Before the coming of the Europeans, the Americas were occupied by diversified indigenous tribes. As an act of survival, the indigenous communities entered into an agreement with the pilgrims who settled on their shores (Kaur, 2020). However, eventually, the rapport between the European and the Native Americans deteriorated, leading to the massacre of the first inhabitants of the USA. The tribe’s lands were also taken. Four hundred years later, the remnants of the tribes are still striving to reclaim their lands and identities (Kaur, 2020). Today, the Native Americans are one of the marginalized group in the United States. In recent times, most media outlets have been outlining the current living conditions of the Native American tribes. While some of the narrations unbiasedly showcases the past and present problems affecting the Native American tribes, there is a significant bias, particularly in stories linked to Pilgrims and the Thanksgiving holiday.
The news media present the Native American community as an ethnic group that suffered historical injustice. Following the coming of the European to the United States, the indigenous tribes were moved from their indigenous lands both forcefully and through treaties that promised them lands elsewhere (Kaur, 2020). However, the current USA community tend not to recognize the Native American suffering. The mistreatment of the indigenous people throughout history has resulted in the loss of their identity and their poor economic conditions. Despite their involvement in US history, some of the tribes are not recognized by the federal government, and thus ruling out the possibility of being compensated for these historical injustices (Kaur, 2020). The news media recognizes the indigenous community to have suffered multiple injustices that still trouble their descendants up to today without any form of bias. According to various media outlets, while a number of rulings have been made to compensate the Native American tribes, the ethnic group still experiences the disadvantages of these historical injustices.
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In addition to these historical injustices, the Native American community has not been provided with the opportunity to tell their story, and thus the multiple myths and misconceptions about the group. The history from the European perspective spearheads a myth that the pristine and fertile American lands were only occupied by a few scattered tribes (Blake, 2020). History by the Europeans paints the region to have had primitive tribes. However, according to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, in An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States , North America had a city known as Cahokia that was much bigger than any city in Europe; the city had a higher population than London at the time (Blake, 2020). The Native Americans’ physical strength and ingenuity have also been omitted in history. In addition, other facts such as the disruption of the Native Americans’ food sources, their trade routes, and the enslavement of some of them have not been clearly outlined in history. The misrepresentation of Native Americans in history, along with the massacre of many elders, who could have passed these narrations to the next generation, has led to the denial of an opportunity for this ethnic community to give their side of history.
The historical injustice, which put the Native American people at a disadvantage, has resulted in the disorganization of the Native American tribal government. Many tribal governments do not have a tax base (Blake, 2020). The lack of property, sales, and income taxes means that these governments do not have adequate funds to run their operations. These tribal governments only collect revenues from their business operations. Therefore, whenever there is a disruption of their economic activities, these communities suffer more compared to the rest of the American communities (Blake, 2020). In recent times, these tribes relied on casinos to earn revenue. However, following the disruption of the economic activities by the Coronavirus outbreak, the community remains underfunded, making it even more difficult to manage the health needs of the community (Blake, 2020). These chronic underfunding of this community results in relatively lower living standards compared to other ethnic groups within the United States. The media recognizes the current unequal distribution of federal funds that is hugely affecting the Native American tribes.
The media characterizes the Native American people to be more susceptible to diseases. According to the media, the lack of funds, in addition to the disorganization of the tribal governments, has made the Native people more susceptible to diseases. Throughout American history, no other community has suffered from infectious diseases like Native Americans. The coming of the Europeans resulted in the introduction of new diseases in North America, including smallpox, measles, and influenza (Blake, 2020). The Native Americans had no immunity for these diseases, which led to the epidemics that resulted in the death of about 90% of Native people in the new world (Blake, 2020). While the early epidemics were a result of the lack of immunity, the current susceptibility of the Native American people to diseases is a result of inadequate access to healthcare services. The current Coronavirus pandemic, which is taking a toll on the Native American people, is a reminder of the historical trauma that they experienced under previous pandemics. Native Americans are also more susceptible to the novel virus due to the relatively higher prevalence rate of asthma, heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes, among these people (Blake, 2020). The prevalence of the aforementioned illnesses, in addition to the lack of access to healthcare and the high poverty rate, puts the Native Americans at a higher risk of contracting the virus (Blake, 2020). The current Coronavirus pandemic has also hugely affected the Native American communities due to their way of life. Native Americans tend to live in small and crowded conditions. The high rate of contraction, coupled with the lack of access to quality healthcare services, puts the Native Americans at a higher health risk.
The media characterizes the Native Americans as a marginalized group that suffers from various systemic injustice, especially undercounting during the US census. The Native Americans are the most undercounted group in the US census (Kesslen, 2019). Some of the consequences of an undercount include inadequate funding from vital federal programs, lack of improvement on reservation infrastructure and healthcare, and the loss of political representation (Kesslen, 2019). In 2010, the Native Americans living on reservation were undercounted by 4.9%, which is about twice the next undercounted group (Kesslen, 2019). The lack of involvement in the US census is partly a result of government mistrust. While there has been an attempt to facilitate and encourage their involvement in the census, the involvement of the Native Americans in the census is still relatively lower. As a result, the ethnic group lags behind in various aspects, including the inadequate funding of roads and building and the poor funding of the Indian Health Services that targets offer healthcare to the tribe. With over $1.5 trillion of federal funds being distributed across the nation based on the census data, the undercounting of the Native American people has a significantly huge negative impact on their day-to-day activities.
