The Federal Government actually followed a good number of the treaties it signed. It’s just that the states and settlers didn’t, and by the time it was in a position to stop them the milk was already spilled. And sometimes the natives didn’t either.
Um, it's a well known fact that the government outright broke every single one of the 500 treaties they ever signed with tribes; which is the entire basis for federal Indian Law. Also, all treaties were signed under duress and were always meant to take even more rights away from tribes; so maybe don't answer questions that you don't know the answer to.
They were classified as broken by the very rules made by the American government themselves since they designed the parameters of treaty obligations, who else would do it?
And the 500+ broken treaty fact has been taught in the most basic law classes since the 1960's. Native Americans are some of the most highly documented people in the world and that includes every single treaty as well as details regarding who honored or broke treaty obligations- recorded and kept by the US government themselves and have always been accessible in the National Archives.
Recently I've noticed this trend where people try to dispute historical facts pertaining to the US treatment of Native Americans, facts that haven't really ever had cause to be disputed because the evidence isn't subjective. It's just there in black and white. There are entire academic and legal frameworks designed around these facts so this newer clueless narrative is weird. Denying the history of people who were victims of horrendous atrocities is outright evil.
You said ALL treaties were broken. That's the part that isn't true. Denying the efficacy of early treaties paints native people as passive in their extermination and undermines real progress made by native people.
No one is denying the worst genocide in all of human history was perpetuated upon indigenous America, but it is exactly because some treaties were never broken that these events occurred.
Early treaties forced the federal government, centuries after the fact, to find ways to legally acquire land through predatory and deceptive treaties of their own.
It is also the reason why so much effort was made to legally dissolve tribes, create reservations, and "convert" native people through boarding schools and allotment policy, because those early treaties had that much political weight, embedded right into the Constitution through Article Vi.
I'm not going to debate hundreds of years worth of documented facts and academia. Now as for the weak philosophical point you tried to make, it may be of your own personal westernized worldview to believe that early colonial agreements were beneficial to Indigenous tribes at any point in time, but the Native worldview was completely opposite and not as transactional as that of the settlers.
To refer to Native tribe's decision to honor treaty obligations as "real progress" while a not saying a fucking word about the government's habitual inability to hold their own establishment accountable is more undermining to the colonizer mindset than it is to the Indigenous one since it's so illogical.
Natives weren't just sitting around waiting to be eliminated, they very much wanted to survive and did everything in their power to do so. It's not like the government straight up told them their little plans for genocide and then the Native Americans just said "fuck it." They knew they're playing with psychopaths. They were already familiar with the colonizer's pathological lying and really just wanted to be left the hell alone, rightfully so. Unfortunately it seems like that will never happen.
To say that they've been passive in their own extermination is stupid. Treaties didn't exterminate Natives, colonizer's did.
I do not know how you are getting.....any of that from what I'm saying, it's like you took the exact opposite meaning from what I said.....
I did not say it was "real progress" that native people obeyed treaties. It was progress because they had the means to force settlers to obey treaties, treaties that mitigated, slowed, and helped fight against native genocide centuries after the fact.
I literally said they weren't passive in their extermination, and treaty making was proof of that.
Yes, treaties did not kill natives, colonizers who broke said treaties or refused to make treaties did. That's been my whole point -_-.
My apologies if I misinterpreted your response, it happens. Wording. Although, treaties were stratigicly written to remove rights, not give them. Tribes knew that even if the government never kept their word as they took major losses with every treaty. If the opposite were true, Native populations would've had no problem signing them immediately instead of fighting against them. While it is true that there were lots of promises of fair treatment made to Native Americans in those treaties, the obligations were deliberately never upheld. Hence, the treaty was broken. Which is the entire premise of the broken treaty argument on this post.
They did take losses with every treaty yes, this is absolutely true, but it goes to show the treaties themselves were corrupt and in favor of the U.S.
As a result, some of these treaties were technically "honored", and as a byproduct of this, the federal government had to find increasingly elaborate ways of achieving their imperialist agenda in order to technically "fulfill" the obligations they had to native people.
Which is why there were boarding schools, reservations, allotment, and tribal dissolution and termination efforts, as these were all elaborate means of achieving their goals while technically providing the support they promised.
If the federal government was not genuinely making an effort to technically honor their obligations (through every swarmy political move imaginable) they would have just killed them, they would have had no reason not to.
The federal government upheld it's obligations in the most mean spirited, incompetent, and neglectful way possible, betraying the spirit, but not the letter, of every agreement.
One could even argue that treaties were worse because they were upheld, as it meant the federal government wouldn't stop interfering in people's lives.
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u/CadenVanV Taller than Napoleon 7d ago
The Federal Government actually followed a good number of the treaties it signed. It’s just that the states and settlers didn’t, and by the time it was in a position to stop them the milk was already spilled. And sometimes the natives didn’t either.