August 2024 Meeting

At our dinner meeting on August 21st, Dr. Tai Edwards, associate professor of history and director of the Kansas Studies Institute at Johnson County Community College gave an excellent program titled: “The U.S. Civil War and Colonization of Indigenous Nations.” She discussed how the Indigenous peoples were horribly mistreated and taken advantage of by the United States during the Civil War. Attendance at the August dinner meeting was 65. The following is a summary of Dr. Edwards’ presentation:

• Indigenous peoples: “Peoples or nations who take their tribal identities as members of the human species from the landscapes and seascapes that give them their unique and tribal cultures.”
• Colonialism: When a power exploits a “lesser” power and uses the “lesser” power’s resources to strengthen and enrich the “greater” power and deny resources to the Indigenous peoples.
• President Lincoln’s Indian Policy:
  • Indian system and corruption.
  • Concentration policy: Concentrating all Indian tribes in the nation on as few as three to five reservations.
  • Colonizing Indigenous nations and their resources.
• “Western” Resources and Sustaining the War:
  • Homestead Act of 1862: Provided 160 acres to heads of households after five years of “improvement.” The goal was to attract eastern lower-classes to western territories and produce goods beneficial to the U.S. economy and war effort. In reality, most of the land went to speculators; cattle, mining, logging operations; and railroad companies.
  • Pacific Railway Act of 1862: This act determined the 32nd parallel as the transcontinental railroad and telegraph route. It provided government bonds to fund the project and land grants to two railroad companies to build it. This secured government use of the telegraph and railroad lines central to war mobilization and economic growth.
• Three major examples of the genocide of Indigenous peoples during the Civil War:
  • The Dakota War/Santee Uprising.
  • The Navajo Long Walk and Imprisonment.
  • The Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864.
• Dr. Edwards said she teaches her students that war is expensive in terms of money and people and that wars have unintended consequences. She said the Civil War ended slavery, but the war also resulted in the genocide of Indigenous peoples. 
• Indigenous peoples based their identity and culture on a specific place. To lose that place,was more than just losing the property. They lost their ancestral homes. Genocide involved expelling, ethnic cleansing, and destroying the Indigenous peoples’ culture.

Photos from the August Dinner