Erasing Native American History: A Blog Post

The Myth of Purchase: How American Culture Erases Native Lives

We like to tell ourselves a comfortable story about the United States. It’s a story of deals, of purchases, and of negotiation. We cling to the legend of the $24 purchase of Manhattan or the "peaceful" acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase. These narratives serve a specific function in American culture: they soothe the national conscience. They suggest that while the outcome was the same—the continent became the United States—the process was legal, orderly, and perhaps even inevitable.

But when we feed the historical data into tools like NotebookLM and analyze the primary documents, a starkly different picture emerges. The "Notebook" doesn't show a history of real estate transactions; it shows a history of systematic erasure.

The Reality: "Every Treaty Broken"

One of the most chilling insights from our source notebook is the sheer consistency of betrayal. The United States government entered into over 500 treaties with Native American nations. These were legally binding documents, ratified by the Senate, recognizing tribes as sovereign entities.

The United States broke every single one.