By Aheli Moitra
The United States of America has a proud history. Emancipation and democracy are buzz words that have become closely knit to popularly held ideas of America.
Yet, many are aware that North America is a story tied to colonisation—of white migration to the lands of Native Americans, plundering and stealing that land, bringing slaves to the continent to build a robust capitalism and finally bullying migrants of any other colour from entering and benefitting from that system.
A small state in the continent’s north east, the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, still retains colonial colour in its name, with only parts of the State attributed to its ancestor, the Narragansett. The motto of the State is ‘Hope,’ with its symbol being a ship’s anchor. It is no co-incidence that up until the 18th century, shipping of black slaves by white merchants was a favoured mode of capital exchange and control—a ship called ‘Hope’ remained a violator of emancipation laws well after they were enacted.
The indigenous people of the space now called Rhode Island were treacherously pitted against each other till most of them became too weakened to protect their lands. In the modern democratic State, the native Narragansett people gained recognition as a “tribe” only in 1983 after a strenuous battle with the white run government.
The University of Rhode Island has a football ground at its centre that is said to be atop a Narragansett Indian burial ground—a University legend pits this unregistered guilt as the reason behind the University’s football team never quite reaching the mark despite its good players, training facilities or prayer. The land, on which the University stands today, narrated a white person from Rhode Island, was “owned” by a white family that grew potatoes on it.
When potatoes began to give unreasonable capital returns, they were replaced by grass—acres of it was grown to be exported for capital till finally sold to provide for education. Few Americans of indigenous origin study at this University.
Struck by poverty, and made completely dependent on the State, Native Americans have little choice but to either take the unfair opportunities created for a few of them by the white government or just remain in their underdeveloped reservations run to the best of their capacity by Tribal Councils.
Farther across the world, another indigenous people have fared far better, particularly due to a strategy that came to be called Naga nationalism. Very early into their battle against colonisers, the Naga people came together to articulate, and fight for, their dignity as a free people. Today, however, this sense is being increasingly replaced by an airtight notion of State driven identity brought about in 1960—an ever expanding political umbrella for the (physically, socially, politically, culturally) marginalised has been reduced to “us” and “them” questions.
These cases stand to be compared not because the indigenous people of the lands may have been similar but the processes of colonisation are.
Today, violent repression has been replaced by the seemingly docile Aadhar card; wet terrace rice cultivation has been replaced by rubber. Any scheme pushed by the centre is gobbled up for monetary returns—formal education has been marching down the same path, as is informal education through television, internet or radio.
300 years ago, perhaps the Native American did not find any harm in collaborative raids with the much stronger white militia. In-fighting, disharmony or land exchanged for other capital may have been seen to be a natural process of co-existing with the new coloniser. Alas, this has not paid off for the indigenous American community in the long run. Farther across the world, will the Nagas continue to fare better in the upcoming future?
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