Sebastian Livingston

Professor: Dr. Anne Graham

Soc. 2630-Race and Ethnicity

Indian Country in White America

Each generation stands on the shoulders of the past. Economically this can mean that

each generation is reliant on the previous one for its wealth inheritance. This is objective wealth

social value accrued over time. Since wealth is objective only because it has social value,

intergenerational wealth is really a subjective reality based upon ascribed status over time.

Another key aspect of intergenerational inheritance is the purely subjective wealth one

receives, inherits, from elders etc. The modes of production, relation to nature/society, conscious

development, are all inherited by mans past creation (Marx, Avineri, 1968). If man becomes

conscious through production, mans relation to society depends upon his method of doing so.

Groups isolated from accessing the modes of production of the dominate society are isolated

from the common stock of knowledge (Berger, Luckmann, 1966) and are therefore unable to

integrate into mainstream economics due to the division of labor and its relation to a functioning

socioeconomic arrangement of civil society.

In removing the Native Americans from their original settlements and their communal

cultural lifestyle the U.S. government forced individualism upon them. Ideally this requires a set

of functioning relationships with mainstream society in order to prosper since capitalism is a

social system which requires access to status through property enhancement i.e. wealth via

capital and markets. Therefore the Indian allotment act was a cultural and social death sentence

with few options of parole.

 Using Marxs subject/ predicate analysis man becomes the predicate to the material world

he creates and the relationship he has within the larger social organization of production and

division of labor. If personal value is then ascribed based upon the role one inhabits within the

division of labor and ones access to the common stock of knowledge then the value of an

individual is based purely upon subjective definitions of value as allowed through the

distribution of knowledge (as obtained/inherited through historic material production) and as

compared to the general consciousness of society, i.e. the wealthy.

The very fact that natives have been segregated into low value land has given them clear

and un-dismissible disadvantages in their ability to accrue wealth and solidify a common stock of

knowledge and devise valuable economy to provide a division of labor which would equip them

with social value and allow them to be viable candidates for acceptance within the dominant

social order as a group resistant to economic degradation and exploitation.

This inability to be self-determined has left Indian reservations very vulnerable to

capitalist exploitation in the form of environmental degradation specifically, among obvious

other economic atrocities. The very nature of their land location and the lack of social

organization bestowed upon them as social exiles has prevented them from securing means of

ascending poverty when the institution of materialist meritocratic capitalism demands

bourgeoisie proletariat interaction to participate in a market that doesnt require a choice between

relative poverty and environmental prostitution. Obviously social institutions such as education

and other pre-requisites to social mobility/ status are a major factor in creating the conditions

which designate native land as dumpsites and subjects of environmental racism.

The relevance of racism is unquestionable in this scenario as the very structure of

inequality, be it spatial or financial, is based within a system of status which in America is

tenanted by subcategories prone to inter class conflict such as racism, sexism, etc., all elements

that are subject to inequality of environmental conditions as per the status quo general

consciousness of social hierarchical aims and outcasts. If slavery did not boost America so

profoundly, natives would likely have a greater stock in the economic environment thus less

pollution and health concerns due to environmental racism.

Bibliography
Avineri, S. (1968) The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx. NY, Cambridge University
Press.

Berger, P., Luckmann T. (1966) The social Construction of Reality. NY, Anchor Books.