Republican media pundit Ann Coulter commented on Twitter: “We didn’t kill enough Indians” under a post about the Socialism 2025 Conference.
The post she commented under showed a clip from the Socialism 2025 Conference. During the event, speakers highlighted the similarities between the genocide and erasure of Native Americans to the genocide of Palestinians. Professor Melanie Yazzie at the University of Minnesota spoke about the Land Back campaign, which aims to return all stolen land to Indigenous people. Ann Coulter was offended by this.
Her abusive words of hate carry power. By disparaging Native Americans, and by extension all Indigenous people, she is normalising the oppression and violence against these nations.
Coulter’s comment is reminiscent of former general Phillip Sheridan’s quote:
“The only good Indian is a dead Indian”.
The unwarranted disdain for Native Americans caused genocide and generations of suffering.
Former president Jackson was behind the Trail of Tears. This was the forceful displacement of 60,000 people from the “Five Civilised Tribes” in the south-eastern states. An estimated 2,500-6,000 people died on the journey.
European settlers killed 65 million Indigenous people in the Americas over 100 years, to the point where they changed the global climate. With the forced desertion of farmland, the trapped CO2 intensified the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850.
Far too many Native Americans have died from disease, violence, displacement and the greedy agenda of the United States government.
How Native American leaders and organisations have responded
Many Indigenous communities and representatives have responded to Ann Coulter’s hate speech.
Chase Iron Eyes, the director of Lakota People’s Law Project & Sacred Defence Fund, said:
“The United States derives its sovereignty, its constitutional American sovereignty and any legitimacy from its treaties, its lawful treaties with Native nations.”
Navajo Elder Wally Brown said:
“All of the Native people had something to do with the way this country came to be.”
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) president Mark Macarro also responded:
“Celebrating genocide against Tribal Nations crosses every moral line. Careless comments like these glorify the darkest chapters of U.S. history and actively endanger Native peoples’ lives today.”
The US would be nothing without Native Americans
The United States of America, the most powerful country in the world, would not have made it without Native Americans. In Jamestown, Virginia, where the story of Matoaka and John Smith took place, the settlers would have starved without the help of the Powhatan nation.
Native American soldiers led campaigns in the South Pacific in the Second World War by using the Navajo language as a code. Navajo Marines, known as “Code Talkers”, created codes that the Japanese could not decipher. American military operations in the Pacific succeeded because of efficient planning and execution by these soldiers.
The Choctaw tribe donated $170 ($5,000 today) to the Irish town Middleton during the famine. This special connection has continued through Covid relief funds, memorial walks for the famine and Trail of Tears and scholarships for Choctaw students.
Native Americans invented safety goggles, snowshoes, kayaks, baby bottles, sunscreen, pain relief medication, oral birth control, hammocks, and suspension bridges.
So, Ann Coulter, the next time you think of speaking an ill word against Indigenous people, shut your mouth.
Featured Image Credit: Pexels
Third year journalism student. 2025/2026 Lifestyle and Comment Editor at Brig. Published in The Yucatán Times, Mi Campeche and The Mourning Paper. Host of From the 40s with Air3Radio.
