The US Predatory Discourse on its Origin Myth Contrapuntally Analyzed: The Case of American Settlers’ Narrative on Native Americans
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Published:
Dec 10, 2025
Keywords:
American Settlers, Native Americans, Jackson’s Speech, White Supremacist Logic, Said’s Contrapuntality Approach
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Abstract
The article seeks to unpack the US hegemonic and predatory discourse which firmly underpins its origin myth through the use of Said’s contrapuntality approach. More specifically, the article places a special premium on revealing that the US mainstream, official historical account about its origins is largely insufficient to vehicle the thorough reality of how the US was first established. The article investigates the US dichotomous, hierarchized and inveterately supremacist narrative that underpinned policies of land theft, forcible removal and genocide against Native Americans. Most importantly, the article contrapuntally analyses President Andrew Jackson’s milestone speech before Congress (Dec. 6, 1830) to demystify the univocal and exclusionary US historical account which elevated its ethnocentric and supremacist narrative into a commonsensical and non-negotiable logic. The analyses dwell on unearthing alternative, but muted, narratives about the experiences of the encounter of American settlers with Native Americans.
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BENMERABET, N. (2025). The US Predatory Discourse on its Origin Myth Contrapuntally Analyzed: The Case of American Settlers’ Narrative on Native Americans. ALTRALANG Journal, 7(2), 343-357. https://doi.org/10.52919/altralang.v7i2.592
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References
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• Stennard, David E. (1992). American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. Oxford University Press.
• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. (1995). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Beacon Press.
• Vasquez, John. (1993). The War Puzzle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.27.
• Vaughan, Alden T. (1995). New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675. 3rd edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
• William Carroll to Andrew Jackson, June 29, 1829, Jackson Papers, 7: 305.
• Wilson, George M. (1994). Edward Said on Contrapuntal Reading. Philosophy and Literature, 18(2), 265-273.
• Wolfe, P. (1994) Nation and miscegeNation: Discursive continuity in the post- Mabo era. Social Analysis 36, 93–152.
• http://mz.china-embassy.gov.cn/por/ssxw/202203/t20220302_10647236.htm
- Axtell, James. (1987). Colonial America without the Indians: Counterfactual Reflections. The Journal of American History, 73(4), 981-996. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1904058 .
• Bakhtin, Mikhail. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. University of Minnesota Press.
• Bressler, Charles E. (2007). Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 4th ed. Pearson Prentice Hall.
• Churchill, Ward. (1997). A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present. City Lights Books.
• Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge.
• Cunico, Sonia and Jeremy Munday (eds.) (2007) Translation and Ideology, special issue of The Translator, 13(2), 151-169. DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2007.10799236
• Daniel W. Wright to Andrew Jackson, March 4, 1829, Jackson Papers, 7: 80.
• De Tocqueville, Alexis (2000). Democracy in America, Vols. I & II. Trans. Henry Reeve. Bantam.
• Dirlik, Arif. 'The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism," Critical Inquiry, Winter 1994, p.329.
• Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. (2014). An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Beacon Press.
• E., Cavanagh and Veracini L. (2013). Editors’ statement, Settler Colonial Studies 3(1), 1
• Giroux, H. A. (2014). Neoliberalism’s war on higher education. Haymarket Books.
• Halbwachs, Maurice. (1992). On Collective Memory. The University of Chicago Press.
• Hoxie, Frederick E. (1984). The Indians Versus the Textbooks: Is There Any Way Out? Newberry Library.
• The Indians of southern California in 1852; the B.D. Wilson report and a selection of contemporary comment. Edited by John Walton Caughey. Library of the Congress. http://www.loc.gov/resource/calbk.051
• “Indian Treaties and the Removal Act of 1830.” Office of the Historian. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/indian-treaties.
• “J. C. Calhoun to the Cherokee Delegation”, January 30, 1824, in U.S., Congress, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, 21st Cong., 2d sess., 1831, 2 vols. (Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1832-1834), 2:473. Hereafter cited as ASPIA./ 2John Forsyth to Jackson, June 23, 1829, in Andrew Jackson Papers, Division of Manuscripts, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Micro¬ film Copy, reel 37). Hereafter referred to as AJP.
• James Monroe: Inaugural Address (March 4, 1821). The American Presidency Project
• https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-24
• John Forsyth to James Barbour, March 9, 1825, ASP: Indian Affairs, 2: 774, Barbour to Forsyth, March 23, 1825, M21 1:423.
• John Quincy Adams to the Senate, January 31, 1826, ASP: Indian Affairs, 2: 611-2.
• Josephy, Alvin M. Jr. (1970). Indians in History, Atlantic, 225, 67-72.
• https://www.theatlantic.com/author/alvin-m-josephy-jr/
• Kress, Günther. (1988). Linguistic Processes in Sociocultural Practice. Oxford University Press.
• Miller, Robert J. (2006). Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny. Praeger.
• Nash, Gary B. Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1982.
• Ngugi, Wa Thiong’o. (2005). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Studies in African literature. James Currey Ltd.
• Nora, Pierre. (1984). "Entre mémoire et histoire." Les lieux de mémoire. Vol. I, La République. Gallimard.
• Pappe, I (2012) Shtetel colonialism: First and last impressions of indigeneity by colonized colonizers, Settler Colonial Studies 2(1), 39–58
• Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, November 1, 1873. p. 379. https://li.proquest.com/elhpdf/histcontext/1601-H.exdoc.1_14.pdf
• Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. (1995). Vantage Books.
• Said, Edward W. (1996). Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures. Vintage Books ed. Vintage, p. 1.
• Said, Edward W., and David Barsamian. (1994). The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with David Barsamian. Between the Lines. .
• Scheurich, J. J., & Young, M. D. (1997). Coloring Epistemologies: Are Our Research Epistemologies Racially Biased? Educational Researcher, 26(4), https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X026004004
• Stephens, Kyle Massey. (2013). To the Indian Removal Act, 1814-1830. [Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School. University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=3124&context=utk_graddiss
• Richardson, James D., ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1896, 2: 262.
• Richardson, James D., ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1: 354-5.
• Stennard, David E. (1992). American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. Oxford University Press.
• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. (1995). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Beacon Press.
• Vasquez, John. (1993). The War Puzzle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.27.
• Vaughan, Alden T. (1995). New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675. 3rd edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
• William Carroll to Andrew Jackson, June 29, 1829, Jackson Papers, 7: 305.
• Wilson, George M. (1994). Edward Said on Contrapuntal Reading. Philosophy and Literature, 18(2), 265-273.
• Wolfe, P. (1994) Nation and miscegeNation: Discursive continuity in the post- Mabo era. Social Analysis 36, 93–152.