It’s important to think of a period of removal as “many removals” because many different peoples were affected, and using the singular makes it sound like only one group or community was removed. Thinking of this period as one of many removals helps to reflect the widespread ideology of Native removal.
Removal affected many people in the United States. Obviously Native people in the Southeast and Great Lakes regions were deeply affected, because they had to physically move to different places and experience the traumas of forced removal. In addition to those who had to move, there were those who escaped (like the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who we learned about in class). These people would also have been very affected by the removal, cut off from their communities and forced into hiding. Even communities that were not forcibly removed to such an extent (I don’t know if there are Native communities in the United States who were completely spared from relocation) probably experienced a lot of fear, uncertainty, and anger because of the removals. Enslaved Black people, as we learned from the podcast, were also affected by removals, since some Native communities participated in the chattel slave trade. Those who were enslaved by Native people were also forcibly removed, and the larger enslaved community was affected by the forced relocation of Native communities because it facilitated the growth of plantation slavery. White settlers were also affected, of course, since removals allowed them to own Native land.
It is important to think about the westward expansion of slavery and Native American removals as intertwined processes because the removals of Native people were what facilitated the expansion of slavery. I also think that it is important to recognize the interconnectedness of these processes because Native people were always connected to the transatlantic slave trade, whether they were enslaved or enslavers.