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In his 1872 painting, American Progress, artist John Gast personifies Manifest Destiny through a collage of images that represents so called civilization of the United States, and the westward expansion of American colonizers led by some lady named Columbia. Armed with a school book and a trail of telegraph wire, modern railway lines in her path, American Progress for settlers was a symbol of hope and prosperity, bringing the light of the colonized East into the perceived darkness and unknown of the West. As settlers and Columbia move forcefully through the land, we see Indigenous men, women, and children, running alongside bear and buffalo in an attempt to save their own lives. What many don’t see, however, is the removal and displacement of Natural Law with the unnatural. Manifest Destiny, a phrase coined by John L O’Sullivan in 1845, drove 19th century U.S. expansion, and held that the United States was destined by God, its advocates believed, to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent. The concept that European settlers were divinely ordained by God towards westward expansion was used to rationalize, through the use of violence and genocidal practices, the removal of the Indigenous from our homelands. On May 28th, 1830, Andrew Jackson signed into federal law the Indian Removal Act emphasizing the importance of expansion, and paving the way for Manifest Destiny. What followed was the most rapid and violent removal of Indigenous peoples in the history of the United States, west of the Mississippi River.
In the thousands upon thousands of years before European contact, Indigenous people of North and South America lived in perfect harmony with Mother Earth, where the land gave us life, and we never took more than we needed. Our ancestors were one with the land, and we maintained this balance as a matter of ceremony since the beginning of time. Our languages and traditional ways were born of the land, and we were chosen to be the caretakers to all that gives us life. The elements of this peaceful balance have always included food, water, medicine, air, shelter, music, language, light, sound, dress, and The People. This was and is Natural Law, bestowed upon our people by Creator before it was interrupted by a group of invaders and an ideology that thought of themselves as above the land. This is the fundamental difference between colonial systems and Indigenous lifeways. While the majority of our people share a deep respect and appreciation for our natural environment, most others lack the understanding of balance that have kept our people healthy and thriving for thousands of years. As the traditional lifeways of our people and lands have been replaced with the destructive and unsustainable foreign law of the invaders, our once peaceful and healthy lifeways have been replaced with sickness and greed of an inferior Western civilization. In the process, our Mother has become very sick, very tired, and it is up to us to make Her healthy once again.
Reflecting again on Natural Law, rooted in Traditional Indigenous Knowledge, and the failed experiment that is Manifest Destiny, we are reminded daily that it has always been an unhealthy and unsustainable cycle that continues its assault on all people and the next seven generations. But in this cycle, just like the seasons, a renewed and refreshed sense of spirit will rise again. In 1872, John Gast painted a picture called American Progress. Fast forward 154 years and the landscape we once saw is now completely unrecognizable. In those waters to the east there you have extreme pollution that’s poisoned our river creatures, and dams that keep the fish from coming home to us. In those mountains to the west, you have increasing temperatures and melting snow caps that produce less and less water to our watersheds. The irrigated farms you see, and those far off fields have been replaced with lithium mines and data centers, horses and wagons replaced with a billion pollution pumping automobiles, and beyond that, an oil pipeline extending a thousand miles has just burst spilling a hundred thousand gallons of oil into the ground. And beyond that still, there is a ray of light. It is 100 million Indigenous descendants, charging back over those hills, warhooping and armed with the spirit of our ancestors coming to take our land back. And so our work continues…
Nic Sanford Belgard
Indigenous Peoples Power Project
