Editing Trail of Tears (section)

==== Classification debate ====
There is debate among historians about how the Trail of Tears should be classified. Some historians classify the events as a form of [[ethnic cleansing]];<ref name=":4">{{Cite web |last=Jochum |first=Glenn |date=December 13, 2017 |title=Kelton Lecture Describes Debate Over Genocide of Indigenous Peoples |url=https://news.stonybrook.edu/humanities/kelton-lecture-describes-debate-over-genocide-of-indigenous-peoples/ |access-date=March 13, 2024 |language=en-US |quote=Scholars generally agree that the Trail of Tears was not genocide but instead ethnic cleansing: "rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area persons of another ethnic or religious group." |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240710193612/https://news.stonybrook.edu/humanities/kelton-lecture-describes-debate-over-genocide-of-indigenous-peoples |archive-date=July 10, 2024}}</ref><ref name=":7">{{Cite book |last=Walker Howe |first=Daniel |author-link=Daniel Walker Howe |title=[[What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848]] |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0195392432 |pages=423 |chapter=Jacksonian Democracy and the Rule of Law |quote=Today Americans deplore the expropriation and expulsion of [Indians]... a practice now called "ethnic cleansing"...}}</ref><ref name="Anderson2014" /> others refer to it as genocide.<ref name="Gilio-Whitaker" /><ref name="Ostler2019" /><ref name="Dunbar-Ortiz2014" />

Historian and biographer [[Robert V. Remini]] wrote that Jackson's policy on Native Americans was based on good intentions. He writes: "Jackson fully expected the Indians to thrive in their new surroundings, educate their children, acquire the skills of white civilization so as to improve their living conditions, and become citizens of the United States. Removal, in his mind, would provide all these blessings....Jackson genuinely believed that what he had accomplished rescued these people from inevitable annihilation."{{sfn|Remini|2001|pp=279–281}} Historian [[Sean Wilentz]] writes that some critics who label Indian removal as genocide view Jacksonian democracy as a "momentous transition from the ethical community upheld by antiremoval men", and says this view is a caricature of US history that "turns tragedy into melodrama, exaggerates parts at the expense of the whole, and sacrifices nuance for sharpness".<ref>{{cite book |last=Wilentz |first=Sean |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2laNEAAAQBAJ |title=Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson To Lincoln |date=2006 |publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]] |isbn=978-0-393-32921-6 |pages=324 |language=en |quote=[Jacksonian Democracy's] first crusade, aimed, the critics charge, at the "infantilization" and "genocide" of the Indians, removal supposedly signaled a momentous transition from the ethical community upheld by antiremoval men to Jackson's boundless individualism. Jackson's democracy, for these historians - indeed liberal society - was founded on degradation, dishonor, and death. Like all historical caricatures, this one turns tragedy into melodrama, exaggerates parts at the expense of the whole...}}</ref><ref name=":6">{{cite book |last=Cole |first=Donald B. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yWR3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA117 |title=The Presidency of Andrew Jackson |date=1993 |publisher=[[University Press of Kansas]] |isbn=978-0-7006-0600-9 |pages=117 |language=en}}</ref> Historian [[Donald B. Cole]], too, argues that it is difficult to find evidence of a conscious desire for genocide in Jackson's policy on Native Americans, but dismisses the idea that Jackson was motivated by the welfare of Native Americans.<ref name=":6" /> Colonial historian Daniel Blake Smith disagrees with the usage of the term genocide, adding that "no one wanted, let alone planned for, Cherokees to die in the forced removal out West".<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Daniel Blake |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nX4aodeyreoC&pg=PA2 |title=An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears |date=2011 |publisher=[[Henry Holt and Company]] |isbn=978-1-4299-7396-0 |pages=2 |language=en}}</ref>

Historian Justin D. Murphy argues that:{{Blockquote|text=Although the “Trail of Tears” was tragic, it does not quite meet the standard of genocide, and the extent to which tribes were allowed to retain their identity, albeit by removal, does not quite meet the standard of [[cultural genocide]]".<ref>{{cite book |last=Murphy |first=Justin D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DapVEAAAQBAJ&pg=PR23 |title=American Indian Wars: The Essential Reference Guide |date=2022 |publisher=[[ABC-CLIO]] |isbn=978-1-4408-7510-6 |pages=23 |language=en}}</ref>}}

