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THE RIGHT WANTS TO WRITE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OUT OF US HISTORY. WE
WON’T LET THEM  
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Johnnie Jae
November 27, 2025
Truthout
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_ The struggle over history, from Wounded Knee to Thanksgiving to ICE
detentions, is not a debate about the past. It is a struggle over who
defines America and whose humanity matters. _

, Andrea J. Mason/Greenpeace

 

A new vision for the United States is being forced into place — one
rooted not in liberty or justice, but in subjugation and the quiet
normalization and acceptance of fascism. You can see it in the memes,
the slogans, and the curated nostalgia flooding social media accounts
aligned with the Trump administration. You can see it in the way
frontier and 1950s iconographies have returned not as history but as
aspiration. And you can see it in the current administration’s
campaign to control what young people learn about history,
colonization, slavery, genocide, and the violent foundations of this
country.

This revival is not about remembering the past or indulging in a
trendy, nostalgic aesthetic. It’s about promoting and embracing a
version of “America” built on authoritarianism and white
supremacy. It’s a version that elevates conquest, cruelty, and
dominance as virtue and heritage over liberty and justice. It’s a
digital-age rebranding of Manifest Destiny — the idea that the
United States was ordained to expand across the North American
continent, seizing land, displacing and eradicating Indigenous people
in the name of progress — now crafted to make subjugation look like
patriotism and to turn historical distortion into accepted truth.

That is why an incident like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s
defense of the Medals of Honor awarded to the soldiers who carried out
the Wounded Knee Massacre
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is dangerous. And that incident was far from an isolated example of
the Trump administration actively embracing and defending the violent
legacy of Manifest Destiny and the belief systems that justified
genocide and land theft.

Indeed the official social media account of the Department of Homeland
Security [[link removed]] posted
the painting _American Progress_ by John Gast on X — a scene that
portrays westward expansion as a noble mission, with a floating white
woman carrying “civilization” toward the frontier, while settlers,
soldiers, trains, and telegraph lines push Indigenous people and
buffalo into darkness and out of the frame — alongside the text,
“A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.” Examples
like these are evidence of a larger project that uses nostalgia as a
political weapon and mythmaking as a tool to justify violence.

This narrative shapes policy, fuels immigration enforcement, and
drives efforts to suppress education about Thanksgiving and the
realities of colonization. It transforms federal agencies, social
media, and public institutions into extensions of a worldview that
treats Indigenous people as obstacles, the “Indian Problem” that
the U.S. must still eradicate.

Across campaign-aligned pages, far right networks, and the
administration’s own digital channels, westward expansion has been
recast as an aspirational identity. The genocide, land theft, forced
removals, and destruction of Indigenous nations that built the
frontier are erased, and what remains is a cinematic mythology built
for political use.

This reframing is not limited to fringe accounts. Federal agencies
have circulated frontier-themed memes meant to promote everything from
joining Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
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pro-natalism [[link removed]].
When institutions tied to national security adopt the language of
“restoring the frontier” and “taking back the country,” they
lay the groundwork for violent policies that demand reclaiming and
recreating an imagined past at any cost.

The nostalgia is intentional because it shapes how people feel before
they decide what to believe. Once that groundwork is laid, the defense
of injustice and violent authoritarianism, like Hegseth’s insistence
that Wounded Knee soldiers “deserved” their medals or violent ICE
raids at daycare centers
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and workplaces
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no longer shocks. It becomes an extension of the myth of American
Exceptionalism wrapped in patriotism. As it becomes more normalized,
injustice becomes inevitable, and inevitability becomes destiny.

The administration’s modern Manifest Destiny stretches into the
operations of federal agencies tasked with policing borders and
communities. ICE has become one of the most powerful tools in this new
frontier project, targeting Indigenous people under the guise of
national restoration.

Navajo and Tohono O’odham leaders
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said the recent detentions mirror older federal efforts to control
Indigenous movement and identity. They pointed to cases where Navajo
citizens carrying state IDs and Certificates of Indian Blood were
still detained or questioned by ICE, and where Tohono O’odham
citizens were told that their ties to their own homelands did not
matter because officials only recognized the border. These incidents
reflect a long-standing pattern of dismissing tribal documents,
Indigenous mobility, and Indigenous identity as invalid. In Iowa, a
member of the Salt River Pima–Maricopa Indian Community was nearly
turned over to federal immigration agents after the Polk County Jail
issued an ICE detainer meant for someone else. As _Iowa Public Radio_
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reported, police told the 24-year-old woman’s family that she would
be removed to a country she had never lived in. She avoided
deportation only because the jail finally acknowledged the detainer
was filed in error.

