely a matter of time. When this happens, the world would be robbed of a distinctly spiritual culture which had populated the vast lands of North America for centuries. It seems that no one will even write their obituary.

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