Reading Ch.7 of PHUS I was most surprised when learning about Andrew Jackson. In elementary, middle, and high school, I never learned much more than that he was a president that fought and led bravely in the War of 1812. Was Andrew Jackson just another one of the “American Myths” that I learned growing up? Never did I learn of the atrocities he committed against the Native Americans. Not only did Jackson pass the Indian Removal Act, but in Florida he lied to them, killed, manipulated, and ordered villages to be destroyed when they did not agree with his terms and conditions.
Another idea Zinn brought up that I found to be most interesting was “tribal disintegration”. I had never heard of the term in relation to tribes, but it fits perfectly. The Americans at the time could not always fight the Native Americans, thus they employed other tactics, such as killing game so that there were food shortages, influencing them with whiskey, and smaller military attacks. Of course the Natives had no chance of winning if the Americans were slowly starving them, getting them drunk, and then attacking them. Zinn also repeats the term “Indian Removal,” a more harsh way of saying, what I was taught growing up- expansion. In order to expand, the Native Americans needed to be removed from the territory because there was no chance that the white people would live with them, because they were “savages,” “uncivilized,” and “violent”. I think the unwillingness of the Americans to live amongst shows how scared and intimidated they really were by them.
In terms of the short story, Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience, I thought it was very interesting how the idea of a VR “experience” was something people paid for to go on a spiritual journey. I feel like this is disrespectful to Native Americans, because vision quests are so sacred and the idea of people who may not necessarily come from Native American descent capitalizing off of them seems wrong. The main character changing his last name from Turnblatt to Trueblood was what made me consider this. It seemed like he was trying to sell something false and foreign to him. And in the end, this caught up to him.
I think your connection of “Indian Removal” and “Expansion” being interchangeable terms is spot on. This is just another example of sugarcoating history, as everything considered the truth is not 100% true. It is crazy to think the replacement of a single word can have such a different meaning and effect, and it makes me wonder what other words in past history books I have read were substituted to replace something important.
I agree with what you said about the spiritual quests thing. Coming from a country (Brazil) that still has a lot of active tribes that live in closer proximity to the main population, I always grew up being very aware of Native culture and how to respect it. One of my most vivid elementary school memories was actually visiting a tribe and learning how they lived and having a meal with them. Even though there was monitization involved, it was put on by the tribe itself as a way to make money to buy outside goods. I feel like there’s a difference between appreciation and appropriation and it was more of the appropriation that I felt with the story as well.
I think a large part of what makes Native Americans so special is their ability to disassociate with modern culture. I agree that it is disrespectful of people to pay for an experience that is so sacred to them, but that is just part of highly socialized people’s desires. They think money buys an experience whereas in this case Native Americans just don’t see money having much value at all.
I had a similar experience with Andrew Jackson, a president whose accomplishments are mentioned but the horrors he commited are not. The way that Americans in power manipulated the Native Americans is atrocious and I wonder if there is any way to fix the past history where they were ostrisized and mistreated. I really enjoyed your connection to the short story, which theme of culture exploitation rings true even today.