Making manifest destiny great again

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March calling for the removal of “improper ideology” from national museums.

Targeting Smithsonian institutions, including the National Museum of the American Indian, the order said it is the Trump administration’s policy to “restore federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage.”

Museums in the U.S. capital, the order states, “should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.”

Johns Hopkins University history Prof. Nathan Connolly remarked on the changes on Facebook in late December after visiting the museum.

“No more Indigenous geography, or Indigenous cosmology,” he wrote.

“The treasured place that had once been a refuge for bearing witness to environmental sustainability, to Indigenous self-regard, to political and cultural expression outside of a U.S. nationalist frame is no more.”

Any student of history knows the United States, and virtually all countries created through European colonization, have perpetrated great harms against Indigenous peoples, unjustly taken Indigenous lands, and left Indigenous nations in economic and social messes that continue today.

Over time, knowledge of this history led to integrating Indigenous peoples, perspectives and even rights into societal policies, practices and laws.

The U.S., like Canada, is certainly not a perfect place. However, no one can deny that increasing knowledge of true history has led to improved relationships, actions and examples of reconciliation.

It has also resulted in backlash.

In his inauguration speech last year, Trump said the U.S. would “pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”

Writer John Louis O’Sullivan coined the term in 1845, when he described a belief, widely held by early Americans, that the U.S. is a culturally, religiously and socially superior society, and a nation chosen by God to inherit and exploit the Earth.

The concept of manifest destiny is a one-dimensional, ethnocentric and racist story built out of righteous nationalism. It is intended to deny, demonize, and empower the destruction of anything and anyone who stands in its way.

But, it’s a powerful story.

Manifest destiny at one time justified to Americans the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the theft of their lands and resources.

It’s an uncomfortable truth, and those who acknowledge it are determined not to let it happen again.

If one controls the story of history in a museum, what else could happen?

On Jan. 3, the U.S. military launched an incursion into Venezuela and captured President Nicholás Maduro.

The act was clearly about opening the way for American oil companies to take possession of the nearly 300 billion barrels of oil reserves. Nearly all those reserves are on Indigenous-held territories, particularly in an area called the Orinoco Belt.

The Wayuú, Warao, Pemón and Añu peoples have lived there for millennia.

While Indigenous rights are recognized in Article 119 of the Venezuelan constitution, international companies and Venezuela’s government have ignored the law and waged violence against Indigenous leaders and their claims.

American companies are certain to do the same thing. The difference is that manifest destiny guarantees God is on the side of the U.S.

This brings me to Trump’s talk of acquiring Greenland, a country where nearly 90 per cent of the population is Inuit (Kalaaliit).

Trump’s desire for Greenland is not for military and security purposes, despite what he says. The U.S. has agreements with Denmark that allow for military bases to be built there virtually anywhere and at any time.

Trump’s interest is in nearly 1.5 million tons of untapped critical minerals such as feldspar, graphite and titanium. They are essential for smartphones, computers and other technology.

Indigenous rights are inherent in Greenland, of course, and the autonomy of the Indigenous-led territory is recognized under Denmark’s Self-Government Act.

Invading Greenland (never mind trying to “buy” it) would be a theft of Indigenous lands not seen since the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre by U.S. soldiers in South Dakota.

It’s no wonder Trump wants to sanitize American history in museums, removing all mention of the atrocities the nation’s government perpetrated against Indigenous people.

His plans are to make manifest destiny great again, and he needs to control the story to do it.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca