Cultural Mentality
It isn’t outrageous to assume that those in power will slight their influence and abilities in a manner that will best accommodate them; even at the expense of those not in power. The United States of America is no exception when one is to investigate their past actions. From its most primal beginnings, American law has been selective in who it will be applied to and who it will protect. The trend, in the cases of the native peoples of the Americas and the Pacific, has been to manipulate, oppress, or blatantly neglect their cultural and political necessities – all in the name of American dominance. Currently, the United States is known internationally as a mecca for cultural diffusion and its overreaching welcoming of those in despair globally.
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In great contrast to its current international reputation, the beginning stages of the US are plagued with clear bias and discrimination embedded in the laws and policies that dealt with the native inhabitants of the land conquered by the former British colonist. American law had one goal when dealing with the Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Puerto Ricans; to assimilate their native culture to that of the former colonists, or eliminate their presence either through isolation or ostracization.
“We have one law…to live on this earth with respect for all living things.
That means we cannot harm the earth because we have respect for the place of those things in the word… Heart, body mind and soul all together with the world: that is the Indian way to live. You see, these hills are our church; the rivers and the wind, and the blossoms and the living things – that is our Bible. Nature is God, God is nature.” (3). The cultural mentality of the American natives held a philosophy of having great respect for the lands and only cultivating what was needed; exploitation for personal gain was not an option. Humans and nature were spiritually connected and, as such, no human owned land. This is virtually the polar alternative to the mindset of the colonist. Their capitalist ideals promoted abundance and surplus, only using as needed was regarded as inefficient would be used as a primary argument against Native Americans to take land from them. According to western ideals, nature is “God’s gift to man, subject to man’s dominion.” (4). There exist an inherent ideological chasm between the Natives and the increasingly powerful colonist; to deal with this difference, laws were wielded as a tool to assimilate the Native Indians, and if that failed, then to eliminate them. The ethnocentric ideals of the Europeans generated a great intolerance for anything outside their native
culture. “Demons of difference” (4) must be cast out of the newly claimed lands of the Europeans and an implementation of what they regard as correct will be put in place. Through the law, the initial method of dealing with the cultural difference of Native Americans was an attempt to convert them to European ideals. Missionaries confronted the Native people to, from the perspective of the Europeans, bring them salvation through Jesus Christ. In addition to attempting to change their spiritual foundation, the European introduced their own type of laws and political norms to the New World. Negotiations between the Native people and White people were done according to how the White people saw fit; this often included western legal concepts that were unfamiliar to natives. The binding legal documents between the Whites and Natives are yet another example of the White people employing the law as a tool to accommodate their selves in the face of cultural difference. These legal treaties were not fully understood by the Native inhabitants and, as a result, were manifested as tools of exploitation. “…They wanted more land. They wanted our country. Our eyes were opened, and our minds became uneasy.” (5). The Natives, slowly becoming more aware of the unending greed of their new neighbors, became resistant in the late 1700s, swearing “never again to cede one foot more of land.” (5). During this stage of Native-White relations, tensions between the two groups reached its peak and the White population took more aggressive measures to deal with the vast cultural differences. The 1830 Indian Removal Act was a tool used by the American government to relocate thousands of Natives into pre-allotted plots of land called reservations. The reservation was seen as a solution to “the Indian Problem” (8). Clearly contained within separate borders, the reservations are similar to a controlled experiment in which the American government is able to “save the Native Americans” (9) through a sometimes forceful transition to Christian capitalist under a democratic government while simultaneously eliminating their indigenous language, economic system and religion. In the case of the Native Americans, the American government didn’t deal with cultural difference, but rather, used any means necessary to merge the Natives to Western culture or, if that failed, to place them aside as outcast them from their own society. Unlike the Indigenous peoples of the continental U.S., the natives of the Hawaiian Islands were not afforded the luxuries of land specifically allotted to them. The circumstances surrounding the relations between the American government and native Hawaiian inhabitants is much more minimal in attempts at assimilation, instead, the American government aimed at fully acquiring the land for commercial and economic benefit. Similar to the situation of the Native Americans, the Native Hawaiians had a culture immensely different from the Western world and like the American governments’ past actions, this differences were dealt with in a method that involved exclusion. Native Hawaiian philosophy paralleled with that of Native Americans in the notion that land was unable to be owned by land and should not be used as an economic benefactor. “No one ‘owned’ the land in the Western sense of total and exclusive dominion.” (22-23). The very first interactions