The thing that intrigued me most this week was that members of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Oneida and Onondaga, declared war on Germany during WWI. It fascinates me that violence was the tool used to attempt legitimizing oneself to the settler colonial state that occupies the land these native groups once controlled. Even more fascinating is that, though this specific act of violence used to legitimize was not heeded and there were no long standing effects from the federal government by this act, it ultimately was native people enacting violence in the name of the United States that granted them eventual citizenship. This relationship between violent action and citizenship can be inferred from native citizenship initially only being solidified into law for veterans and only granted to all native people years later. Though this inference is not the only way that we know this to be true, as explicitly stated in the excerpt from 1952 of a Department of the Interior report that explains Indian citizenship. The report states that citizenship was granted “by a legislative enactment as an expression of gratitude” to native veterans of WWI. Also stated in the report it must be said are numerous allusions to native people as violent or infantile, including the prohibition of alcohol to native people due to the risk of them being at risk of “unscrupulous non-natives”, and a stated reason for reservations being to protect white settlers from native “molestation.” This view of native people as infantilized or dangerous goes back throughout our nation’s history and still continues through to today. Especially after the dehumanization campaign of the late 19th century, post Custer’s defeat at the Battle of Greasy Grass. The only way that occupying governments are willing to give personhood within the state to native groups is if, for a time, they will remove their own personhood and act as a tool of violence for that state. The Cherokee, for instance, were rewarded with protection by the confederate government for siding with them during the civil war; and the Cherokee are not unique in this instance, throughout the push westward during manifest destiny many tribes were offered protections and rewards in return for their allegiance to the U.S.