While it’s accurate in some sense to call the U.S. a “nation of immigrants,” this nation’s history is not quite that simple and heroic. To begin with, though many of the people who built the U.S. were “immigrants” – people who choose to leave their homelands and travel to another nation with the intention of becoming permanent residents –many others were not. People who were captured and brought here against their will, treated as property, and forced to work were not immigrants; they were slaves. That’s the first addition to the national mythology: The U.S. is a nation built by immigrants, but also a nation built by the slaves many of those immigrants exploited. And that’s only the beginning of the rest of the story.

This continent was home to millions of people whose ancestors had been here for thousands of years when Europeans began to colonize it. Though technically immigration only began after those colonies declared themselves a new nation, that new nation occupied lands stolen from other nations – aboriginal nations.

Of course, the U.S. wasn’t content with the lands it occupied at its founding, either. It was aggressively expansionist, waging war, deception and betrayal against the tribes on its borders to conquer their homelands. While immigration was by no means the sole cause of this violence and brutality, immigrants – including my ancestors – bear  some responsibility for what was done to steal the lands they staked claim to as the U.S. grew. They were immigrants, yes, but they also were invaders.    

Though they’re generally ignored, the descendants of this continent’s aboriginal peoples are still here, crowded onto reservations and prevented from living their ancestral ways fully. While the federal government and the corporations that largely control it may welcome the addition of roughly a million immigrants every year, what about the ongoing impact on these other cultures?

I have no simple answers for undoing the damage done to the aboriginal peoples of this land. I was born here, so I am a native, too. Though my ancestors were European, I am not. I can never fully make amends for their actions, and there's nowhere I can "go back to." I have lived my whole life from the water of this place, from the food of this soil. I am of this place, and striving to be more wholly and healthily so every day.

As a native, I feel that changing the government policies that promote immigration would be an important step – when coupled with stabilizing our native-born population – in bringing a complete end to the campaign of genocide waged against the aboriginal peoples of this land for more than 500 years.

Stabilizing our population wouldn’t be a complete remedy, of course; but, as long as our numbers continue to increase, their chances of breaking the reservation chains and thriving again on their own terms will only grow dimmer.

I recommend the books Stolen Continents by Ronald Wright and A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn to anyone who wants to know the other sides of Manifest Destiny.