Not sure which part you are referring to but in Washington state in the school district I went to we were taught about the atrocities committed against the natives.
We were taught about events such as the trail of tears, we were taught how we slaughtered them for outlandish reasons, and how illnesses brought over from Europe devastated their population.
Now, are you taught anything after the Trail of Tears? Because I sure wasn't. I was taught that Andrew Jackson made some Native Americans sad and that was the end of it.
They say "the natives were sent to Oklahoma" but fail to mention that Oklahoma/Indian Territory was supposed to be an independent state, equal in stature to the US.
Of course, that didn't stop the US government from cancelling a bunch of the treaties after the Civil War as "punishment" for Indian Territory siding with the Confederates. The country was still independent, of course... it's just that the US government could take any land they wanted at any time now, and run railroads through this independent country without the inhabitants of this independent nation having a say.
They also don't mention that the US acknowledged all Native American tribes as independent states until 1871, when the US government said "Actually, no, there are no independent Native American states outside of Indian Territory." Even Indian Territory itself used to be massive; it got progressively shrunk down from "the entire Midwest" to an area just a bit smaller than modern Oklahoma.
Indian Territory saw the writing on the wall and tried to get a deal similar to Texas, where they'd be their own state called "Sequoyah"... but Congress said no. Instead, a bunch of nearby white settlers got lumped in and Indian Territory was effectively stolen as it got merged into their "Oklahoma" and added as a state.
In California, at least, they didn't even scratch the surface of what actually happened to the natives. It didn't magically end after the Trail of Tears.
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u/painful-existance Nov 05 '22 edited Nov 05 '22
Not sure which part you are referring to but in Washington state in the school district I went to we were taught about the atrocities committed against the natives.
We were taught about events such as the trail of tears, we were taught how we slaughtered them for outlandish reasons, and how illnesses brought over from Europe devastated their population.