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Dr. James W. Thomasson

So, patient readers, where to begin: how about this land is my land or no one here is from here? It is always difficult for educators to know how to broach this subject, unless current regional culture dictates it. Just today, for example, I received a national survey in the mail, wanting my opinion on a left leaning that threatens an honest and balanced (read right-leaning) account of American history. Well, I have always challenged my students to an honest and balanced account, that is an open-minded, objective critical inquiry.

If a little humor can be allowed, I would like to tell you a story about a former colleague and honored scientist, Dr. David Robinson. After an initial period teaching biology as George-town University, he made his way to the National Institutes of Health, and in his latter years was Director of the Human Genome Project, yes, where we all came from. David knew origin was a difficult issue to address with persons with little scientific training and much religion-formed versions. Me he liked to tease with this version: Great grandma to the 2,008th power came off the Serengety looking more like Opray Winfrey than Erik the Red, then slowly moved north through Italy and Greece through eastern Europe, picking up red hair from the Fressian soldiers, then on up to Scandinavia, along the way spreading east, northeast, southeast across that continent to Asia and southeast Asia, then eventually here. This story, of course, avoided an discussion of how those 3.6 million years ago Neanderthals gave us that Great Grandma!

Let me start with scientific and historical objectivity: no one here is from here. Here, of course, means this Continent. Well, unless I missed some scientific discovery that a version of homo sapiens originated on this continent, the first human beings here came from southeast Asia across the Bering Strait some 13 thousand years ago. Of course, they were the come heres, but their immediate offspring are from here, as are any subsequent new born. That is why histor-ical literature calls them native Americans (though that latter word got attached centuries later). Now history gets very complex, because so many more came here after that from else-where through explorations and trading ventures from Alaska, Europe, far northwest Canada, Mexico, etc.

Ironically, as we explore the history of the tribes and their territorial possession of the land, we have to also note that white explorers and traders, mostly from Spain, France, Portugal, England, and northeastern Scandinavia, were present on the Continent (for familiar references: new Mexico, California, Florida, Newfoundland) as early as the 1420s. You can find the lost extensive and trustworthy account of this early history in a thoroughly objective history by a unilaterally informed Native American, Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States, University of Oklahoma Press.

Not surprisingly, once the white man arrived, all the relevant categories of classifi-cation changed: (1) who lives on this land?; (2) who owns this land?; (3) who governs this land? On his first visit, passing down the coast from Newfoundland on his way back to Spain, Colum-bus discovered this native inhabited land. (1490) On his second visit, landing on Hispaniola in 1492, Columbus launched a trafficking of gold from there back to Spain, therewith, as Debo des-cribes, beginning the Spaniards century of exploitation. By 1513 Juan Ponce de Leon, a mem-ber of Columbus first Hispaniola colony, returned back from Puerto Rico, carrying in hand a royal patent to settle new lands and distribute the natives among the colonists. Time moved quickly! Those who lived on the land (that royal patent was a land grant), like the land itself, were now owned and in servitude to the Spanish. This harsh punishment of braves, assault on women, and seizure of wealth continued until 1605, when the French expanded their reach. As Debo denotes, the French learned their languages, mar ried their women, adopted their ways, and converted them (referring to religion) without subjecting them to alien rule.

Oddly, in 1607, the johnny come lately British arrived and things began to change rapidly. The English, given their sustained aggression in various parts of the globe, looked to the developing colonies from New England to Virginia and the Carolinas, south to Florida, and west to the Ohio Valley, and far west in Arizona and California as footholds of a new nation under British authority. The wars between native tribes, as they sought to preserve their lands by opening a new friendship with French, Spanish, and slowly developing colonies of mixed national origin along the eastern coast to the Ohio Valley, were slowly part of a developing new nation. As the colonies worked to free themselves from British authority by forming states and seeking united actions, they also looked to ways to shrink the land mass held by native tribes. The temporary culmination of that effort is captured in President Andrew Jacksons seventh annual address to Congress on December 7, 1835. Noting that all the tribes on the east side of the Mississippi, stretching from Michigan to Florida had been engaged for transplantation, he notes: The plan for their removal and reestablishment is founded upon the knowledge we have gained of their character and habits and has been dictated by a spirit of enlarged liberality. Indeed, as Jackson notes: A territory exceeding in extent that relinquished has been granted to each tribe.

Our third question, who owns this land, is also the answer to the second question. The natives land is replaced by new land assigned. The action is carried forth by the ones who have authority and practical ownership over all the land by Constitutional decree! Though we started with no one here is from here, we have arrived at everyone here is under the authority of those who govern all the land here. Now we must move on to that other question: In what sense is this land my land?

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Thomasson Series on Education and American Democracy 'Go West, Young Man' Reconsidered: No One Here is from Here' Crookston Times - Crookston Daily...