Whose North America is it? “Nobody owns it. It owns itself.”

IF 0.1 4区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
Margaret Connell-Szasz
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Responding to the question, “Whose North America is it?,” this essay argues North America does not belong to anyone. As a Sonoran Desert Tohono O’odham said of the mountain: “Nobody owns it. It owns itself.” Contrasting Native American and Euro-American views of the natural world, the essay maintains that European immigrants introduced the startling concept of Cartesian duality. Accepting a division between spiritual and material, they viewed the natural world as physical matter, devoid of spirituality. North America’s First People saw it differently: they perceived the Earth/Universe as a spiritual community of reciprocal relationships bound by intricate ties of kinship and respect. This clash has shaped American history. From the sixteenth century forward, many European immigrants envisioned land ownership as a dream. Creators of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution thrust “happiness”/“property” into the nation’s mythology. Southern Euro-Americans claimed “ownership” of African Americans, defining them as “property”; Native Americans resisted Euro-Americans’ enforcement of land ownership ideology; by the late 1800s, Euro-Americans’ view of the natural world as physical matter spurred massive extraction of natural resources. The Cartesian duality persisted, but, given its dubious legacy, Native Americans question the wisdom of this interpretation of the natural world.
它是谁的北美?“没有人拥有它。它拥有自己。”
在回答“这是谁的北美?”这个问题时,这篇文章认为北美不属于任何人。正如托霍诺·奥德姆(Tohono O'odham)在谈到这座山时所说:“没有人拥有它。它拥有自己。”这篇文章对比了美洲原住民和欧美人对自然世界的看法,认为欧洲移民引入了笛卡尔二元性的惊人概念。他们接受了精神和物质之间的划分,将自然世界视为物质,缺乏精神。北美的第一民族对此有不同的看法:他们将地球/宇宙视为一个由错综复杂的亲属关系和尊重联系在一起的互惠关系的精神共同体。这场冲突塑造了美国历史。从16世纪开始,许多欧洲移民将土地所有权视为一种梦想。《独立宣言》和《美国宪法》的缔造者将“幸福”/“财产”融入了这个国家的神话。南欧裔美国人声称对非裔美国人拥有“所有权”,并将其定义为“财产”;美洲原住民抵制欧洲裔美国人对土地所有权意识形态的强制执行;到19世纪末,欧美人将自然世界视为物质,这促使了对自然资源的大规模开采。笛卡尔二元性仍然存在,但鉴于其可疑的遗产,美洲原住民质疑这种对自然世界的解释是否明智。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA
AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
0.00%
发文量
8
期刊介绍: American Studies in Scandinavia, the journal of the Nordic Association for American Studies, is published twice each year, and carries scholarly articles and reviews on a wide range of American Studies topics and disciplines, including history, literature, politics, geography, media, language, diplomacy, race, ethnicity, economics, law, culture and society. American Studies in Scandinavia is sponsored by the National Councils for Research in Science and the Humanities in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, the journal is published by Odense University Press with the financial support of the Nordic Publications Committee for Humanist Periodicals.
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