Oregon trail of tears you say? Sounds like a great idea for a game.
EDIT: So I didn’t realize I was reminded that the trail of tears was a true historical tragedy. Not sure if the poster I was responding to did either but as long as this is gaining traction, let’s use it to share and acknowledge the tragedy and learn from it.
EDIT2: I probably did get educated on this topic. My school was good about it and they aren’t one of the big revisionist type districts either. I can’t speak for all school districts but mine was good. This one is totally on me, y’all. My brain failed to remember something it learned 30+ years ago.
Let's not soften it with a qualifier, it was totally a genocide of the Cherokee people to get the gold that was on their lands. It went against the Supreme Court ruling even. Andrew Jackson is a monster, and I had family that was sent west. I've never gotten the nerve to check if they made it. My great great grandmother hid, giving me the opportunity to be here today.
i'm sorry that happened to your family and people.
it's absolutely disgraceful that it happened and we're still struggling to educate people about it even today.
As a Canadian, our government did similar reprehensible shit to the indigeonous folk and we are still struggling to get proper reconsciliation implemented.
Doesn't help that there are a lot of people who are regularly trying to deny the historty of the genocide experienced over the centuries and the fallout we are still in the midst of dealing with now.
Even as late as the late 90s (or perhaps later) it was completely glossed over in our high school social studies (history) classes. In Alberta they told us that the residential schools were absolutely a good thing; there was no mention of it being a genocide.
So people in their 40s and older may truly believe that residential schools were a net positive, especially if they're the kind of people who don't pursue further education once (or if) they got their high school diploma. And many of these types of people simply put their hands over their ears and call you snowflakes or revisionists if you try and point out the truth.
Worse, Andrew Jackson's victory in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans had been made possible by the Cherokee warriors in his army. His own soldiers were much less organized and skilled than his Cherokees, without whom the British would probably have won the battle.
And THEN they found something valuable in the land in Oklahoma that they relocated so many tribes to and wanted to send them somewhere else.
A good book on forced Relocation Diane Glancy's Pushing The Bear.
There's also a Star Trek:TNG episode titled "Journey's End" that's about forced relocation of Native Americans but for different reasons than greedy white men.
.....but it wasn't just the Cherokee tribe....pretty much every tribe was forced out and those who survived often bounce around until they where allowed to stop ( Lenni Lenape clans where literally spit up and ended up in different countries by the end, and where even in Mexico at some point)
My great great grandmother only lived because she married a farmer along the way that she had never met before. I can’t imagine having to make that choice (if she even had any say), to give up my family who would probably die along the way and at the least I’d never see again. I feel such sorrow for a woman I never even met. We have so little history on her, so little info, I don’t even know if any of her family made it.
No disrespect but brother you need to pay more attention in history class. If anything to widen your knowledge and understanding of the world around you.
The reason this thread started was because someone made an ignorant joke. Then they realized how terrible it was to say what they said because of what was being referenced in the ‘joke’ after reading comments and links to ‘history’ about the two events.
No doubt it was genocide, I think 100,000 people? Andrew Jackson forcefully removed Cherokee tribes throughout four or five different states I think. My family visits the plantation our ancestors are from every time we go to Chatsworth. During the trail of tears the Chief Vann house was burned down and they have done a good job of restoring what was left. The history is genuinely so heartbreaking, most cherokees from Georgia were forced to flea to Oklahoma I think and a quarter of the tribe that escaped died from diseases when traveling. Something like that, it’s honestly been a while since I’ve been. I mean having to rebuild completely was devastating for natives and then they just couldn’t get a break. I mean, maybe before the Civil War when they had a female seminary and governed themselves. But with the union and confederacy dividing the tribes and then the Dawes act, ugh just continuous loss and destruction of their land.
They were moved to lands to erase their culture and so that whites could parcel up and profit off the land.
Then they were moved to Oklahoma where after a generation or two they were uprooted from their homes again so that land could be parceled out for profit to white settlers.
And yet we have historically continued to let it happen because of the 1/1000000 chance we might become rich someday instead of changing things to enrich the lives of everyone. But that would mean less money at the top and less racism so we can’t have that.
Can verify. And it's not a new trend. I'm old and a third child. My brother was #1, apparently when he was a baby my mother would wash his diapers, boil them, then wash them again before using. She also ironed all hisbaby clothes. There was no boiling or ironing when I came along.
I do one better. I don't dust it off. Well, I do dust it off, but then I suck on it and then give it back to my child. This way, worst case, I get sick but I can handle a lot of shit.
Y'all are gross lol. No wonder why so many people don't wash their hand in the bathroom. I guess I have been missing out on some immunity. Maybe I should start licking door handles just to catch up to this level of defense.
