Settler colonialism Archives

Undoing Manifest Destiny

Undoing Manifest Destiny, L. Daniel Hawk. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514008645) 2026.

Summary: Through vignettes from Ohio history, questions narratives used to justify injustices against Native peoples.

“I live on the ancestral Lands of the Miami and Hopewell peoples. This Land was ceded in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.” This is the land acknowledgement I’ve appended for some years to my email signature. In this treaty the Indigenous peoples of Ohio ceded roughly three fourths of what is now Ohio to the United States, retaining the land of the northwest quadrant for their own use. The treaty was never enforced and settlers encroached on this remaining land.

Like the author of this book, I’ve lived all my life in the state of Ohio. The name of the state and most of its rivers and many counties derive from indigenous names. My wife has a collection of arrowheads found in her backyard, not far from a tribal gathering area on the east side of Youngstown. We live a couple hours from the site of the massacre of Moravian Christian Native people at Gnadenhutten. In the quadrant reserved for Indigenous peoples, particularly the Wyandottes, they were eventually expelled, traveling their own “trail of tears.”

I am a lifelong fan of Cleveland baseball. However, from the first time I saw the demeaning image of Chief Wahoo outside the old Municipal Stadium, I sensed something wasn’t right. I approved the name changed to the Guardians, so appropriate to the carved figures (“the Guardians”) on the Bob Hope Bridge approaching Progressive Field from the west. And I live in a city named after the “discoverer” of America, a city that removed a statue of him in recent years from in front of City Hall. October 12 is now Indigenous Peoples Day in our city.

L. Daniel Hawk descends from a German family that settled in the northwest Ohio town of Tiffin. An Old Testament professor at Ashland Seminary, he also has studied Ohio’s treatment of Indigenous people. Likewise, he explores the conquest narratives in Joshua and their use to support American settler narratives. He brings all this together in a rich exploration designed not to blame or shame but to encourage us to question those narratives. He writes particularly for those of us who, like him are descendants of White settlers.

Each chapter of the book begins with a vignette from Ohio history, a number which I’ve mentioned. He begins with a statue of the Indian Maid overlooking his home of Tiffin. He considers the settler narratives that justified dispelling the Seneca peoples. In succeeding chapters, he explores the use of the doctrine of discovery along with the creation mandate to seize land and efforts to extort, exterminate, expel, and erase indigenous peoples.

Then he explores five “tropes” used to construct native peoples, four of which are under the fifth, the Vanishing American. All of these help explain by White settlers are the rightful possessors of the land. The other tropes are the Ignoble Savage and the Noble Savage, and the Indigenous helper (e.g. Pocahontas) and the White Savage.

When Hawk turns to Joshua, he does not find many direct references to Joshua’s conquest in early colonial writing. However, he does find parallels in the theological justifications of violence, displacement and seizure of the land. He also notes the parallels of Indigenous helpers, Rahab in Joshua and Pocahontas and Sacagawea in the American context.

The concluding chapter offers hope and help for those deconstructing the American settler colonialist narrative. It can be hard and there may be pushback, as he notes our city experienced in removing the Columbus statue. Our state has doubled down against teaching students, even in college, “divisive” concepts. Sadly, they miss the truth that it is only by interrogating our narratives that we can begin to explore healing pathways. He concludes with one such example, in which his denomination restored a Wyandotte mission and burial ground to the living descendents of the Wyandotte nation, now living in Oklahoma, marked by exchanges of gifts and shared celebration. Instead of division, there was a new friendship.

What makes this such a compelling study is that Hawk models what he invites the reader to consider. He interrogates his own situation, his own history, working from there to set it in a larger national context. Rather than write a piece on national policy, he exemplifies the thoughtful and hard work Christian individuals and congregations might engage to undo the myths of national origin and destiny, including Christian overlays, by which our forebears perpetrated grave wrongs. Then, he points to ways we can pursue making things right in our sphere, as we connect with Indigenous peoples. Rather than suppress history or cause division, he points to awareness that can heal.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

The War on the Uyghurs, Sean R. Roberts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.

