Just a lil rant if you don't mind (not enough points to post lmao), but ALL presidents of the US up until the 1920s were involved in oppression of Native Americans and their removal from ancestral land. Some were undoubtedly worse than others -- Jackson was especially brutal, but even Presidents like Lincoln, Washington and Jefferson were involved in this. The National Parks, as much as I adore them, were conceived as a way to control Indian populations in the backcountry. This is part of why the American model of conservation involves no humans at all, when British, Swedish or Polish national parks have villages, towns, and sometimes even industry. The genocide and repression of American Indians was (and still is) far more insidious than many people first realise, and was interwoven with so many other facets of society. Conservation is just the area I happen to know about the most.
This is not an absolvation of European guilt. The British (my country) were breaking treaties with Indians long before Americans did so, and we British have a very long and not so proud history of subjugating native peoples of our own islands, the Cornish, Manx, Welsh, Irish and Scottish Highlanders, not to mention the atrocities comitted in the name of Empire, whilst the Nordic Countries and Russians have spent centuries systematically erasing the Sami (though persecution has largely ended now) in Lapland (or Sapmi). This is by no means an exhaustive list. The American treatment of Indians, just like the German treatment of Roma, Slavs and Jews, were/are both based in the exact same European tradition of colonisation and brutalisation of first peoples.
Sorry, but I had to dump this somewhere, have a nice day.
