In this post, I invite you to read two essays in American civilization that I wrote at University.

The first one, ‘The dark side of Liberation‘ is quite short because it was written to prepare an oral presentation. I wanted to broach an aspect of WWII which was hidden for decades: the rapes and abuses committed by some GIs during Europe’s Liberation.

The second essay is the result of extensive research and deals with Native Americans in the 1950s:

“To what extent were the “Three Plagues” of Native Americans in the 1950s—termination, relocation, and the development of US nuclear activities—part of a deliberate strategy of the United States government to solve, once and for all, their “Indian problem”?

Since the arrival of the Europeans in America, Native Americans have suffered an appalling history of invasions, military conflicts and broken Treaties, which led most of the surviving tribes to be progressively removed to reservations in the Southwest, often located on arid lands. In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Indian New Deal” attempted to correct the mistakes of the past with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. World War II, however, saw the end of its federal funding, and in the 1950s, while Indians had to face new government policies of rapid assimilation through termination and relocation, the reservation lands were then coveted by governments and energy companies for the resources contained in their soil: coal, oil, and especially uranium, a mineral resource fundamental for military and public purposes. From the Cold War and the race for nuclear armament up to today’s protests over the final repository of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Native Americans have borne a disproportionate burden from US nuclear activities compared to the general population. Uranium mining and milling, atomic bomb testing and radioactive waste disposal have caused serious health issues among Indian Nations in the Southwest as well as disastrous environmental consequences on their lands.

In this essay, I investigate the three disasters faced by Native Americans during the 1950s and assess if they belonged to a deliberate strategy of the US government to solve once for all the “Indian problem”. While doing my research, it has been quite difficult to find objective sources: American history books, though giving much detail on the “Termination Era”, did not provide information on nuclear activities in Indian reservations. Marienstras’s book about Indian resistance in the US, though giving precious information about the exploitation of mineral resources in Indian reservations, showed the same bias as several articles and videos created by pro-Indian journalists and found on the Internet, which tend to victimize the Natives without describing some of the compensations offered or actions carried out by the government. Even if Gregory’s academic paper “Better Dead than Red” also demonstrates a definite pro-Indian point of view, I am greatly indebted to it for pointing me towards interesting directions for my research.

I invite you to read the complete essay, available in the pdf document here below, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it. You may download it and use parts of it for your own research work but beware of plagiarism: do not forget to indicate your references as soon as you quote, reformulate, or cite any part or idea written in this essay.