Culture of Conquest
Large areas of land not owned by anyone, in which any person or family in a given community could raise livestock and grow crops; a feature of many pre-modern European societies.
What are the commons?
a relatively small group of people dedicated to a set of beliefs that are outside mainstream theology or political or social practice
What is a cult?
An act, or acts, committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group
What is genocide?
The process of trying to acquire, develop, or improve a person, people, bit of land, quality, or skill
What is cultivation?
The process of making a person or group feel “other” than what is expected, dominant, or regular; the cultivation of an in-group/out-group dynamic based upon dominance and power
What is otherization?
A process of measuring and commodifying land such that it became available for purchase (or seizure) by individuals, families, or groups; a means of strictly enforcing borders
What is land privatization/private property?
an agreement which brings about a relationship between God and his people or a government and its people
What is a covenant?
People or groups who seek to become independent of the nation or religious tradition that has power over them and to form their own government or religious tradition
What are separatists?
The belief that English-speaking Americans were destined to spread their presence and their ideals across the entire continent
What is Manifest Destiny?
The process of isolating and forcibly assimilating Native American children through the use of the education system
What is the boarding school system?
The idea that European nations could claim the foreign lands they “discovered”/that “discovery” granted colonizers a “right” or entitlement to the land; that Indigenous peoples lost their own “right”/entitlement to the land upon European arrival.
What is the Doctrine of Discovery?
What is a natural right?
The idea that the American continent was unsettled prior to European arrival
What is the myth of the pristine wilderness?
An ideology consisting of white supremacy, African-American slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft
What is American Settler Colonialism?
After the Civil War, the US government launched a campaign to annihilate the population of this animal, sacred to certain Indigenous peoples
What is the buffalo?
The quality that allows someone to continue doing something or trying to do something even though it is difficult or opposed by other people.
What is persistence?
A measure of a person’s Christian lineage, which determined their status in early modern European societies
What is blood purity?
A Christian religious ideology that held that humans had no free will and that they were “predestined” to either heaven or hell from birth; these were some of the first European peoples to enter the United States
What is Calvinism?
The process of taking political and economic control of region/the people and/or institutions that are part of that process, including the military, business interests, and religious agencies
What is colonization?
160-acre parcels of land, subdivided from Indian Reservations, that were given out by the US government in order to undermine Indigenous sovereignty
What are allotments?
Unlimited power over a country; a country's independent authority and the right to govern itself.
What is sovereignty?
An obsession with the death, disappearance, and absence of Indigenous people rather than their continued, visible presence and challenge to colonialism; the idea that Indigenous populations were annihilated by colonization, violence, and disease
What are terminal narratives?
Total dominance, dominance over every aspect of life, by one country or social group over others
What is hegemony?
Throughout the history of the conflict between Indigenous peoples and white settlers, bounties were put on these items and taken as proof of the slaughter of Indigenous peoples
What are scalps?
After the Civil War, the nationwide development of this industrial necessity encroached significantly on Native lands and ways of life
What are the railroads?
The idea that American democracy/progress was formed by the American frontier, and that for democracy to advance, settlers would have to gain all of the land of the nation––from sea to shining sea
What is the Turner thesis?