between the Caucasians and Polynesians did involve attempts of assimilation, and many of the Natives, after seeing their Kapu-based faith being defied by the actions of the Westerners, willingly converted. These initial contacts also involved the spread of diseases, including tuberculosis, venereal diseases and viral infections that dramatically reduced Native populations. Currently, only about 2% of the initial 400,000 native population exist as a result of the casualties experienced (23). In the mid-19th century, the American government instilled similar tactics to garner land in the Hawaiian Islands that were employed against the Native Americans. Policies such as the Kuleana Act were not fully understood by the Native population. An act that would allow Natives to claim homestead was a “spectacular failure” (25) due to the inability of Natives to fully comprehend written law and pay survey fees. These complex policies led to the Western takeover of much of the Hawaiian Island. These policies enacted by the American government claiming to have a purpose of aiding the Native population was a process of actually replacing the Native population with Westerners and other demographic as the Westerners saw fit. The shrinking size of the Native population eventually turned into a pathway for the Islands to be annexed as an official U.S. state. As an official state, the Native voice became extremely weak in the American court system. Many claims brought to the judiciary system by Natives were not accepted, and on the rare case that a court heard the plea of Natives, they were very often dismissed as unimportant, or “frivolous.” (30). There was no dealing with cultural differences when the American government dealt with Hawaii, instead there was a constant encroaching on the land with copious methods of removal. Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, has the most unique situation compared to that of the Native Hawaiians and Native Americans. Unlike the two ground, the inhabitants of Puerto Rico did not suffer from mass genocides, or massive land removal. Instead of the American government aiming at completely replacing the Puerto Rican demographic, the government took strategic and coercive methods at acculturation; a plan to Americanize the Puerto Rican identity. The American government had a goal of turning the Caribbean island into a capitalist, consumerist land that idolized the mainland. American propaganda was placed into the commercial advertising. Symbols of the Puerto Rican identity, such as the Puerto Rican flag and salsa music was pasted into many of the advertising campaigns of American corporations that superficially connected Americana imagery to Hispanic identity. In addition to the subtle subliminal messages, blatant laws were put in place to forcefully alter Puerto Rican culture. In 1902, the American government made the English language the official language of the island despite the extremely low percentage of speakers. Changing their language while filling their commercial images with American-fused symbolism were all desperate attempts of using law to modify a different culture. The American government has a very repetitive history of intolerance towards diversity. With mass genocide, forceful removal and assimilation, law was not the great equalizer but a tool of exploitation. In the face of American law and cultural diversity, law did nothing but exacerbate an unequal scale.
In great contrast to its current international reputation, the beginning stages of the US are plagued with clear bias and discrimination embedded in the laws and policies that dealt with the native inhabitants of the land conquered by the former British colonist. American law had one goal when dealing with the Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Puerto Ricans; to assimilate their native culture to that of the former colonists, or eliminate their presence either through isolation or ostracization.
“We have one law…to live on this earth with respect for all living things.
That means we cannot harm the earth because we have respect for the place of those things in the word… Heart, body mind and soul all together with the world: that is the Indian way to live. You see, these hills are our church; the rivers and the wind, and the blossoms and the living things – that is our Bible. Nature is God, God is nature.” (3). The cultural mentality of the American natives held a philosophy of having great respect for the lands and only cultivating what was needed; exploitation for personal gain was not an option. Humans and nature were spiritually connected and, as such, no human owned land. This is virtually the polar alternative to the mindset of the colonist. Their capitalist ideals promoted abundance and surplus, only using as needed was regarded as inefficient would be used as a primary argument against Native Americans to take land from them. According to western ideals, nature is “God’s gift to man, subject to man’s dominion.” (4). There exist an inherent ideological chasm between the Natives and the increasingly powerful colonist; to deal with this difference, laws were wielded as a tool to assimilate the Native Indians, and if that failed, then to eliminate them. The ethnocentric ideals of the Europeans generated a great intolerance for anything outside their native
