Guest Essay
Editor’s Note: This article is part of Native News Online’s America 250: A Republic Built on Native Land initiative.
This nation was never built with all of us in mind, and the celebration of its 250th year of independence reminds me of generations of Indigenous, Black, Brown, and non-Western immigrant peoples who have paid the price for America’s rise.
As the country prepares to commemorate this anniversary, there will be speeches about freedom, democracy, opportunity, and the promise of a nation born in 1776.
There will also be criticism of how this current regime doesn’t reflect the America that was built on these promises.
As an Anishinaabe woman, I find myself reflecting on a different timeline. The story of America doesn’t begin in 1776.
Long before the Declaration of Independence was signed, hundreds of Indigenous nations flourished across the continent. We governed ourselves, maintained vast trade networks, developed systems of law and diplomacy, and cared for these lands and waters through generations of accumulated knowledge and responsibility. Our ancestors understood these places not as resources to be conquered, but as relationships to be honored.
When the United States celebrates its founding, as Indigenous people, we remember the history that is seldom recognized: the beginning of a nation whose growth depended on the acquisition of Indigenous land and the exploitation of African people.
This country’s Founding Fathers spoke eloquently about liberty, freedom, and justice, while Indigenous nations were being slaughtered and displaced, and African people were being lynched and held as slaves. This contradiction is not a footnote in America’s history. It is one of the foundations upon which the United States was built. The wealth, expansion, and power of the nation emerged alongside conquest, dispossession, and enslavement, and the consequences of those systems remain today.
For Indigenous peoples, that history includes broken treaties, forced removal (in many formats), and boarding schools, all designed to eradicate our languages, cultures, and identities. In my ancestral homelands of what is now Michigan, these histories are not distant. They are embedded in the landscapes we move through every day. The cities, roads, and communities that now occupy Anishinaabe aki exist because agreements were signed, ignored, and then violated, always at the cost to Indigenous nations.
The effects of colonization extended far beyond land. Federal policies to transform Indigenous peoples by separating children from their families, outlawing cultural practices, and dismantling traditional ways of life. The goal was never coexistence. It was erasure, and when that became too expensive, it became assimilation. These policies have left lasting wounds that continue to shape Native communities today.
But this history does not belong to Indigenous peoples alone.
Across the country, Black and Brown communities continue to confront systems that were never designed to protect their freedom or well-being. Racial disparities persist in education, healthcare, housing, policing, incarceration, and economic opportunity. Voter suppression continues to disproportionately affect communities of color. It is a stark reminder that American democracy has never fully wanted to include everyone.
Meanwhile, technologies such as license plate tracking systems, including Flock cameras, have expanded the government’s and law enforcement agencies’ ability to track movement and collect data on citizens. At the same time, raids and detentions by ICE leave countless families living in uncertainty and fear. Data centers are expanding across the country. Together, these realities reveal an ongoing struggle over belonging, citizenship, and which safety is prioritized.
It’s never been about making ‘America Great Again’, because for too many people, it has never been great.
For Indigenous Peoples, there was no golden age of American expansion. Every celebrated chapter of westward growth is a representation of loss of land, sovereignty, and life. For Black and Brown Americans, the nation’s most prosperous periods coincided with segregation, disenfranchisement, and racial violence. For immigrants, the promise of America has often existed alongside exclusion.
Yet despite everything, we remain.
Indigenous nations remain. Black communities remain. Immigrant communities of color remain.
We have survived policies intended to erase us, remove us, silence us, and assimilate us. Our survival speaks not to the benevolence of the systems that targeted us, but to the resilience of the people who endured them.
That resilience, however, should not be mistaken for justice.
Too often, America points to the survival of marginalized communities while avoiding responsibility for the conditions that made survival necessary. Endurance is not evidence that harm did not occur. Survival is not the same as accountability.
As the United States marks 250 years, I find myself asking, what exactly does it celebrate?
Can a nation fully honor its history without confronting the violence committed in its name? Can patriotism coexist with honesty? Can a country claim to value truth while minimizing the experiences of the people who bore the costs of its success?
Those questions are uncomfortable for many to swallow, but they are necessary.
A nation that I would be proud of would be capable of examining its achievements alongside its failures. It should be able to celebrate progress while acknowledging the suffering that accompanied it. Yet discussions of American history too often demand that Indigenous peoples soften our criticism for the sake of moving forward, as though truth itself is divisive.
But the truth is simple.
Entire nations were displaced. Languages were nearly lost. Sacred places destroyed. Families separated. Communities fractured. These realities are not side notes to this nation’s story. They are its foundation.
The challenge of America’s 250th anniversary is not deciding whether the nation has accomplished great things. The challenge is deciding whether Americans are willing to confront the truths that complicate those accomplishments.
For Indigenous peoples, the question has never been whether we would survive 250 years of America.
We did. We have. We continue to do so.
The real question is whether America is finally prepared to face what those 250 years have meant for everyone else.
Until the United States is willing to fully reckon with the land it occupies, the treaties it violates, and the nations it attempts to erase, every celebration of its greatness remains incomplete.
The country is 250 years old.
My people’s history on this land stretches back since time immemorial.
One story doesn’t erase the other. But neither should one story dominate the national conversation while the other is always reduced to a footnote. If America wishes to celebrate its anniversary, it should first have the courage to tell the truth about how it got here.
That truth is uncomfortable.
