Introduction: Standing Between Two Histories
I was born into two nations long before I was ever born into a country. On my mother’s side, I am Muskogee, an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma. My ancestors endured removal, coercive treaties, land loss, and a century of forced assimilation policies that left lasting wounds. On my father’s side, I descend from England, Scotland, and Ireland—the same societies whose descendants pressed across this continent and reshaped its political, cultural, and demographic landscape.
Because I am literally the place where these two histories meet, I do not have the luxury of the simplified narratives that dominate modern discussions about colonization, migration, and identity. I cannot choose one side and ignore the other. I walk around every day with both stories inside me—the story of the people who were here, and the story of the people who arrived. That perspective forces me into honesty, even when modern political rhetoric prefers slogans to reality.
Today, we are told that the European settlement of North America was not only harmful in its outcomes—which is undeniably true—but inherently immoral in its very nature. At the same time, we hear that immigration and demographic change in the present are automatically enriching, never to be questioned, and that any cultural transformation today should be celebrated as progress. These claims often come from the same group of commentators. In their telling, the movement of peoples in the past is pure injustice, while the movement of peoples today is pure virtue.
When you are a child of both nations, that contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.
The World of 1620 Was Not a Moral Fairy Tale
To speak honestly about history, we must first understand the conditions in which it unfolded. The early seventeenth century was one of the harshest eras on record—not just in North America, but across the globe. Europe was burning people alive for witchcraft. The Ottoman Empire was conducting massive slave raids. African and Asian kingdoms were locked in cycles of war, famine, and disease. China teetered between dynastic collapse and food shortages. Japan was emerging from the Sengoku period, where beheading and mass warfare were routine.
Indigenous North America was no exception to this global pattern. It was home to rich cultures, sophisticated agricultural practices, complex spiritual systems, and remarkable achievements in diplomacy and ecology. But it also contained warfare, raiding, captive-taking, and ritual violence long before Europeans appeared. No society in the world was living in a peaceful utopia. All were dealing with the same pressures of survival in a premodern world: disease, scarcity, conflict, and instability.
Recognizing this complexity does not diminish Native dignity. It simply refuses to romanticize the past or treat Indigenous history as morally uncomplicated while condemning everyone else’s.
What Indigenous Civilizations Were—And What They Were Not
Another modern habit is to inflate Indigenous technological development as a counterweight to European colonization. But honoring a people does not require rewriting the archaeological record. North America north of Mexico, on average, existed at a late Neolithic level of technology. Many societies developed settled agriculture, built ceremonial mounds and pueblos, created long-distance trade routes, and governed themselves through sophisticated kinship and clan systems. But large-scale ironworking, bronze metallurgy, wheel-based transport, and large domesticated herd animals did not develop in this region, with the exception of limited native copper use in certain areas.
These differences were not the result of any inferiority. They were shaped by geography, ecology, and isolation from Eurasian technological exchange. The Indigenous societies of this continent achieved remarkable things within their particular environmental and historical realities. They do not need to be recast as “almost Europe” to command respect.
The Real Story of Colonization Is About Power, Not Movement
When critics talk about colonization as a uniquely evil chapter, they are usually referring not to migration itself, but to the coercive structures that followed. They rightly point to land seizure, the denial of sovereignty, coerced treaty-making, and the forced removal that lifted entire nations—like my own Muskogee people—from their homes. These acts were not simply population change. They were organized policies backed by state power, often carried out under legal doctrines like “discovery” and “plenary power” that treated Native nations as obstacles to be managed rather than sovereigns to be respected.
We must never soften or excuse those injustices.
But the modern narrative often treats all forms of early European presence—the peaceful contacts, the intermarriage, the trade, the alliances, even the earliest settlements—as inherently illegitimate, as though the very act of crossing the ocean constituted an unforgivable moral error. That is a standard we do not apply anywhere else, nor to any other group. And it is a standard that evaporates entirely when the conversation shifts to the present.
The Modern Contradiction: When Migration Is Condemned in the Past and Celebrated in the Present
Today, many commentators who emphasize the injustices of colonization also describe modern immigration as unquestionably positive and morally mandatory. They argue that the cultural transformation caused by current migration streams enriches the United States, energizes its economy, and expands its identity. They insist that demographic change is a strength, that assimilation should be optional, and that concerns about cultural or political shifts are rooted in fear or prejudice.
But when these same commentators look backward, they treat cultural and demographic change as inherently destructive. Any transformation of Native societies by incoming populations is portrayed as a permanent injury. Any blending of cultures is framed as erasure. Demographic change is treated as theft. Cultural adaptation is often described as loss rather than evolution.
This is where the contradiction emerges. The logic used in one era is reversed in another. In broad public rhetoric—not in every academic paper, but in the common discourse—migration in the past is immoral, while migration in the present is celebrated. Cultural change in the past is cultural destruction; cultural change today is cultural enrichment. Concerns about transformation in the past are justified; concerns today are bigotry.
If we are going to have an honest conversation, we cannot apply two entirely different moral frameworks to the same human behavior simply because the groups involved are different.
Living Proof That History Is More Complicated Than Ideology
My perspective on this does not come from political loyalty to one side or another. It comes from my life. I am the descendant of those who were here and the descendant of those who came. I owe my existence to the merging of two worlds that collided in ways both tragic and transformative.
And the truth is this: every Native American alive today lives within a modern system—legal, medical, technological, and infrastructural—that did not exist in 1491. We benefit from clean water, antibiotic medicine, constitutional rights, electrification, mass agriculture, representative government, transportation networks, and communication systems. These developments emerged not from a single culture but from the merging of many—and from the globalizing forces that followed contact.
Acknowledging this does not justify the injustices suffered by Native nations. Those wrongs remain wrong. But refusing to acknowledge the reality of the modern world we live in is just as dishonest as denying the past. We honor our ancestors through truth, not through selective narratives.
A Better Moral Framework for Understanding Migration and Change
Rather than moralizing entire eras, we should judge actions based on their specific conditions. Forced removal was wrong. Coercive treaties were wrong. Denying sovereignty was wrong. But migration itself is not inherently evil, nor is cultural change inherently destructive or inherently enriching. Movement of peoples is a constant in human history. The real question is whether the movement is accompanied by violence, coercion, or the denial of rights—or by consent, law, and mutual respect.
Once we make that distinction, it becomes clear that our current public debate often confuses categories. We condemn the past for any cultural transformation at all, even peaceful or consensual ones, while celebrating the present for the exact same process. That inconsistency reveals that the argument has become ideological rather than analytical.
Conclusion: Speaking as a Child of Both Nations
As someone who belongs fully to both of the civilizations that converged on this continent, I am not interested in comforting fictions. I am not interested in narratives designed to score political points. I am interested in truth.
And the truth is that history is complicated, identity is complicated, and the American story is complicated. Migration is not inherently wicked. Cultural change is not inherently virtuous. Our past contains injustice and resilience; our present contains opportunity and contradiction.
If we are going to talk honestly about migration—past or present—we must stop applying moral frameworks that shift based on who we are talking about. The movement of peoples can cause harm and can create good. It can destroy and it can build. It can erase and it can enrich. The only way to understand any of it is through clarity, humility, and consistency.