Indigenous people were enslaved by the obvious means undertaken throughout Spanish colonization. Additionally, they were enslaved with the expectation that indigenous people will assimilate to further the interests of whites. Finally, indigenous people were forced to work as laborers in white owned corporations for less than subsistence wages. With the introduction of American capitalism, large industrial corporations were established on land that indigenous people had called their home for centuries. Movement leaders were persecuted and punished for openly challenging colonizers' power.
Indigenous people have and continue to be objectified through processes of colonization.
As a group they are denied power and are forced into a societal hierarchy based primarily on race and class. Thus, indigenous people have the agency to resist, the ability to organize resistance on a mass level, the capacity to decide upon the tactics of resistance, and the intelligence to understand that they are being oppressed. Through my research and analysis I will interrogate the social hierarchies that were being challenged through these resistance movements. In doing so, I hope to highlight the fact that each movement's participants made the choice to act and that their choices were limited by the complex societal structure of the time. Thus, they were not rebellious victims.