Hi, question for you as an American. Why do some Native American nations have reservations so far away from their traditional territories? Like I know the Lenape traditionally inhabited New York, so why do they have a reservation all the way in Oklahoma? As far as I know, no Indigenous peoples in Canada were dispossessed that far away from their traditional territories, Like most reserves seem to at least somewhat close to their traditional territories here in Canada.
So I definitely won’t have the most thorough answer but I can do my best!
Most displacement happened when white colonists began to push them out of the “desirable” areas where they wanted to live instead. Since the United States was so huge, a lot of the idea was that white people could just move them out of the way. The United States government, especially under Andrew Jackson, also viewed that land as “theirs” so therefore they didn’t want Native Americans living there since that would mean we hadn’t acquired it. And since for a while most white colonialism was concentrated on the East coast, that was a big part of the push of getting that Eastern nations pushed to the center of the States. If you end up wanting to google anything specific, The Trail of Tears was a monumentally tragic event that really highlights what happened. In this displacement too, it was a pretty easy way to force different tribes into exposure and starvation without white people having to use up resources or something heinous like that. While then it opened the land that white people wanted for themselves and pretend that somehow they were being “generous” by just sending them another place to live lol. Which of course, isn’t generous at all and we followed it up by massacring so many nations as it is.
So obviously the ridiculously short answer is racism but I think like a lot of United States style racism, it first starts in “well if we can just push this problem out of sight it won’t effect us” which then merged into “well we have to get rid of you somehow.” As colonial greed expanded, I think that was a large part of what pushed them to use displacement. And then as people realized we could expand where we lived, it just encouraged more and more displacement. So it’s very much a combination of greed and the racism of not wanting to even deal with Native tribes, followed up by deciding to control them.
