American settlement was a history of dispossessing native peoples

Evidence

The history of American settlement, if you wanted to sum it up in one sentence, was a history of dispossessing the native peoples; sometimes violently, often with cruel and callous disregard of their rights and their very humanity. This history is, in many ways, one long trail of tears. This is the master narrative. But it masks a very complex story. The tribes were sometimes friends and allies; sometimes bitter and warlike enemies. Sometimes colonists bought land from native tribes; sometimes they swindled them. The tribes were, after all, pagans, and, to the white man, uncivilized savages. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 273

Categorization

• XREF: Anchor for the LGST polyad thread on land/place and colonialism — connects directly to M’Intosh v. Johnson doctrine that later course materials build on. — connects to: Native Americans cannot relocate away from environmental hazards as other citizens can; Yellowstone National Park was seized from Native people promised the territory — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 753; U.S. treatment of Native Americans constituted genocide through varied means including education — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1191 (+16 more)
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the trees-as-infrastructure piece’s treatment of land as a contested colonial resource, though the specific overlap is land disposition rather than trees.

Broader Connections

• Euphemistic labeling historically legitimized dispossession of native peoples. #expands (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 287
• Colonial treatment of native peoples was justified by claims about their essential humanity #expands (0.88) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 648
• Land entitlement claims rest on race rather than history in settler colonies #expands (0.85)
• Settlers often integrated with the native population instead of exterminating them #qualifies (0.85) — Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking…, 107
• Settler nations were built on stolen land and enslaved people. #expands (0.85) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 763
• Discovery doctrine reduced Native peoples from actors to subjects acted upon #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 232
• Cultural-erasure denial licensed apartheid and Native American dispossession #expands (0.85) — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 385
• The first European settlement in the Americas quickly collapsed into violence with indigenous peoples #exemplifies (0.82)
• American soil across the United States conceals indigenous peoples’ remains and heritage #expands (0.82)
• Settler states resort to expulsion when indigenous populations resist cultural reengineering #expands (0.82)
• Labeling a settler conflict ‘tribal’ displaces its causes onto the colonized #expands (0.80) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 2113
• Defending indigenous sovereignty helped legitimate colonial dispossession #expands (0.80)
• Displacing indigenous island peoples to build bases was a systemic U.S. pattern #exemplifies (0.80) — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 196
• Indigenous people served as disposable labor before African slavery began #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1075