In contrast, some scholars have debated that the Trail of Tears was a genocidal act.<ref name="Ostler2019" /><ref name="Anderson2014" /><ref name=":4"/> Historian Jeffrey Ostler argues that the threat of genocide was used to ensure Natives' compliance with removal policies,{{r|1=Ostler2019|2=Conrad2019|p2=1|q2=Ostler argues that "genocide was a part of the history under consideration" (7)...and he argues that Indigenous people demonstrated a "consciousness of genocide," even in contexts where genocide did not occur, and acted creatively to survive the perceived threat of destruction (147).}} and concludes that, "In its outcome and in the means used to gain compliance, the policy had genocidal dimensions."<ref name="Conrad2019">{{Cite journal |last=Conrad |first=Paul |date=2019 |title=Review: Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas |journal=Early American Literature |volume=56 |issue=1 |pages=286–290 |doi=10.1353/eal.2021.0021 |s2cid=234112850}}</ref> [[Patrick Wolfe]] argues that [[settler colonialism]] and genocide are interrelated but should be distinguished from each other, writing that settler colonialism is "more than the summary liquidation of Indigenous people, though it includes that."<ref name="Wolfe2006">{{Cite journal |last=Wolfe |first=Patrick |date=December 1, 2006 |title=Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native |journal=[[Journal of Genocide Research]] |volume=8 |issue=4 |pages=387–409 |doi=10.1080/14623520601056240 |issn=1462-3528 |s2cid=143873621 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Wolfe describes the assimilation of Indigenous people who escaped relocation (and particularly their abandonment of collectivity) as a form of cultural genocide, though he emphasises that cultural genocide is “the real thing” in that it resulted in large numbers of deaths. The Trail of Tears was thus a settler-colonial ''replacement'' of Indigenous people and culture in addition to a genocidal mass-killing according to Wolfe.{{r|1=Wolfe2006|2=Wolfe2006|p1=1|q1=settler colonialism destroys to replace|p2=2|q2=Mass murders are not the same thing as genocide, though the one action can be both. Thus genocide has been achieved by means of summary mass murder (to cite examples already used [including the Trail of Tears]) in the frontier massacring of Indigenous peoples, in the Holocaust, and in Rwanda. But there can be summary mass murder without genocide, as in the case of 9/11, and there can be genocide without summary mass murder, as in the case of the continuing post-frontier destruction, in whole and in part, of Indigenous genoi.}} [[Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz]] describes the policy as genocide, saying: "The fledgling United States government's method of dealing with native people—a process which then included systematic genocide, property theft, and total subjugation—reached its nadir in 1830 under the federal policy of President Andrew Jackson."<ref name="Dunbar-Ortiz2014" /> Mankiller emphasises that Jackson's policies were the natural extension of much earlier genocidal policies toward Native Americans established through territorial expansion during the [[Presidency of Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson administration]].<ref name="Dunbar-Ortiz2014" />

[[Dina Gilio-Whitaker]], in ''[[As Long as Grass Grows]]'', describes the Trail of Tears and the [[Long Walk of the Navajo|Diné long walk]] as [[Structural violence|structural]] genocide, because they destroyed Native relations to land, one another, and nonhuman beings which imperiled their culture, life, and history. According to her, these are ongoing actions that constitute both cultural and physical genocide.<ref name="Gilio-Whitaker"/>{{rp|35–51}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Jacklet |first=Ben |date=January 4, 2019 |title=Review of Dina Gilio-Whitaker, 2019. As long as grass grows: the Indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock |url=http://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/id/2115/ |journal=[[Journal of Political Ecology]] |language=en |volume=26 |issue=1 |doi=10.2458/v26i1.23503 |issn=1073-0451 |s2cid=200057371 |quote=The full extent of the State's project to hamstring the rights of Indigenous people in the U.S. becomes clear in Chapter 2, provocatively titled "Genocide by any other name: a history of Indigenous environmental injustice." This unflinching examination of settler colonialism and its wrongdoings exposes familiar tropes such as the "pristine" American West and "vanishing" populations of Native Americans while delivering difficult truths about forced relocation, structural genocide, and slavery. In addition to the well-known tragedies of the Long Walk and the Trail of Tears... |doi-access=free}}</ref>