As a descendant of the Cherokee and Choctaw, I would like to talk about the United States being founded upon Christian principles and being a Christian nation.
Manifest Destiny was one of the excuses used to justify the forced removals of Native American tribes.
Let us not forget that this so-called Christian nation resides on stolen tribal lands. Let us not forget that millions of Native American men, women and children were forcibly removed from their tribal lands and displaced, so that white [often Christian] settlers could own that land. The U.S. federal government has violated every single one of the hundreds of treaties it signed with various tribal nations, despite the fact that Article VI of the Constitution clearly states: "and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land." Entire tribes were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and displaced, forced to live in third-world impoverished conditions on Reservations (also known as Prisoner of War Camps).
Furthermore...
Native Americans were denied US citizenship for 148 years until The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
There were
countless massacres of entire Native American tribes, such as Sand Creek and Wounded Knee.
There were many death marches during the forced removals and relocations, like the Trail of Tears into Indian Territory, and that land was later stolen to become the state of Oklahoma through the Oklahoma Land Run.
Native American religious sacred sites and burial grounds, where the remains of their ancestors and family, could be desecrated and destroyed until the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990.
There was cultural genocide through the American Indian Boarding Schools whose primary purpose was to 'Kill the Indian, Save the Man' and forcibly Christianize Indian children with the purpose to destroy everything that had to do with being Indian. They were stripped of their identity and heritage. They weren't allowed to speak in their native tongue, and they were punished if they did.
Religious freedom is guaranteed by the First Amendment, but Native Americans were denied religious freedom for 202 years until The American Indian Religious Act of 1978. It was once illegal for them to perform their religious and spiritual ceremonies in public (like the Sun Dance and the Ghost Dance) and performing these ceremonial dances in public was punishable by imprisonment.
Now let's take a look at what some of the Christian "Founding Fathers" had to say about Native Americans.
“If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order to make room for cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means.” - Benjamin Franklin
“This unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.” - Thomas Jefferson
“The immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more.” - George W.
“The hunter or savage state requires a greater extent of territory to sustain it, than is compatible with the progress and just claims of civilized life, and must yield to it. Nothing is more certain, than, if the Indian tribes do not abandon that state, and become civilized, that they will decline, and become extinct. The hunter state, tho maintained by warlike spirits, presents but a feeble resistance to the more dense, compact, and powerful population of civilized man.” - James Monroe
Source:
Nice Day for a Genocide: Shocking Quotes on Indians By US Leaders, Pt 1
Also read:
Nice Day for a Genocide: Shocking Quotes on Indians by U.S. Leaders, Pt. 2
"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it." - Martin Luther King, Jr. (
Dr. King spoke out against the genocide of Native Americans)
If we were to take an honest look at the founding of America, and looking beyond the facade of this nation being founded upon Christian principles, we would humbly admit that America is a nation built on violated treaties, stolen tribal lands, and slavery.
America was not founded upon Christian principles or upon freedom, liberty and justice for all. It was originally founded upon the attempted genocide of Native Americans, massive land theft, and hundreds of broken treaties. It was also founded upon white supremacy that manifested itself through slavery, racism, discrimination and oppression of minorities. Native Americans, African-Americans, and other minorities, were not free nor did they have liberties or justice or the same equality as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male had when America was first founded. Minorities were suppressed, subjugated, and legally discriminated against.
Slavery was legal for 89 years and for 99 years after slavery was finally abolished, the descendants of the freed slaves were then denied rights and equality to white people and legally segregated from white people until the Civil Rights Movement of 1964. African-Americans and other minorities were also denied the right to vote until the Voting Act of 1965. "No Colored" signs, "No Mexicans" signs, "No Indians and dogs" signs, and "Whites Only" signs once dawned in public stores and public restaurants. African-Americans and other minorities were oppressed, subjugated, segregated, discriminated against and denied equality for 188 years.
African-Americans had to sit at the back of the public bus and were legally required to give up their seat to a white person. They weren't allowed to eat at the same counter as white people in a public restaurant or use the same public restroom as white people or use the same drinking fountain as white people. Black children weren't allowed to go to the same school with white children until the Supreme Court intervened with the landmark Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. It took another 3 years and the presence of the National Guard before black children were allowed to attend schools with white children, beginning in Little Rock, Arkansas.