These cases reveal a pattern rather than isolated mistakes. The
American Immigration Council
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recently warned that the Supreme Court’s refusal to limit racial
profiling in immigration enforcement has given officers even more room
to target people based on appearance alone. This puts Indigenous
people at particular risk, since tribal identification, Native
languages, and even clear proof of citizenship are often ignored or
treated as suspect by federal agents. The result is a system where
Indigenous identity itself becomes grounds for questioning, detention,
or removal, no matter how much documentation a person carries.

The Indian Law Resource Center
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has also sounded the alarm, noting that many of those targeted for
removal are Indigenous migrants whose nations long predate the borders
being used against them. The center points to the planned deportation
of more than 600 Guatemalan children, at least 90 percent of whom are
Maya, stressing that these children are Indigenous people with rights
under both U.S. and international law.

These cases reveal a deeper reality. The same systems that once worked
to erase Indigenous nations within the United States are now being
used to remove Indigenous children and families from beyond its
borders. It reflects the same thinking that once justified westward
expansion. The ideology did not disappear; it simply learned to
present itself in new ways.

The administration’s revival of Manifest Destiny builds on this
ongoing pattern of targeting Indigenous peoples, shifting it into the
realm of imagery and narrative using a nostalgic blend of frontier
myth and mid-century Americana to normalize subjugation and erase
accountability. When that narrative takes root, it becomes easier to
dismiss harm, ignore injustice, and discredit those who speak against
it. This same narrative machinery is at work to shape how people in
the U.S. understand Thanksgiving.

For many households, the holiday is a time to gather with loved ones,
share a meal, watch football, and express gratitude. Many Native
people celebrate in these ways too, because feasting is Indigenous,
and we also enjoy good food and football. Yet the holiday carries a
heavier weight for our communities. It marks the beginning of a
violent era of colonization set in motion when European settlers
arrived on these lands.

For generations, Thanksgiving has been offered as a simple tale of
peace between settlers and Native peoples, a comforting story that
reassures the country of its own goodness. This “friendly” version
of Thanksgiving serves the broader strategies of historical
revisionism used to justify settler colonialism by distorting,
minimizing, or erasing the violence, exploitation, and resistance at
the heart of this nation’s formation. These myths reinforce settler
identity and national pride, encouraging people to avoid uncomfortable
truths and discouraging any critical engagement with our shared,
complicated history.

Even so, Native communities have never stopped pushing back against
the sanitized Thanksgiving narrative.

In Plymouth, the National Day of Mourning [[link removed]] has
gathered hundreds of participants each year since 1970 to confront the
Thanksgiving myth at its origin point. On Alcatraz Island, the
Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Gathering
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honors resistance, survival, and sovereignty. Across Native nations,
youth-led teach-ins, community fasts, and cultural events counter the
national narrative with history, presence, and truth.

These gatherings do more than disrupt the myth. They expose the
fragility of American exceptionalism and the power of Indigenous
memory, survival, and resistance.

The struggle over history, from Wounded Knee to Thanksgiving to ICE
detentions, is not a debate about the past. It is a struggle over who
defines America and whose humanity matters. A nation that cannot face
its own history cannot repair its present. A country that denies
genocide cannot claim justice. A society that clings to myth will
repeat the violence it refuses to see.

Telling the truth about the United States, the beauty and the
brutality, the promises kept and the promises broken, is not
destroying the country. Insisting on telling the truth asserts that we
are capable of more than myth and refuse to accept a future shaped by
denial, distortion, and the quiet normalization of authoritarianism.
Honesty is the path that lets us reconcile with our complicated
histories, repair the harm that continues, and choose a different way
forward.

When we confront our history with honesty instead of lies, we create
the possibility of a country where life, liberty, and justice are not
privileges for the few but shared, inalienable rights for all. That is
the measure of a nation brave enough to face itself. That is the only
way the United States can ever live up to its own reputation as the
land of the free, not as a slogan, but as a lived reality.

 

J_ohnnie Jae_ [[link removed]]_ (Otoe-Missouria and
Choctaw) is a writer, speaker, and founder of __Red POP! News_
[[link removed]]_ and the late A Tribe Called Geek. Known
for her journalism, mental health advocacy, and digital activism, she
is dedicated to amplifying Native voices through storytelling, media,
and art. You can find her in the __Bluesky_
[[link removed]]_ and __Instagram_
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_Truthout is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to providing
independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social
justice issues. Since our founding in 2001, we have anchored our work
in principles of accuracy, transparency, and independence from the
influence of corporate and political forces. Truthout works to spark
action by revealing systemic social, racial, economic and
environmental injustice and providing a platform for progressive and
transformative ideas, through in-depth investigative reporting and
critical analysis. With a powerful, independent voice, we spur
transformations in consciousness and inspire both policy change and
direct action._

 

 

* Native Americans
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* Wounded Knee
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* Thanksgiving
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* ICE
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* manifest destiny
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* U.S. history
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