Retracing Our Paths - Remembering Our Origins
Photo by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz
By Sterling M. Hawkins, LCSW-C, LICSW
D I S P O S S E S S I O N
"Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won,
you earn it and win it in every generation."— Coretta Scott King
Colonial extinction and dispossession have occurred over the past 500 years. Dispossession involves a state where something you have is taken away from you, particularly your home or land, in most cases for the sole purpose of profit. Extraction and exploitation are materially connected. Colonization is a form of unequal exchange and involves those whose inhabitants are controlled by a more powerful country or group that is often far away. Conquest and European colonization between the 15th and 17th centuries brought disease to livestock and to enslaved peoples. When Europeans could not force enough indigenous labor to make colonization profitable they turned to the importation and enslavement of Africans that were violently extracted to supplement other indentured labor. Mass deaths in the 1500s occurred more than at any other time in American history because of disease. Eighty percent of Africans lost their lives resulting from smallpox, tuberculosis, yellow fever, and malaria. While not originally intended, pursuing profit through gold, silver, tobacco, and sugar resulted in genocide. At the very least enslaved Native Americans and Africans were expendable resources whenever their labor failed to generate a profit.
Terra nullus is a Latin term that means— “the land of no one” and refers to a land not under the sovereignty or control of any other state or socially or politically organized grouping. It was based on the Doctrine of Discovery which European explorers used to invade the sovereignty of Indigenous nations confiscate them as vacant and deem these lands and their inhabitants for their country. European explorers from— Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and the Netherlands ventured out in search of conquest and capital from 1492 - 1800. Their desire was for adventure, wealth, gold, silver, land, and commercial crops to increase political power. The use of native indigenous peoples pre-date African slavery. The Spanish invaded the Inca dynasties to mine precious metals from modern-day Columbia. Colonists turned to the continent of Africa to extract Africans in 1619 because indigenous tribal lands were soon exhausted and crops such as sugar, cotton, and tobacco were used to supplement and replace gold and silver to meet the demand for European monarchs at home.
Why Slavery? Indentured servants required payment or other forms of protection that would decrease profits. Originally, the first Africans arrived in the American colonies in 1619. However, slaves from Africa had already arrived in the Caribbean and Latin America in the 1500s, including North, South, and Central America.
Since the purpose of establishing colonies was to make money for royal families, wealthy colonists were set on decreasing the costs associated with producing cash crops. The easy method available was slavery. The quickest way to increase wealth using Indigenous tribes proved difficult because of their vast knowledge of the terrain. Extraction of Africans made it less likely for escape and revolts, allowing colonists to exercise greater control over them. Besides colonists needed to learn the skills of Native peoples to survive. West Africa bordered Europe and American seaports, making slavery— the capture, exchange, and sale of human property more accessible (Project, n.d.).
Terra nullus served as the prologue for intergenerational trauma. Dispossession occurs when any Indigenous people group (Africans and Native peoples) are removed forcibly from their land with subsequent occupation by their oppressor. Or, cession by treaty, whereby the previous government (Chiefs, Clans, Tribes, Councils, and Confederacies) yields power.
African American History, along with Native American history, shares similar stories. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade and The Iconic Trail of Tears that relocated thousands of Native peoples to Oklahoma were an epic tragedy that uprooted Indigenous peoples from their lands. In 1838, the Georgia militia dispossessed the Cherokee from their homeland at gunpoint. Forced to leave most of their belongings behind, they witnessed white Georgians taking ownership of their cabins, looting, and burning prized possessions. They were loaded into stockades and held captive until the militia set out on multiple routes to cross Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas at 10 miles a day with meager rations.
“In addition to bearing the physical and emotional hardship of the trip, enslaved Blacks were enlisted to labor for the Cherokees along the way; they hunted, chopped wood, nursed the sick, washed clothes, prepared the meals, guarded the camps at night, and hiked ahead to remove obstructions from the roads.” (Miles 2012)
Sadly, the Black presence on the Trail of Tears is dismissed by both Blacks and Natives alike. Some Native tribes (Cherokee, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Seminoles) were complicit in denying their role in slave ownership. Some Cherokees insisted that the tragedy rightfully should be theirs alone and not shared with Blacks, A few chose to exclude Blacks (many of whom had Native “blood) from a claim on this history and deny Black descendants from the circle of tribal belonging. (Miles 2012)
Likewise, some African Americans wished to avoid confronting the painful memory of Native peoples’ slave ownership, preferring instead to fondly imagine any Indian ancestor in the family tree and to picture all Native American communities in the South as safe havens for runaway slaves. (Miles 2012)
African American history and Native peoples have intertwined histories involving dispossession. Both experienced the brutal effects of colonization and exploitation by European settlers.
The Trail of Tears (1831-1850) marked the beginning of the forced relocation of Native peoples onto land parceled out by the US Government. During this time, Blacks remained enslaved by the Native tribes or by white settlers until the end of the Civil War ( 1861-1865) and the abolishment of slavery. After the Civil War, some Blacks received land allotments and limited tribal entitlements, depending on the laws of the individual tribes.
The intersectionality of race, gender, and class is critical to understanding the systemic nature of intergenerational trauma among marginalized societies and communities that have experienced dispossession. The effects of dispossession and enslavement have produced impoverishment, degradation, racism, sexism, and physical and mental health issues that never completely resolve but are suppressed, internalized, repackaged, and repeated and passed on to successive generations in ways that are often unclear to those who experience the symptoms.
The late author, feminist, and Civil Rights activist Bell Hooks, when addressing cultural oppression, writes— “I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this— In order to love you, I must make you something else. That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recaste you.” (“Reel to Real Quotes by Bell Hooks,” n.d.)
I believe Hooks is correct. Unless there is redemptive engagement, there is no path forward and no reconciliation. The question white communities must ask themselves is— what are the most effective strategies for eliminating discriminatory practices that keep Blacks and other marginalized groups from experiencing dispossession and becoming re-traumatized? Likewise, Black communities must ask— what practices will preserve our cultural heritage, and promote freedom and equality that will aid our psychological healing and improved mental health?
“Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.” (“Bell Hooks Quotes (Author of All About Love),” n.d.)
______________________________________________
References:
Project, Connected Sociologies Curriculum. n.d. “Connected Sociologies - Colonial Dispossession and Extraction.” https://thesociologicalreview.org/projects/connected-sociologies/curriculum/mmw/colonial-extraction-and-dispossession/.
“https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/25/us/pain-of-trail-of-tears-shared-by-blacks-as-well-as-native-americans/index.html.” n.d. Https://Www.Cnn.Com/2012/02/25/Us/Pain-of-Trail-of-Tears-Shared-by-Blacks-as-Well-as-Native-Americans/Index.Html.
“Reel to Real Quotes by Bell Hooks.” n.d. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/668261-reel-to-real-race-sex-and-class-at-the-movies.
“Reel to Real Quotes by Bell Hooks.” n.d. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/668261-reel-to-real-race-sex-and-class-at-the-movies.“Bell Hooks Quotes (Author of All About Love).” n.d. https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/10697.bell_hooks.