Homeland

Insatiable Greed

The recent decision by the US Senate to settle the Cobell Indian Trust lawsuit for pennies on the dollar is only the latest in a long series of thefts of American Indian properties by the government of the United States. In fact, that goes back to the very beginning of the country, when George Washington and other rebels fought the British Crown’s restrictions on land speculation in Indian territories. As Doug George-Kenentiio writes, only the Shawnee Confederacy, led by Blue Jacket and Tecumseh, was willing to continue fighting the Americans to keep them out of their homeland. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy chose instead to make a treaty with the United States, thereby foreclosing the only pan-tribal alliance at the time capable of continuing to defeat the US Army. Now days the battles take place in federal courtrooms, corporate boardrooms, and in the media; the only thing that hasn’t changed is the insatiable greed of Americans for Indian land.