their removal from their homelands,” according to the statement.
In his letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the Forest Service Chief Randy Moore, Vance wrote, “The federal effort denigrates Ohio history and represents a lack of fidelity to our nation’s founding generation.”
He went on to write, “I take exception to the U.S.D.A.’s designation of Wayne’s legacy as ‘complicated.” Labeling the life and times of Wayne in such a way is an all-too-common dismissive, academic handwave that is beneath the dignity of the U.S. government.”
In 2023, Sabrina Eaton of Cleveland.com described Wayne as a general in the Revolutionary War, nicknamed Mad Anthony Wayne either because of his bold military tactics or his hot temper.
In 2019, ICT quoted George Ironstrack, assistant director of education for the Myaammia Center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, about Wayne’s history with Native peoples in Ohio. The center is an initiative led by the Miami Nation of Oklahoma, whose homelands include lands in and around the Ohio river valley. They were removed from the state in 1840.
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“As part of his campaign, Wayne’s forces systematically burned Miami villages, food stores and crops,” Ironstrack told ICT.
According to Ironstrack, Wayne’s strategy of starvation culminated by the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers, which forced the Miami tribe to the negotiating table and resulted in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville in which the Miami and other tribes ceded most of their lands in Ohio.
Vance, who is the author of the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” frequently touts his hardscrabble upbringing and aversion to elitism in politics as bridges to the populist wing of the Republican Party. He also opposed Trump sharply before shifting his rhetoric to support the former president.
A story published Thursday, July 18, by the news site Wired, however, details the senator’s contacts with the elite, conservative heavyweights, wealthy financiers and others that he previously had denounced.
The contacts came from a Wired analysis of Vance’s public Venmo account network. Venmo is a digital payment application that frequently makes users’ phone contacts and friends’ lists public.
Among those listed as Vance contacts is Amalia Halikias of the controversial Project 2025. Created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, Project 2025 sets forth a political plan that calls for dismissal of thousands of public servants, expanded power of the president, dismantling of the Department of Education, halting sales of the abortion pill and many other actions that appeal to the far right. Trump has claimed ignorance of Project 2025 but Vance has stated in previous interviews that the document has “some good ideas.”
Vance’s nomination as the GOP’s vice presidential candidate came during the Republican National Convention, which ran July 15-18 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Indianz.com noted a lack of Native events during the convention in a state that is home to 11 federally recognized tribes, but ICT reported the scheduling of a federal Indian policy roundtable organized by Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who is Cherokee.
A couple of Native delegates from Oklahoma were also voting at the convention, which included appearances from some tribal leaders from Wisconsin, including Forest County Potawatomi Chairman James Crawford. Former Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer, who made a statement during the 2020 convention, had been expected to attend the roundtable discussion.
The announcement of Vance as the vice presidential candidate, however, came at the last minute as the convention was set to begin.
“Our rights and history as Indigenous peoples are not up for debate; we demand respect from someone in such a potentially powerful position like the vice president,” Briana Mazzolini-Blanchard, executive director of the Urban Native Collective, told ICT. Massolini-Blanchard is a citizen of the CHamoru Nation of the island of Guam.
“It’s saddening that political leaders continue to stand by these colonized names that hold such deep pain for Indigenous peoples.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
