Joseph Smith Klein 1

Joseph Smith Klein

Ms. Whipple

APUSH

3/16/17

What has been the impact of government policies on Native Americans?

Although the United States was founded on the principle of E Pluribus Unum, out of

many, one, many individuals were far from equal in their societal status. Their lower status was

often the result of preexisting norms and the implementation of policies that resulted in

individuals being restricted to the status held by their forefathers. While stereotypes often

targeted a wide range of individuals, governmental policy was generally used to specifically

persecute a more narrow range of minority groups. The laser focused nature of the policy has had

an especially detrimental impact on Native Americans with some recent exceptions, because of

its long history and multitude of actors.

The first recorded interaction between Native Americans and Europeans was in 1492

when columbus made landfall in the present day caribbean. These early interactions between

Natives and Spanish explorers were critical as they laid the groundwork for future relations

between Native Americans and the future governments of the Americas. Once they had

established control over their new territories, the Spanish designed a system of governance,

Encomienda, for their new lands that was efficient at extracting resources. This system relied on

grants of land and Native labor which were given to colonists that moved to Spains new lands.

Although highly effective at its intended purpose, the system was controversial in certain
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segments of Spanish society most notably the clergy. In APUSH, we examined this controversy

through the form of an SAQ, which required us to analyze letters by Bartolome de las Casas,

supporter of indigenous rights, and Juan Gines de Sepulveda, advocate for the Encomienda

system. My analysis of their letters revealed that despite their competing viewpoints on the

matter they both claimed that theirs was supported by the greater good, God. The greater good

would become a common explanation for policies that impacted Native Americans, regardless of

the nature of it.

In the mid and late 18th century, the Britain's colonies in the Americas launched a

successful revolt, which would result in the formation of country that would eventually become

the premier power on the continent, the United States. Support for this revolt was not universal

with a large part of the population being neutral on the matter and a vocal minority publishing

the arguments for and against the revolt. For the AP exam, we were assigned a Document Based

Question essay over this subject, which required us to analyze primary sources from the era.

These sources reveal that the leaders of both sides focused little on the impact that independence

would have on Native Americans. This apathy towards Native Americans among the new

nations leading minds in politics resulted in the crafting of policy that saw them as parts of the

environment rather than as individuals. In the mid 18th century, the policy of neglect and

relocation towards Native Americans sparked a revolt by the Lakota people. Although the revolt

was a failure and numerous members of the tribe were brutally punished, it revealed the nuance

of the relationship between the government and native people. One, such, individual, John Nix,

recognized in his memoir, that we briefly analyzed in APUSH for our Dakota War mini project,

the emotions of fear and anger on both were justifiable the actions committed were not. The
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nuance he brought attention towards was largely ignored by Americas political class, who

continued, expanded, and or drew up policies that aimed to repress Native Americans and their

culture. Similar to the Encomienda system of Spains colonies, these policies, such as boarding

schools, were framed through the distorted lense of the greater good, in order to hide their true

insidious nature.

The late 60s and early 70s saw an explosion of Native American activism and protests

(Like a Hurricane). They began in the last years of the Johnson administration, which we learned

on our trip to his presidential library worked to improve the lives of those marginalized by

society. These programs, established with the purpose of serving the greater good, marked a shift

from programs that destroyed their culture, boarding schools, to ones that, as we learned on our

learning expedition, facilitated its preservation, Headstart. Despite a shift to policies that

improved the lives of many Native Americans, younger members of the community launched the

protest movement in order to accelerate the improvements and to receive recognition for the

historic and contemporary abuse they have suffered from their government and fellow citizens.

Election of the conservative, law and order, president Richard Nixon meant that many of their

demands fell on deaf ears, since he had been elected to halt the unrest caused by protests such as

theirs. Although in the years following the Nixon administration Native Americans fell out of the

spotlight, they continued to advocate for policies that will benefit them. On our trip to New

Mexico we learned of one such policy, Dine Natural Resource Protection Act in 2005, which

outlawed many aspects of the uranium extraction industry from occurring on Navajo Nation

land. This represented the greater good swinging to side of Native Americans as it reversed a

policy that had been allowed in order to provide America with the security of nuclear weapons.
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Government as a envisioned by our founding fathers was meant to be an entity that

improved the lives of its citizenry, unfortunately for Native Americans many governmental

policies have traditionally served to hold them back in life. This is the result of a long history of

abuse that established a precedent that their suffering was acceptable if it was for the greater

good of the nation.

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Works Cited

Smith, Paul Chaat, and Robert Allen Warrior. Like a Hurricane. The New Press, 1996,

Accessed August 21 2016.