culture. “Demons of difference” (4) must be cast out of the newly claimed lands of the Europeans and an implementation of what they regard as correct will be put in place. Through the law, the initial method of dealing with the cultural difference of Native Americans was an attempt to convert them to European ideals. Missionaries confronted the Native people to, from the perspective of the Europeans, bring them salvation through Jesus Christ. In addition to attempting to change their spiritual foundation, the European introduced their own type of laws and political norms to the New World. Negotiations between the Native people and White people were done according to how the White people saw fit; this often included western legal concepts that were unfamiliar to natives. The binding legal documents between the Whites and Natives are yet another example of the White people employing the law as a tool to accommodate their selves in the face of cultural difference. These legal treaties were not fully understood by the Native inhabitants and, as a result, were manifested as tools of exploitation. “…They wanted more land. They wanted our country. Our eyes were opened, and our minds became uneasy.” (5). The Natives, slowly becoming more aware of the unending greed of their new neighbors, became resistant in the late 1700s, swearing “never again to cede one foot more of land.” (5). During this stage of Native-White relations, tensions between the two groups reached its peak and the White population took more aggressive measures to deal with the vast cultural differences. The 1830 Indian Removal Act was a tool used by the American government to relocate thousands of Natives into pre-allotted plots of land called reservations. The reservation was seen as a solution to “the Indian Problem” (8). Clearly contained within separate borders, the reservations are similar to a controlled experiment in which the American government is able to “save the Native Americans” (9) through a sometimes forceful transition to Christian capitalist under a democratic government while simultaneously eliminating their indigenous language, economic system and religion. In the case of the Native Americans, the American government didn’t deal with cultural difference, but rather, used any means necessary to merge the Natives to Western culture or, if that failed, to place them aside as outcast them from their own society. Unlike the Indigenous peoples of the continental U.S., the natives of the Hawaiian Islands were not afforded the luxuries of land specifically allotted to them. The circumstances surrounding the relations between the American government and native Hawaiian inhabitants is much more minimal in attempts at assimilation, instead, the American government aimed at fully acquiring the land for commercial and economic benefit. Similar to the situation of the Native Americans, the Native Hawaiians had a culture immensely different from the Western world and like the American governments’ past actions, this differences were dealt with in a method that involved exclusion. Native Hawaiian philosophy paralleled with that of Native Americans in the notion that land was unable to be owned by land and should not be used as an economic benefactor. “No one ‘owned’ the land in the Western sense of total and exclusive dominion.” (22-23). The very first interactions between the Caucasians and Polynesians did involve attempts of assimilation, and many of the Natives, after seeing their Kapu-based faith being defied by the actions of the Westerners, willingly converted. These initial contacts also involved the spread of diseases, including tuberculosis, venereal diseases and viral infections that dramatically reduced Native populations. Currently, only about 2% of the initial 400,000 native population exist as a result of the casualties experienced (23). In the mid-19th century, the American government instilled similar tactics to garner land in the Hawaiian Islands that were employed against the Native Americans. Policies such as the Kuleana Act were not fully understood by the Native population. An act that would allow Natives to claim homestead was a “spectacular failure” (25) due to the inability of Natives to fully comprehend written law and pay survey fees. These complex policies led to the Western takeover of much of the Hawaiian Island. These policies enacted by the American government claiming to have a purpose of aiding the Native population was a process of actually replacing the Native population with Westerners and other demographic as the Westerners saw fit. The shrinking size of the Native population eventually turned into a pathway for the Islands to be annexed as an official U.S. state. As an official state, the Native voice became extremely weak in the American court system. Many claims brought to the judiciary system by Natives were not accepted, and on the rare case that a court heard the plea of Natives, they were very often dismissed as unimportant, or “frivolous.” (30). There was no dealing with cultural differences when the American government dealt with Hawaii, instead there was a constant encroaching on the land with copious methods of removal. Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, has the most unique situation compared to that of the Native Hawaiians and Native Americans. Unlike the two ground, the inhabitants of Puerto Rico did not suffer from mass genocides, or massive land removal. Instead of the American government aiming at completely replacing the Puerto Rican demographic, the government took strategic and coercive methods at acculturation; a plan to Americanize the Puerto Rican identity. The American government had a goal of turning the Caribbean island into a capitalist, consumerist land that idolized the mainland. American propaganda was placed into the commercial advertising. Symbols of the Puerto Rican identity, such as the Puerto Rican flag and salsa music was pasted into many of the advertising campaigns of American corporations that superficially connected Americana imagery to Hispanic identity. In addition to the subtle subliminal messages, blatant laws were put in place to forcefully alter Puerto Rican culture. In 1902, the American government made the English language the official language of the island despite the extremely low percentage of speakers. Changing their language while filling their commercial images with American-fused symbolism were all desperate attempts of using law to modify a different culture. The American government has a very repetitive history of intolerance towards diversity. With mass genocide, forceful removal and assimilation, law was not the great equalizer but a tool of exploitation. In the face of American law and cultural diversity, law did nothing but exacerbate an unequal scale.