Yes, it's well understood to be the country's original sin, even if not always put in quite such negative terms.
Yeah, one would have to look high and low to find a meaningful population of Americans who don't believe Natives were royally cheated and mistreated by European and (later) American settlers. This isn't 1956 anymore. Even the occassional choad who might argue how slavery was ultimately "good" for Africans likely wouldn't stretch that analogy to Native Americans.
The thing is, for us, these were both part of our original sin.
Absolutely correct. Though would you agree that even while a substantial minority minimize the effects of slavery not many do so for the wholescale ethnic cleansing of Native Americans?
I think that has to do with the more politically-charged role of black-white relations in society compared to Anglo-Native relations. The debates (and occassional scapegoating) over affirmative action, welfare/government assistance, a black president, urban white flight, discrimination, poverty, etc. make it difficult for some to separate a rational historical analysis and discussion from these modern issues. Hence, we periodically find nimrods like this fellow from AR and his ilk who take minimizing the horrors of slavery as somehow being part and parcel with being politically "conservative" in 2012.
Conversely, in most parts of America there aren't substantial cohesive Native American communities that raise the same sort of hot button issues black and white relations do. Don't get me wrong--I'm fully aware that the same issues I previously mentioned infect Anglo-Native relations and politics in areas with large Native minority populations, like the Dakotas and parts of the SW. But those areas are far less populous in general--of both Anglos and Natives--than areas with substantial black minorities (i.e. most urban areas), just as Native Americans are comparitively only a sliver of the African-American population. Thus these hot-button issues tend not to pervade Anglo-Native relations at a nationwide level, but rather only a local or, at most, regional level.
Thus it's easier for whites nationwide to acknowledge the historical wholesale exploitation of Natives than it is to acknowledge the horrors of slavery, because relatively few whites are threatened by the perceived political and social encroachment of Natives the way some whites are threatened by black poltical and economic competition. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there's notable minimization of the past wrongs perpetrated against Native Americans among whites in regions with substantial Native minorities. Maybe someone from such regions can shed more light here.
