About this episode

The episode explores the impact of American expansion on Indigenous nations, focusing on the political economy of plunder as described by historian Michael Witgen.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are endowed with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But what did liberty and equality mean for the peoples the Declaration never named—the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations who had governed the vast Great Lakes homeland they called Anishinaabewake for generations before a single European sailed its waters? In this revisited conversation, historian Michael Witgen, Professor of History at Columbia University and a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, takes us inside the Anishinaabe world and reveals how the new United States set about transforming it. The answer, Witgen shows us, wasn't simple conquest. It was something more elaborate, more profitable, and in some ways more insidious: what he calls the political economy of plunder—a system engineered to strip Indigenous peoples of their homelands while funneling the wealth of that dispossession directly into the settler colonial economy. Michael's Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/323 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 051: A History of Early Detroit 🎧 Episode 064: Native American Slavery…

People in this episode

Host: Liz Covart

Guest: Michael Witgen

Topics covered

• American Expansion
• Political Economy
• Indigenous Peoples
• Settler Colonialism
• History of the Great Lakes
• Ojibwe Nation

Keywords

• liberty
• equality
• Ojibwe
• political economy of plunder
• settler colonial economy
• Indigenous rights
• Great Lakes history

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Columbia University

Books & works: The Declaration of Independence

Places: United States, Great Lakes, Anishinaabewake, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe

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