How European Settlement in America Affected our Human Expression

The high prevalence of nationalism in America can predate to the idea that settlers built a socio-economically sound nation from a small piece of colonial land; we often overemphasize the glimpses of resilience and symbolism amidst a myriad of unspoken cruelty. Our education system typically overlooks and covers up the tragedies of Native Americans in early American history. We portray them as untamed, feral beings, as if their non-stereotypical - more fulfilling, even - approach on living deprives them of their humanity. Their simple, unstratified values of community over cut-throat politics and complex technology seem like a much more satisfying approach to life, but that genuine connection to their culture and values was devastatingly stripped from them. Their subjection to residential schools, slavery, and being coerced westwards left only unnoticeable flickers of their cultures, like fireflies slowly dying out as summer comes to a closure. All this trauma cultivated a cycle of abuse on reservation sites. Nationalism’s bright light over-shines the fact that we completely shattered their equilibrium, and ruined thousands of years of culture. What was the outcome of all this violence? Are any of us truly content with our corporate lives? Have our early settlers ruined such a beautiful culture just to take its place with a generally flat presence, where each life is a carbon copy of the next, merely a shell of true human nature? God, this idea makes me want to use capital letters - another example of how human emotion has been reduced to such an extent. How our inner frustrations have been suppressed; reduced to pixels on a screen. Even in our writings, our language created to convey, we are forced to use a monotone, objective voice when writing essays, another way to oppress our beliefs into the confinements of professionalism. “They are just events. They mean nothing to me.” One second of sadness, then scroll. “What a shame.” Our complex emotional systems were made for empathy and compassion, but that culture was demolished 200 years ago, neatly placed into an Amazon box. The loss of language was devastating. We cry for attention because nobody is emotionally connected anymore. We hate ourselves, surgically alter our traces of ethnicity into a racially ambiguous beauty standard. The settlement of Europeans brought Eurocentric beauty standards, heavily based on European features. Light eyes, pale skin, small noses, traits that were dominant in European cultures. These beauty standards can be heavily seen in America today, ethnic beauty is barely emerging today after decades of supression. The general standards of society haven’t changed since the colonization of America, we still carry the same need to be monolithic; to blur our individuality and call it “unity”. The most devastating thing is that our appreciation and contentedness towards nature had been taken from Natives, transfigured into a lucrative perspective - natural resources are not a gift, but a way to profit off of capitalism in a manmade system. Sacrificing what made us just for our selfish practices.

The argument that Native American tribes were “primitive” is uninformed, and merely a way to justify colonization and abuse, and leads back to the question - what defines a society as primitive? Is it greed, an insatiable lust for resources and gold? Is it the rejection of cultural and religious barriers; a language that cannot be understood by most? “We are the chosen ones.” This line echoes in the past of society, defining centuries of cruelty.