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Indian removal :the cherokees,jackson, and the trail of tears
Trail of tears cherokee essay for history
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The Terrorist Attacks and the Cherokee Theory of Violence
Like most Americans, I have spent many moments since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 trying to grasp both the acts themselves and the seemingly endless chain of depressing events following in their wake. Although many have rediscovered faith communities or a renewed social activism in their search for understanding, I have immersed myself in the lessons of Cherokee culture and history. This history teaches me to situate September 11th in the context of other tragedies that have occurred on American soil. For example, as many as 10,000 Cherokee people perished as a result of the forced march to Oklahoma known as the Trail of Tears B or, more accurately, the nuna dat suny, which literally translates as "they were crying in that place." Cherokee oral tradition is replete with stories acknowledging the trauma of what historians euphemistically call "removal", and its physical, spiritual and social wounds may never be completely healed. Other stories, and particularly those in the genre known as origin narratives, illuminate both 9/11 and Removal by enabling the emergence of a distinctly Cherokee critical theory of violence.
One story tells of the time when animals, fishes, insects, plants and humans lived with each other in peace and friendship (see Mooney, pp. 250-252). Eventually, however, humans began to crowd and crush their animal partners out of carelessness and contempt. Even worse, they invented weapons of mass destruction such as the blowgun and the spear that allowed them to kill animals indiscriminately. Each animal nation then called a council and decided to invent diseases inflicting pain and death upon their human victimizers. Under the able leader...
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...ely with one another and lived in peace as partners, the ease of human transgression permits no romanticized view of this Agolden age.@ Finally B and this is a much more fragmentary conceptualization B the story refuses its hearers the luxury of demonizing, suppressing or repressing violence. Violence is not something that others do to us, but something we inflict upon others. The story consequently demands that we confront and internalize deeply the consequences of violence, and in this alone offers a profoundly important model of response.
Works Cited
Arendt, Hannah. On Violence. San Diego, New York and London: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1970
Mooney, James. Myths Of The Cherokee And Sacred Formulas Of The Cherokees: From 19th and 7th Annual Reports B.A.E. Nashville, Tennessee: Charles and Randy Elder‑Booksellers. 1982
Milton, Neil. "Lessons From Rodriguez V. British Columbia." Issues In Law & Medicine 11.2 (1995): 123. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.
In Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee, two American Indians from separate tribes join together to co-author this historically thought provoking portrayal of a time in history when playing by the rules did not work when dealing with minority rights issues. Paul Chaat Smith, a Comanche, and Robert Allen Warrior, an Osage, join forces to create an accurate account of a time when the Native American civil rights movement took center stage television and press coverage. The world watched as Indian militants, American military, and world media covered three key events, which took place in a forty-two month period beginning with the student takeover of Alcatraz in November 1969 to the occupation of the B.I.A. in Washington D.C., and finally ending with the siege at Wounded Knee in May of 1973. Collectively, many books have been written about this particular period in history but from the standpoint of the U.S. government’s failed policies or aggression and repression of Native American rights. Smith and Warrior co-authored the book out of a need to shake off the stereotype that Indian people were either “victims or pawns” in American history.
Native American literature from the Southeastern United States is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the various tribes that have historically called that region home. While the tribes most integrally associated with the Southeastern U.S. in the American popular mind--the FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole)--were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) from their ancestral territories in the American South, descendents of those tribes have created compelling literary works that have kept alive their tribal identities and histories by incorporating traditional themes and narrative elements. While reflecting profound awareness of the value of the Native American past, these literary works have also revealed knowing perspectives on the meaning of the modern world in the lives of contemporary Native Americans.
The Trail of Tears was a horrific time in history for the Cherokee Indians. May 18, 1830 was the beginning of a devastating future for the Cherokee Indians. On that day, Congress officially passed Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act. This policy granted President Andrew Jackson the right to force the Cherokee tribe consisting of about 13,000 people off of their reservations consisting of about 100 million acres east of the Mississippi River in the Appalachian Mountains and to attend a long and torturous journey consisting of about 1,200 miles within nine months until they reached their new home, a government-mandated area within present-day Oklahoma. They left their land which was home to the “Five Civilized Tribes” which were assimilated tribes including, the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminoles.