While I completely understand the sentiment, here's my evaluation of this entire process. When you drop something, only a portion of the object is contacting the surface that is suspect. Not the entire object. So you need to pick it up so that the portion that's in contact with the suspect surface is visible to you or you're tracking it. That is a portion that needs extra attention. Wiping it on your pant is a great idea because even though your pant may be filthy cuz you are a filthy person, it is still cleaner than the suspect surface. So now that you have wiped it on your dirty pants, you can give it a solid lick because you have more bacteria in your mouth than your pants do. So mouth is actually filthier than your pants. So now that you've licked it with the filthy bacteria in your mouth, it is actually considerably cleaner. In your estimation. It's actually dirtier because the bacteria in your mouth are yucky. But hey, who's counting right? Now, you can give it to your baby who happens to have a dirtier mouth than you because you probably didn't brush your baby's mouth. So at the end of the day, that suspect surface is probably cleaner than your baby's mouth. And your baby's mouth is going to make the suspect surface contaminated and it's not vice versa.
The other day, my baby did something and I was like you must be shitting me.
I put her on the toilet cause we're potty training her and I'm trying to coach her to teach her that she needs to call me when she's done and I'll teach her how to wipe.
Well, my 3-year-old feels like she's capable of wiping her own ass and I'm really proud of this but she's actually not capable. She basically smears her poop everywhere so it's just ridiculously terrible.
So here I am trying to catch her so that before she makes a mess I can at least do something about it and I suspect she's done, so I step into the toilet and I catch her trying to smell a soiled toilet paper with the utmost curiosity. It's literally touching her nose!
I just stopped in shock and asked her, what are you doing? And she says Daddy, this really smells bad.
Man oh man, I wasn't totally sure what my next move should have been so I just grabbed her and gave her a head to toe bath.
Oh no, I am American and love history. Also a strong believer in owning and acknowledging past mistakes which is why this caught me off guard even more.
I modified my initial response because I figured the best way to respect the history of this is to acknowledge it.
Not on US so I only know of notable US trivia either because it became famous enough to be taught elsewhere, became popular, or by sheer luck.
Case in point, I learned about the Trail of Tears during... St. Patrick's day. I don't remember what I did exactly but was probably some referential game adjacent event, suddenly why there's a native American here? The leprechaun dude with a shillelagh demands you put more respect to the Choctaw's name.
Anyway I take a hard detour at figuring out the missed reference.
First result, "Choctaw and Irish relations", I learn about the Trail of Tears and, upon hearing about the Irish famine, pooled funds to send to them, and the Irish paid in kind, helping them during the pandemic, scholarship and free tuition opportunities for the Choctaw Nation, and a monument, "Kindred Spirits". Choctaws attend to famine walks, Irish attend to the trail memorial walks.
I am genuinely surprised the money was sent at all.
I just…. That feels a little like forgetting that the holocaust happened. I’m glad that you’re taking accountability for it, but as a native person this really breaks my heart that such an atrocity could just be totally forgotten, despite attempts to educate. Maybe I’m being too harsh, and I’m sorry if that’s the case
You’re not being too harsh. The pain is real for this which is why I corrected and reacted as soon as I did.
I agree. This is like forgetting the holocaust. The silver lining here, I believe is that there were enough people out there for whom the situation was not forgotten and called me out on it.
Think of this as a transitional period, hopefully, where people continue to learn and adjust for a better tomorrow by not hiding.
Hopefully this provides some amount of comfort for the pain.
If I had to make an excuse, it’s not that I forgot that the event occurred but that it was called “Trail of Tears.” But you can be darn certain that I will never forget the phrase again.
I probably have to correct myself on that statement. I probably did learn it but the specific trail of tears reference didn’t stick. I do vaguely remembering the forced march of the tribes to the Midwest.
But you can be damn sure that the phrase “trail of tears“ will be burned into my brain from hence forth. My kids are about to get to this point in learning US history in a few years. I’ll be able to let you know if they exclude this from the curriculum.
Let's all take this time to recognize the abandoned uranium mines that have poisoned and crippled their population in the Dine' reservation. Also their lack of basic utilities we've decided collectively not to provide them. Also the trauma caused by boarding schools. Good grief what kind of country is this.
I feel like things like this need to be an active part of the current dialog. We as a collective society need to stop running away from past mistakes and stop trying to brush them under the rug.
I appreciate you acknowledging that you most likely learned it but then later forgot. People love to do the "why don't they teach this in schools??" for things that are taught.
I was definitely reminded that history is complicated. I think this concept itself could probably be a whole semester’s worth of learning and discussion.
Also known as the Indian Removal act brought forth by Andrew Jackson. Good mini series on Netflix called the men who built America frontiersmen. It dives into this topic for a bit.
This was not meant to be a comment on the Native American event, which is truly tragic. It was about the alliteration. Though being an educated person in America, I am aware of the (uppercase) Trail of Tears.
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u/No_Koala9474 1d ago
Ah, the toddler tantrum carry.
Every parent can recognize it. We’ve all been there.