Whose North America is it? “Nobody owns it. It owns itself.”

Authors

  • Margaret Connell-Szasz The University of New Mexico

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v50i1.5698

Keywords:

property, Cartesian duality, natural world, Native Americans, spirituality

Abstract

Responding to the question, “Whose North America is it?,” this essay argues North America does not belong to anyone. As a Sonoran Desert Tohono O’odham said of the mountain: “Nobody owns it. It owns itself.” Contrasting Native American and Euro-American views of the natural world, the essay maintains that European immigrants introduced the startling concept of Cartesian duality. Accepting a division between spiritual and material, they viewed the natural world as physical matter, devoid of spirituality. North America’s First People saw it differently: they perceived the Earth/Universe as a spiritual community of reciprocal relationships bound by intricate ties of kinship and respect. This clash has shaped American history. From the sixteenth century forward, many European immigrants envisioned land ownership as a dream. Creators of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution thrust “happiness”/“property” into the nation’s mythology. Southern Euro-Americans claimed “ownership” of African Americans, defining them as “property”; Native Americans resisted Euro-Americans’ enforcement of land ownership ideology; by the late 1800s, Euro-Americans’ view of the natural world as physical matter spurred massive extraction of natural resources. The Cartesian duality persisted, but, given its dubious legacy, Native Americans question the wisdom of this interpretation of the natural world.

Author Biography

Margaret Connell-Szasz, The University of New Mexico

Margaret Connell-Szasz is a Regents Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, where she teaches Comparative Indigenous and Celtic History. She has published on American Indians/Alaska Natives and themes linking Native America and Celtic peoples, especially the Gaelic people of Scotland’s Highlands and Islands. Her first homeland is the Columbia River Plateau but New Mexico has become a second homeland, interspersed with teaching and research in Scotland and England, and visits to Finland and Ireland. She can be reached at conszasz@unm.edu.

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Published

2018-01-30

How to Cite

Connell-Szasz, M. (2018). Whose North America is it? “Nobody owns it. It owns itself.”. American Studies in Scandinavia, 50(1), 151–164. https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v50i1.5698

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Section

Articles