Another form of systemic injustice is the relatively poor education system among the Native American tribes compared to the rest of the United States. Although the federal government recognizes 565 Native American tribes that enjoy sovereign status as separate nations, their education funding comes from federal government programs (Lee, 2014). Ideally, public schools rely on local tax money to funds their operations. However, reservations do not have private landowners, and thus no one to tax. Therefore, the federal government accounts for up to 60% of reservation schools’ budgets (Lee, 2014). When the federal sequestration cuts were enacted, the Native American education funding suffered the most. Although the government recognizes its inability to offer quality education to the Native Americans, and despite their effort to eradicate some of the failures in the education system, schools in reservations are some of the lowest-performing in the country. The poor education system has resulted in the high rate of school dropouts by the Native American people, which has resulted in higher unemployment rates and widespread substance abuse.
According to Fox News, the Native American community is still underrepresented in congressional debates despite the signing of multiple treaties. The Cherokee Nation, for instance, signed treaties in the 18 th and 19 th centuries in a bid to push for their own representation in Congress (O’Reilly, 2019). According to the Treaty of New Echota that was signed in 1835, the United States federal government was to offer a delegate position in Congress as reparation for evicting the Native American tribe out of their ancestral lands (O’Reilly, 2019). While other US territories have a non-voting delegate in Congress, the Cherokee Nation does not have one. The negotiation between the Native Americans’ ancestors and the federal government has not been successful in helping bring equality in political representation. The inadequate representation in Congress prevents the community from fully defending its constitutional and treaty rights (O’Reilly, 2019). While such non-voting delegates do not have the power to vote in Congress, they have the ability to sponsor bills and vote in committees. Therefore, the low level of political representation for the Native American tribe prevents them from effectively protecting their constitutional and treaty rights, which bars the growth and development of the community.
The US media is partly biased in the discussion of the interaction between the indigenous people and the Europeans. Following the coming of the European, the Native Americans were welcoming and offered to give them places of settlement. However, the Europeans chose to push the indigenous people away from their land, with many of them being massacred (Kaur, 2020). The Europeans even enslaved some of the Native American people. Be that as it may, US media continues to refer to the Europeans as Pilgrims rather than colonizer or slavers. The US media choses to refer to these Europeans as pilgrims despite their inhuman treatment of the indigenous people. Ideally, the Europeans should be referred to as colonizers or enslavers for their act of forcefully evicting people from their land, and killing them. Besides, the indigenous people have also been described to have been primitive before the coming of their colonizers, which is not the case (Kaur, 2020). The biased presentation of the Europeans and the Indigenous tribes in the US media bars people from understanding the injustices the Native American people experienced under the hands of Europeans.
Today, the media continues to spread the myth surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday- happy Pilgrims and Native Americans joining together peacefully to share a meal in mutual gratitude. Although this is not entirely true, the media continues to tell the story from generation to generation (Dion, 2020). The media does not want to acknowledge what happened. Despite the massive massacre of the indigenous people following the coming of these colonizers, Thanksgiving is portrayed as a day of being grateful and happy. Such narrations suggest that the lives of the Native American people is not as important as those of the European (Dion, 2020). The presentation of the Thanksgiving holiday in the media denies people the truth about what actually happened in history.
In summary, the American media hugely portrays the Native American tribes as victims of injustices by the pilgrims. These tribes have lost their ancestral land along with their cultural identity following the coming of the European colonizers. The coming of the Europeans saw the death of up to 90% of the Native American population. The misrepresentation of facts in history has caused persistent underestimation of the injustices experienced by the community. Even today, the historical injustice has seen the Native Americans suffer from disorganized government, poor access to basic needs and amenities, and the increased susceptibility of these tribes to diseases. When compared to other ethnic groups in the United States, the indigenous people have a relatively lower standard of living. While there have been multiple attempts, from within the Native communities and by non-Native people, to elevate the living condition of the indigenous people, there is a need to do more for full reparation.
References
Blake, J. (2020, April 14). Native Americans were already decimated by a virus. They’re scared it could happen again. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/14/us/Native-americans-coronavirus-blake/index.html
Dion, E. (2020, November 26). This is America: A not-so-happy Thanksgiving. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/11/26/america-not-so-happy-thanksgiving/6355189002/
Kaur, H. (2020, November 26). Indigenous people across the US want their land back -- and the movement is gaining momentum. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/25/us/indigenous-people-reclaiming-their-lands-trnd/index.html
Kesslen, B. (2019, December 29). Native Americans, the census’ most undercounted racial group, fight for an accurate 2020 tally. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/Native-americans-census-most-undercounted-racial-group-fight-accurate-2020-n1105096
Lee, T. (2014, May 20). Pine Ridge: A broken system failing America’s most forgotten children. MSNBC. https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/failing-americas-most-forgotten-children-msna332271
O’Reilly, A. (2019, August 28). Cherokee Nation aims to send first delegate to Congress, citing past treaties. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cherokee-nation-looks-to-send-first-delegate-to-congress-as-nonvoting-member
