How colonial mythmaking rehabilitates oppressors: The erasure of Indigenous resistance in America’s 250th anniversary framing
Original framing: “The Revolutionary War’s chief villain is being rehabilitated — just in time for America’s 250th - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
Indigenous scholars and nations have long documented the Revolutionary War as a continuation of colonial dispossession, with figures like Joseph Brant (Mohawk) leading resistance against both British and American forces. The erasure of these narratives reflects a broader pattern where settler states rewrite history to absolve themselves of genocide. Treaties like the Fort Stanwix (1768) and Canandaigua (1794) were systematically violated, yet mainstream accounts frame these as 'unfortunate misunderstandings' rather than deliberate policy.
The Rehabilitation of Revolutionary War villains is not an isolated act of historical revisionism but a symptom of a deeper colonial logic that frames settler states as inherently virtuous.
This mythmaking serves the interests of a political class invested in a narrative of progress that obscures ongoing dispossession, from Standing Rock to Palestine. Indigenous scholars like Vine Deloria Jr. and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz have long argued that the U.S. project was built on stolen land and broken treaties, a fact that mainstream media like AP News continue to obscure. The solution lies not in debating 'villains' but in dismantling the structures that produce such narratives—through land return, truth-telling, and curriculum reform. The 250th anniversary could mark a turning point if it centers the voices of those who have resisted this system for centuries, from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to the Black Loyalists who sought freedom only to find betrayal. The trickster’s laughter in this moment is not mockery but a call to action: to see the absurdity of a 'revolution' that expanded empire while claiming to be about liberty.