by Alexzandria Heath
Last Tuesday, we had a special speaker, Robert Valencia Jr. He was an Instructor from the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. He talked about the westward expansion and how it has affected our society today. Mr. Morey from American government invited him over to teach his class.
Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull “Inter Caetera” which gave authorization to Spain to colonize Americas and its Native people as subjects, convert, and enslave in 1493. This is what led to the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1949 issuing an agreement between Spain over lands newly discovered or explored by Christopher Columbus. This affected Native Americans because the government took over their lands without asking.
In 1851, the U.S. government attempted to negotiate peace with native tribes by assigning designated lands under protection of the Treaty of Fort Laramie. This meant that there was peace between the government and the natives. It was shortly broken when they started hunting resources on their sacred land. It lead to a second Fort Laramie treaty which combined the reservations and cut the land initially designated to the tribes by the government. In 1823, the Supreme Court rendered Native Americans to have no power granting their land to only the government and no one else.
In 1831, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia stated that Indians were second class and didn’t have a say in what the government does to their lands. The year following Worchester v. Georgia stated that Native American were controlled by the federal government. Native tribes at the end of the 19th century decreased in size of the reserved lands and declined in population. There was a rumor that gold and natural resources were produced on their lands. So the government decided to investigate. By the late 1800s mining companies invaded the tribal lands to mine for gold in the Black Hills, Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. This pushed the Native American tribes further in reservations.
Native tribes still continue to struggle in the 21st century to maintain their lands from the federal government. They fight to preserve their lands because there has been invasion of pipelines and oil drilling. The pipeline plan, also referred to as Keystone XL Pipeline, affected 38 local tribal territories. They attempted to save their lands by making a declaration in opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline. The TransCanada, on the other hand, provided 9,000 new American jobs, increased government revenue, and it would be one of the safest pipeline ever constructed in the U.S. this company was trying to help out the native Americans. In the end this all leads back to how we treat our land and planet. We have so many things we could do to save it: reduce, reuse, recycle, and conserve our water. In reality we are too lazy to save it. There was a recent issue with our water. There were chemicals and contaminants found in tap water line causing people to get cancer. If we keep polluting our water, air and planet, the next generation to come after us won’t survive long. Our purpose should be to keep our planet alive so we can live longer.
PRA 411 