I managed to log in!
It is important to approach the history of removal as a period of many removals because this approach recognizes the individual sovereignty and identity of the many indigenous groups across the Americas and acknowledges the spectrum of their experiences and struggles. One of the biggest efforts and results of removal was to force all Native groups into one single monolithic identity that could be controlled, marginalized, and abjectified in the public eye. By recognizing individual stories and understanding the brutal histories, we can see how different communities sought liberation and understand Indigenous identities beyond their states of simply “Other”, beyond the status quo.
For example, the Cherokee Nation had a very specific experience prior to removal. Initially, it seemed they had some form of agency, as they could sell their own land to buyers and claimed to be a sovereign foreign nation prior to being told by the federal government that they were instead a “domestic dependent nation” in the 1831 case, Cherokee Nation v Georgia. Then, after more back and forth about their sovereignty, they were forced out of their land after gold was found there and a small minority of Cherokee people agreed to sign a highly contentious treaty handing over their land, with over 15,000 Cherokee people protesting. This agreement led to the infamous Trail of Tears and caused the removal of about 12,000 Cherokee people and the deaths of 4,000.
This history relates very closely to the history of plantation slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade. After all, Indigenous people were being removed from their land to allow for monocultural farming and resource exploitation, creating an institution built around slavery. Additionally, the paternalistic attitude taken towards Indigenous people, with federal and state governments assuming they knew what was best for Indigenous people and denying them the rights of full citizens, was very similar to how white slaveholders held paternalistic attitudes towards the people they enslaved. This legacy of denying the personhood of marginalized groups and using the idea of ‘acting in their best interest’ as a cover for acting in the interest of profit and exploitation has defined racial politics in the Americas.