Newitz: To be 'seen and erased at the same time'

I learned a few things about Indigenous American history from Annalee Newitz's new book Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.

Look at these connections

In Chapter 2: A Fake Frontier, Newitz writes:

“Today it’s often called the ‘manifest destiny’ period [the second half of the 19th century], though at the time there was nothing manifest or obvious about what the future of the United States would look like.”

* * *

“The Indian Wars took place at a time when nobody had any idea whether the West could be ‘won.’ And yet, by the early twentieth century, most Americans accepted the idea that ‘manifest destiny’ had been the guiding principle of the Indian Wars, suggesting that the US government had always been steadfast in its commitment to owning the West. That’s because the final psychological battle of the Indian Wars hinged on the question of how the nineteenth century would be remembered.”

* * *

“…the phrase ‘manifest destiny’…was ensconced in history books for decades, affecting the perceptions of generations of young Americans. This latter feat was thanks largely to a Harvard historian named Frederick Jackson Turner, whose ‘frontier thesis’ is what popularized the idea of manifest destiny. The young professor presented his frontier thesis in a famous speech during the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. There he told the assembled crowd that westward expansion defined the American character. This was a departure from the assertions of thinkers in previous generations, including Alexis de Tocqueville, who thought of New England as the center of gravity in the United States. Instead, Turner argued, the western frontier was what forged a uniquely American identity. It was a place where settlers could reinvent themselves, shedding their European origins and constraining Old World Traditions.”

* * *

“…Turner was suggesting that Europeans became American in the nineteenth century by replacing Indigenous people. The frontier thesis was the original racial replacement theory. And the settler public loved it.”

— Annalee Newitz, Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind. W. W. Norton, 2024. Chapter 2: A Fake Frontier.

And in Chapter 5: School Rules:

"...psyops targeting education are incredibly fungible. Today, advocates for Don't Say Gay bills and trans bans push for 'parents' rights.' Yet in the nineteenth century, legislators argued against parents' rights when it came to Indigenous children. During the Indian Wars, the US government took Indigenous children away from their families and taught values that contradicted their ancestral traditions. The justifications for residential schools were like the Don't Say Gay laws in reverse. Indigenous kids needed exposure to new ideas to help them progress, the government claimed. Parents had no right to set the curricula in these schools, nor even to visit their children on campus. Then and now, educational psyops harm children to punish — or appeal to — their parents."

And:

"Schools are places where we implant our hopes for the future in the minds of the people who will build it. When activists take away the right to discuss LGBT identity in school, they are participating in a larger project to eliminate LGBT people from the next generation of Americans. Refusing to teach kids about their history and culture is a way of erasing their futures."

And in Chapter 7: History is a Gift:

"Though the government's official stance was that there were no Indians in Coos Bay [Oregon], they nevertheless sent a number of Indigenous children to boarding school in Pennsylvania. This familiar psyop from the Indian Wars, in which Indigenous people are seen and erased at the same time, is why white people said to [Coquille tribal chief Jason] Younker's face that there were no Indigenous people in Coos Bay."