Tag Archives: Trail of Tears

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

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

My badass great-grandmothers and the power of Native women

Posted on January 7, 2023 by Stephen Carr Hampton

Women have always occupied positions of strength and respect across Native America. For starters, most tribes were matrilineal. This generally meant that when a couple marries, the husband moved into the woman’s town and joined her family. Her brothers, the … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged Andrew Jackson, Cherokee, detachment, grandmother, Indian Territory, indigenous, Nancy Ward, Native women, Pocahontas, Power of Native Women, Richard Fox Taylor, Susannah, Trail of Tears | Leave a comment

The Pioneers were bad guys

Posted on May 29, 2022 by Stephen Carr Hampton

One thing about “the pioneers” as we call them in the US — they were essentially white renegade militias, operating outside of US law, who sought to ethnically cleanse the land for their own acquisition. And that’s the opinion of … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged Cherokee, colonists, crockett, Daniel Boone, ethnic cleansing, Franklin, frontier, genocide, gun culture, history, indians, John Wayne, Little House on the Prairie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Oregon Trail, pioneer, pioneers, settlers, Trail of Tears, white savages, white supremacy | Leave a comment

Reflections of a Native birder: The one Indian killer bird name I really have trouble with

Posted on June 6, 2021 by Stephen Carr Hampton

As a citizen of Cherokee Nation and a birder for nearly fifty years, I offer these thoughts on the burgeoning discussion to re-name birds that are named after people. When people say they are used to the current bird names … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged Abert, aos, bird names, bird names for birds, Cherokee, Clark, Couch, Native birders, Scott's Oriole, Sibley, Townsend, Trail of Tears, winfield scott | 51 Comments

Erasure, white fragility, and the verbal monuments of bird names: Should we hold people in the past accountable to present-day mores?

Posted on June 4, 2021 by Stephen Carr Hampton

When addressing historic wrongs, and especially memorials that honor people that perpetrated historic wrongs, a common challenge is: Should we be holding these people accountable according to modern values and mores? There are two big problems with this question. Almost … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts | Tagged accountable, aos, aou, bird names, bird names for birds, Cherokee, honorific, indians, mcCown, memorials, mores, native american, parisorum, Scott's Oriole, statues, Trail of Tears, verbal monuments, white fragility, winfield | 2 Comments

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 14th District: Where the Trail of Tears began

Posted on January 30, 2021 by Stephen Carr Hampton

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 14th District in the northwest corner of Georgia lies in the center of the lands the Cherokee Nation was forced to vacate at gunpoint during the horrific ethnic cleansing known as the Trail of Tears. Greene is … Continue reading →

Posted in news | Tagged Andrew Jackson, Cherokee, ethnic cleansing, genocide, Marjorie Taylor Greene, pioneers, racism, removal, settler colonialism, Trail of Tears, trump, white supremacy | 5 Comments

Intergenerational supremacy: The straight line from pioneers to poor white support for Trump

Posted on November 8, 2020 by Stephen Carr Hampton

While I’m tremendously relieved that Biden won the election, I remain terrified. Why did 71 million people vote for Donald Trump in 2020, even more than in 2016? By now, we all knew that the draft-dodging, pussy-grabbing, bankrupt, tax cheating, … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts, news | Tagged 2020, Bacon's Rebellion, Chivington, Custer, de Tocqueville, election, ethnic cleansing, genocide, grant, intergenerational trauma, manifest destiny, massacres, Metzl, mound builders, moundbuilders, pioneers, racism, Sand Creek, sheridan, socialism, Trail of Tears, trump, wedge, white supremacy | Leave a comment

How reparations could work: Using the US’s past affirmative action for whites as a model

Posted on April 9, 2019 by Stephen Carr Hampton

Reparations for on-going injustices against Native and African Americans are entirely feasible. Historic government programs for white people serve as a model. The giant Monopoly game Imagine the US economy thru history as a giant Monopoly game. In the beginning, … Continue reading →

Posted in my own thoughts, news | Tagged african american, Black Hills, blacks, Bundy, Cherokee, citizenship, discrimination, FHA, gi bill, homestead act, indians, jubilee, lakota, life expectancy, mining law, monopoly, native americans, naturalization act, preemption, redlining, reparations, Sioux, slavery, socialism, Supreme Court, Trail of Tears, unions, white privilege, white supremacy | Leave a comment