On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act.

This act authorized the government to negotiate removal treaties with Native American tribes.

The tribes would surrender their land, the very land they had called home for generations,

long before any white settler set foot in Americas,

in a land exchange west the Mississippi.

States like Georgia, which many of my relatives and ancestors called home,

wanted the Native American lands for the increasing number

of white settlers. To enforce these treaties, Jackson and the U.S. government and state governments

used coercion, manipulation, and brute force to accomplish their goal of force relocation.

Jackson, along with other leaders, believed that this policy was in the best interest of the Native American tribes.

Jackson himself called it a benevolent act because the Native American tribes were uncivilized, savages,

incapable of improvement, and destined to fade away.

Before this act, Georgia had been using a variety of illegal methods to steal land for Native American

tribes, who lived, raised, and built communities for centuries before the white settlers arrived in Georgia.

The methods including passing laws that declared all land to be under state law, not tribal

law, thereby nullifying Cherokee sovereignty. These laws made it illegal for Cherokee government

to function.

This measure also had another chilling effect.

Georgia officials would harass Cherokee leaders,

suppressed information in local newspapers,

and made it illegal for non-native people to live on Cherokee land

without the permission from the state.

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