Summary: An account of the People’s Republic of China’s suppression of the Uyghur minority within its borders, including its use of the U.S.-initiated Global War on Terror to pursue religious and political persecution, re-education, internment camps, and intermarriage to effect what the author calls “cultural genocide.“

The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim people of the Turkic linguistic family. The largest portion of the population lives in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in the western part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). There are also Uyghur populations in several other Central Asian countries as well as a refugee community in Turkey. Since 2001 they have undergone increasingly repressive treatment. They have a long history in this part of the world, first becoming subject to China under the Qing dynasty.

Sean R. Roberts has spent the last several decades studying this people, first for his doctoral work. He has interviewed people both inside the XUAR, when this did not put them at risk, and lived in homes of Uyghurs in surrounding countries. In this work he recounts their history and describes the growth of increasing repressive treatment of the PRC’s Uyghur population in what amounts to what he calls “cultural genocide.” He begins by describing early colonial efforts of Qing and Han dynasties, rising nationalist hopes during the 1940’s under Soviet control, the early accommodation under Mao, with increasing efforts at assimilation during the Cultural Revolution. The 1980’s represented the last breath of accommodation before growing settler colonialism and efforts at integrating the XUAR into the rest of the PRC.

After disturbances in Baren in 1990 and Ghulja in 1997, resisting government policies, the PRC responded with increasing security crackdowns. Then 2001 came and with it, the U.S. led Global War on Terror (GWOT). Roberts traces how China used GWOT to designated a tiny group, the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement as a Uyghur terrorist organization, one operating outside its national boundaries but intent on terrorist acts within the country, with the aid of indigenous Uyghur populations. A good part of the book examines this claim, showing that the group and its successors typically consisted of 5 to 25 individuals more adept at creating threatening videos than any actual terrorist acts. Yet this justified further crackdowns on the PRC’s Uyghur population. Threats around the Beijing Olympics in 2008 including a bus bombing in Shanghai and a 2009 riot in Urumqi, within XUAR, served as further proof of “terrorist” threats.

All of this justified PRC’s efforts at settler colonialism to dilute Uyghur influence and counterterrorism efforts that involved increased surveillance, bans on religious practices, state-run schools, and the suppression of the Uyghur language. Much of this took place between 2002 and 2012.The next several years were a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Uyghur resistance rose in recognition that their cultural identity was under attack. Then came brutal measures from 2017 on to wipe out the Uyghur identity in what would become simply Xinjiang. Some were able to flee, Many men were sent to internment camps. Uyghur settlements were destroyed and replaced with apartment blocks settled by Han settlers. Due to male internment and “one child” policies among the Han, there were many “forced” intermarriages of Uyghur women to Han men. Internees were dispersed throughout China as factory workers.

Roberts’ account depends on two key concepts: his definition of terror as acts that are “violent, politically motivated, and deliberately target civilians” and his use of the idea of “cultural genocide” which is the cultural if not bodily destruction of a people. As to the first, he argues that there is scant evidence of a real Uyghur terrorist threat with only a few isolated incidents that are not a part of a premeditated scheme. Furthermore, almost none of the indigenous Uyghur population could in any way be associated with this threat, yet China’s use of the GWOT served as pretext for its campaign against this Muslim minority. “Cultural genocide” argues that there are more ways to eliminate people than mass killings and that the systematic campaign of settler colonialism, educational assimilation, interment, forced intermarriage, dispersion, and religious suppression is also genocidal even if there are few dead Uyghurs as a result.

Roberts’ conclusion is chilling. He argues that indifference to the fate of the Uyghurs gives permission for others to do the same. Where will it end? He points to three concerning global trends 1) the eclipse of privacy with the rise of electronic surveillance ubiquitous among all of us, 2) the decline of respect for human rights, a decline that during the GWOT includes the U.S., and 3) the re-emergence of settler colonialism and nationalism, justifying the suppression and assimilation of minorities. Do we really want a situation where it may be said, “First they came for the Uyghurs…”?