Oklahoma Is – Always Has Been – Native Land
Any shock that tribal nations have sovereignty over their own land reflects a serious misunderstanding of American history. For Oklahoma – indeed, all of North America – has always been, for lack of a better term, Indian Country. North America was not a vast, unpopulated wilderness when white colonizers arrived in 1620. Up to 100 million people of more than 1,000 sovereign indigenous nations occupied the area that would become the United States. At the time, fewer than 80 million people lived in Europe.
America’s indigenous nations were incredibly advanced, with extensive trade networks and economic centers, superior agricultural cultivation, well-developed metalwork, pottery, and weaving practices, as historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has comprehensively detailed.
Unlike Europe, with its periodic epidemics, North America had little disease, Dunbar-Ortiz says. People used herbal medicines, dentistry, surgery, and daily hygienic bathing to salubrious effects.
Historically, indigenous nations emphasized equity, consensus and community. Though individualism would come to define the United States, my research finds that Native Americans retain these values today, along with our guiding principles of respect, responsibility and reciprocity.
