President Jackson: A villain to Indigenous peoples and hero to President Trump
President Jackson: A villain to Indigenous peoples and hero to President Trump
Shekóli ('hello' in Oneida) and yaw^ko ('thank you') for reading the First Nations Wisconsin newsletter.
As he did in his last term, President Trump hung a portrait of his presidential hero, Andrew Jackson, prominently in the Oval Office.
Trump has expressed admiration of Jackson for his populist style of politics.
Jackson served as the nation's seventh president from 1829 to 1837.
Trump also said Jackson was the most politically attacked president before him, weathering all of it and still emerging triumphant.
In Indian Country, Jackson is seen by Indigenous peoples as probably the most villainous of all past U.S. presidents.
He enacted and enforced the Indian Removal Act forcing Indigenous peoples from their lands east of the Mississippi River to make room for slave plantations.
And when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the government had no right and no enforcement power in Cherokee Nation lands in Georgia, Jackson ignored the ruling and said: 'John Marshall has made his decision. Now, let him enforce it.' The quote is apocryphal but sums up Jackson's belief that the Indigenous population was an obstacle to American success, an violence against tribes was preferable to friendship.
The ensuing forced removal became know as the Trail of Tears in which many Indigenous people, including children, died on the forced march by foot to Oklahoma.
'That those tribes cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain,' Jackson said about Indigenous peoples. 'Established in the midst of another and superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.'
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About me
I'm Frank Vaisvilas, the Indigenous affairs reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I cover Native American issues in Wisconsin. You can reach me at 815-260-2262 or fvaisvilas@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank.
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