Jeffrey Rosen denies the Cherokee Trail of Tears

It was alarming to hear Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and professor at GWU Law School, dismissing ethnic cleansing in U.S. history. On the morning of February 11, he was interviewed on NPR's 1A Show, "The American judiciary versus the Trump Administration." Rosen mentioned that President Andrew Jackson defied the US Supreme Court's ruling, but then mumbled, ““the dispute in question resolved itself" ... and quickly jumped back to talking about Trump's disruptions. (Note 1)

No. The situation was not "resolved." In 1837, Jackson's army led the forced removal of most Cherokees from their towns and well-tended farms in Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas to "Indian Territory" (now Oklahoma)–as part of the Trail of Tears that the U.S. forced upon most of the Eastern Indigenous Nations. In this century, we understand that the 1,200-mile forced march, in winter, was a genocidal act.

Rosen's slipshod statement is harmful to Americans in this present moment for several reasons:

* It avoids the fact that a US president (Jackson) did successfully deny the ruling of the US Supreme Court. There was no accountability for his crimes against the Constitution (even as it was written in that era). History is warning us–It can happen again;

* It avoids the related fact that Trump is not doing something new in breaking US laws in this century. Presidents Biden and Trump (and the US Congress) have been breaking five federal laws for years as they provided funding and weapons for Israel's illegal occupation and oppression of Palestinians. The path to tyranny is well lit and open for traffic.

* It avoids the observation that the violence that the U.S. government has been practicing overseas it will now practice upon the American people. Undesirable "excess populations" will lose their homes, be starved, be denied access to education and healthcare, and be non-reported in the news.

Rosen's statement does reveal that his self-comforting, clearly Zionist view of history, which discounts the experience of Indigenous Peoples everywhere, is distorting civic discourse in the United States and providing wind in the sails as Trump steers our nation into dictatorship. (Note 2)

Steven Sellers (Muskrat) Lapham
Gaithersburg, Maryland

Note 1: minute 12:35-13:00; www.npr.org/podcasts/510316/1a

Note 2: Read about the far-Right Heritage Foundation’s "Project Esther" to stifle free speech, and watch the documentary BOYCOTT.