Author Archives: Stephen Carr Hampton

About Stephen Carr Hampton

Stephen Carr Hampton is an enrolled citizen of Cherokee Nation, an avid birder since age 7, and a former resource economist for the California Department of Fish & Game, where he worked as a tribal liaison and conducted natural resource damage assessments and oversaw environmental restoration projects after oil spills. He writes most often about Native history and contemporary issues, birds, and climate change.

Migrating to Substack

Posted on December 24, 2024 by Stephen Carr Hampton

This blog, combined with The Cottonwood Post, my other blog more focused on birds, climate change, and other environmental issues, will be slowly moving to my new Substack. It offers more options for the reader and is easier to manage … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The many voices that called for Native genocide: A collection of quotes from the United States

Posted on December 5, 2024 by Stephen Carr Hampton

Below is a collection of quotes, mostly from politicians and newspapers, calling for or describing the genocide of Native Americans, from 1832 to 1891. That word didn’t evolve until the Holocaust. In the 1800s, the word was simply “extermination.” On … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged ethnic cleansing, extermination, genocide, Holocaust, indians, native americans, Native history, redskins, US history, William Clark | 4 Comments

The Whiteness of Audubon’s Snowy Egret

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Stephen Carr Hampton

Nicolas Mirzoeff’s essay, The Whiteness of Birds, brought my attention to this painting. There are layers here that probably tell us more about people than the about the ecology of the bird – about white history, white nature, white autonomy, … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged Audubon, black-history, haiti, print, Rice Hope Plantation, slavery, snowy egret | 2 Comments

Book Review: Rebecca Nagle’s ‘By the Fire We Carry’ burns bright

Posted on November 8, 2024 by Stephen Carr Hampton

Like Rebecca Nagle, I remember that Monday morning in July, 2020, glued to my laptop, waiting for news from SCOTUSblog. My first indication of the McGirt decision was a tweet from Nagle exclaiming that Gorsuch authored the decision. That was … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged book review, By the Fire We Carry, Cherokee, history, Indian removal act, indigenous, McGirt, native american, native americans, Native history, Rebecca Nagle, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Trail of Tears | Leave a comment

Women Leaders Are An Indigenous Tradition; Is It Time for a Woman US President?

Posted on October 27, 2024 by Stephen Carr Hampton

My essay, published Oct 9, 2024 by Native News Online, dives into the long tradition of women in social and political leadership roles in Indigenous societies, from time immemorial to the present. It can be found at the hyperlink above.

Posted in my own thoughts, news | Tagged history, leadership, Nancy Ward, Native America, Native News Online, tribes, women | Leave a comment

Another Native mass burial site hidden in plain sight

Posted on October 20, 2024 by Stephen Carr Hampton

Last week I saw one of the largest mass burial sites in the United States. It is unmarked. The location is the fields among the rolling hills and gentle pastures just south of Charleston, Tennessee. This is where 9,032 Cherokees … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged Cherokee, concentration camp, detachments, ethnic cleansing, Fort Cass, genocide, georgia, history, mass burial, mass grave, NAGPRA, native americans, stockade, Tennessee, Trail of Tears | 8 Comments

Indian Removal and the Black Belt: Connecting ethnic cleansing and slavery

Posted on October 2, 2024 by Stephen Carr Hampton

The 100-million-year story of the Black Belt, a crescent-shaped swath from Virginia to Louisiana, has been told many times – how a geological formation from the Cretaceous, visible today in the dark soils it created, can be seen in the … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged Black Belt, black-history, By the Fire We Carry, ethnic cleansing, Indian removal act, plantations, Rebecca Nagle, slavery, Trail of Tears | Leave a comment

Sky Woman vs The Hillbilly: An Indigenous critique

Posted on July 27, 2024 by Stephen Carr Hampton

The contradictions of JD Vance are well-known. He once called Trump “a bad man, a morally reprehensible human being.” Now he’s allied with Trump. He claims to come from a poor region, yet embraces policies that will further exploit and … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged appalachia, hillbilly, hillbilly elegy, Indigenous Critique, j-d-vance, JD Vance, matriarch, sky woman, trump, women | 4 Comments

Revelations about the Revolution: The Freedom to Steal Land from “Merciless Indian savages” was Key to the Declaration of Independence

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Stephen Carr Hampton

My essay, published this morning (July 4, 2024) by Native News Online and Yahoo News, explores a central thesis in Ned Blackhawk’s award-winning book, The Rediscovery of American – that the American Revolution was primarily motivated by the desire to … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged Declaration of Independence, ethnic cleansing, ethnostate, genocide, merciless Indian savages, Native American history, Ned Blackhawk, Nick Estes, Rediscovery of America, taxation without representation, US history | 1 Comment

Twenty-nine years: How long it took Americans to decimate the whales, and for the Makah to get a permit to (almost) resume hunting

Posted on June 29, 2024 by Stephen Carr Hampton

You may have heard that the US government will now allow the Makah Tribe to hunt whales again. Not quite. The US will now allow the Tribe to “enter into a cooperative agreement under the Whaling Convention Act.” After that, … Continue reading →

Posted in news | Tagged bureaucracy, Deepwater Horizon, eis, IWC quota, makah, MMPA waiver, NOAA, permit, whales, whaling | Leave a comment