Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T07:20:29.983Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - The Great White Father and His Little Red Children

Surveillance and Race in Native America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2023

Michael Kwet
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut and University of Johannesburg
Get access

Summary

Surveillance has always been at the heart of America’s ongoing effort to subordinate and control the first people of the land. Contrary to the mythology about scattered bands of roaming nomads in the forest, America was at least as densely populated as Europe at the time of first contact with Europeans. Charles Mann and others have successfully narrowed the population estimate of North America to somewhere around 90 million people at the time of Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbean.1 The capital city of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlan, was three times larger than the largest city in all of Europe, which was London. Getting the land out of native hands was no small task, and a lot of blood and treasure was expended on the effort then. America’s native nations still control substantial land and resources; and much blood and treasure are still spent today in a changed but obviously ongoing effort to take what’s left. This chapter explores how surveillance was used to subjugate and colonize the Indigenous populations of North America.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×