First, I will look at Arendt’s criticism of violence. She believes that violence is not an idle concept. It needs to be justified by ethics and philosophy and often cannot be referred to without regard to
The Cherokee marched through, biting cold, rains, and snow. Many people died during this trip from starvation, diseases, exposure, and vagaries of unknown terrains. Those who recounted this journey in later years spoke of a trip that was filled with tears borne of immense suffering and deaths during this trip and thus the name Trail of Tears. Modern scholars and champions of human rights have described this event as one of the most notorious genocides during the 19th Century. This paper will therefore attempt to prove that, the Cherokee community suffered human right atrocities from the American government shortly before and during the Trail of Tears.
The architecture of the courtroom establishes clear power disparities within the courtroom setting. The physical dimensions of Courtroom 5.1 were organised in such a way that the hierarchal nature of the court is visually clear from the moment you step into the room. The stratification of power amongst the courtroom actors is displayed through the ‘structural elevation’ of the seating (Carlen, 1976, pp. 50). The magistrate is seated at the uppermost level at the bench facing the defendant, solicitors and public gallery. This particular positioning demonstrates pre-eminence which allows com...
Evaluations are generally concerned with the effectiveness of programs. However, good judgment evaluation has an incredibly extensive chronicle; evaluation research t...
7. Starr, Emmet. History of the Cherokee Indians and Their Legends and Folk Lore. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 2003. Print.
“The story employs a dramatic point of view that emphasizes the fragility of human relationships. It shows understanding and agreemen...
Unconcerned about the legitimacy of their actions, European colonisers took lands unjustifiably from indigenous people and put original inhabitants who had lived on the land for centuries in misery. The United States also shared similarities in dealing with native people like its distant friends in Europe. Besides the cession of vast lands, the federal government of the United States showed no pity, nor repentance for the poor Cherokee people. Theda Perdue, the author of “Cherokee Women and Trail of Tears,” unfolds the scroll of history of Cherokee nation’s resistance against the United States by analyzing the character of women in the society, criticizes that American government traumatized Cherokee nation and devastated the social order of
The pope is therefore reinforcing the inquisitors' power to conduct inquisitions for the sake of "[preventing the] ruin of others who are innocent." He also gives them the power to punish those selling their souls to the devil in return for magic and witchcraft, with imprisonment, and unspecified "correction" and "punishment." This excerpt reveals its Medieval provenance in the fear expressed by its words. Magic and witchcraft were high items for concern in the Middle Ages, which was a foremost religious world, and which put much greater faith in the power of Evil than might be said of our modern times. Magic was considered to be tied to the Devil, and the practitioners of its craft were therefore considered heretics.
In this essay, I will be exploring the notions of violence in Sophocles’ Antigone. In examining these notions, I will be referring to and explaining both Hannah Arendt’s ‘On Violence’ and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Critique on Violence’. By referring to these two political philosophers, key theories and terms relating to violence are discussed and analysed, and the play Antigone is examined in the context of these two essays
Rights have been emphasized as fundamental building blocks of the social order of society. These are both moral/ legal norms, which are aimed at protecting people from various forms of abuse. The idea of human rights is often taken for granted, these human rights fall into two categories; legal and moral. When looking at rights one must consider, whether we have rights, what these rights are, where they come from, what it means to have rights and whether or not they are timeless or context specific. On top of this there are two types of rights that will be looked at in relation to gay rights and others in this essay, these are the Utilitarian idea and the Natural idea.
QUESTION ONE: Hannah Arendt argues for a crucial distinction between politics, which she takes to be the realm of speech, conversation and debate, and violence, which she suggests is ‘speechless’. Others we have studied this term propose something different – that politics and violence are inseparable, and that one invariably entails the other. With direct reference to at least one of the authors considered in Theories of Conflict and Violence, consider the relationship between politics and violence. Hannah Arendt was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. After witnessing the atrocities of both World Wars and the worldwide tension during the Cold War, no concepts or theoretical understandings of the crimes and events that occurred were developed, inciting Arendt to comment on political violence.