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Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

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Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#41

Post by flatline »

chrisco255 wrote: post #27

The idea of the stable borders is so new. The Ottoman Empire still controlled much of the middle east before World War I. The British Empire was also still quite expansive at the beginning of that war (and into WW2). The fact that so much of the world speaks Latin-derived languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian...nearly 1 billion people in total) is a relic of the Roman empire's own expansive conque…

Indian land was taken over the course of hundreds of years of false promises and violated treaties. European settlers were predominately the ones drawing the maps, and consistently taking what was not only not theirs to begin with, but what they had agreed belonged to the native tribes and then took anyway. We're not talking about thousands of years of human history, we're talking about very real injustices that are still being perpetuated by one current-day party (largely the states) against another (various tribes). Would you prefer the tribes resort to rebellion and bloodshed to reclaim what is theirs by treaty? Would you prefer that contracts and treaties are simply ignored when inconvenient?

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#42

Post by cowboysauce »

627467 wrote: post #23
Gunax wrote: post #18

So the case at hand is about the prosecution of a tribal member by the state court. While I think the SC made the correct legal decision, I am worried about the implications of this. Do we really want to have separate legal systems based on ethnicity or tribal membership? What if the tribe legalizes marijuana but the state doesn't? What if the punishments in one are more severe than another? Typically the jurisdictio…

> Do we really want to have separate legal systems based on ethnicity or tribal membership? And how does one certify identity/ethnicity and why won't individuals claim as many (or as little) of them?

In the exact same way that every country in the world operates. The tribal government sets the criteria that must be met to be a member of the tribe.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#43

Post by wpm »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #38
chrisco255 wrote: post #27

The idea of the stable borders is so new. The Ottoman Empire still controlled much of the middle east before World War I. The British Empire was also still quite expansive at the beginning of that war (and into WW2). The fact that so much of the world speaks Latin-derived languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian...nearly 1 billion people in total) is a relic of the Roman empire's own expansive conque…

Seems like there is quite a bit of fragility and anxiety with this thread, mostly culminating into getting the US out of the spotlight, and talking about humanity through all periods.

Fragility is accusing anyone who disagrees with you or presents a slightly impure viewpoint of fragility.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#44

Post by S33V »

krapp wrote: post #39
S33V wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the original commenter, but what I'm taking from it is that the notion of land ownership was/is foreign to indigenous people. Given that, using the term native land can be misrepresenting native history. I'm not sure what the alternative verbiage would be to describe an area has inhabited by an indigenous tribe. Urban Native Era, a pretty large Native movement/brand, holds the slogan "You Are On Native Land" and…

"indigenous people" comprises hundreds of tribes, with distinct cultures and beliefs. Talking about what was or wasn't a "foreign concept" in that context is like doing so for Africans or the kind of Indians that Columbus intended to find. It's difficult to come to an objective conclusion because so much of what's believed and reported about native culture is often done through appropriate by the descendents of Europ…

I agree, I do think it is disingenuous to make a blanket statement on Native American's knowledge of land ownership and border establishment. I was merely interpreting what the original comment said.

Given your points, is there a more correct way to define the lands once inhabited by Native peoples?

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#45

Post by santoshalper »

chrisco255 wrote: post #27

The idea of the stable borders is so new. The Ottoman Empire still controlled much of the middle east before World War I. The British Empire was also still quite expansive at the beginning of that war (and into WW2). The fact that so much of the world speaks Latin-derived languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian...nearly 1 billion people in total) is a relic of the Roman empire's own expansive conque…

I've heard some version of this argument many times, but I never really understand the point.

Is your point that because the world has been terrible for years, we should not bother to do better and try to right wrongs? What an incredibly defeatist attitude. That just sounds like you are being defensive to criticism of our culture, which is never helpful.

Is your point that you believe that the United States is uniquely targeted for criticism? I don't believe that is true. There is plenty of criticism of the way other colonial powers treated indigenous people. If you are in the US, the criticism is mostly about the US, but if you go to Europe or Australia for example, people are talking about their own nations and their history.

I don't think your comment is entirely untrue, I just think it misses the point and/or doesn't really have a point to begin with.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#46

Post by neonate »

chrisco255 wrote: post #27

The idea of the stable borders is so new. The Ottoman Empire still controlled much of the middle east before World War I. The British Empire was also still quite expansive at the beginning of that war (and into WW2). The fact that so much of the world speaks Latin-derived languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian...nearly 1 billion people in total) is a relic of the Roman empire's own expansive conque…

The problem is that arguments like this always end with an implicit "QED" that dismisses surviving grievances regardless of how legitimate they may be. What we need to do is hear each other. Responding by saying, "this happened on every square foot of the globe" is implicitly a refusal to listen, a denial of standing to the other. When I read a comment like this, it sounds like a judge tossing a case out of court.

Your comment includes this in other ways too: changing the subject to horrible things the other side did is implicitly a way of saying "I don't need to hear you", and representing the other side as a straw man ("several hundred years ago should be brought forward to modern times") is a way of saying "nothing to see here".

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#47

Post by tspike »

krapp wrote: post #39
S33V wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the original commenter, but what I'm taking from it is that the notion of land ownership was/is foreign to indigenous people. Given that, using the term native land can be misrepresenting native history. I'm not sure what the alternative verbiage would be to describe an area has inhabited by an indigenous tribe. Urban Native Era, a pretty large Native movement/brand, holds the slogan "You Are On Native Land" and…

"indigenous people" comprises hundreds of tribes, with distinct cultures and beliefs. Talking about what was or wasn't a "foreign concept" in that context is like doing so for Africans or the kind of Indians that Columbus intended to find. It's difficult to come to an objective conclusion because so much of what's believed and reported about native culture is often done through appropriate by the descendents of Europ…

It's fundamentally irrelevant anyway to the immediate questions; the land rights they have were assigned by our own system and have been unlawfully disregarded.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#48

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

627467 wrote: post #9
dlivingston wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain further? I don’t see how you reach your conclusion from your premise. Or, how you reach your premise at all.

I do want to hear more from more versed people since I hear arguments in favour of indigenous rights that are variations of pro-(insert your ethnogroup) rights. Why are some pro-ethno rights alright and others not? Is it that because some ethnogroups are considered in disadvantage and hence deserving special rights? I understand the concept Affirmative Action, is this what we are talking about?

First of all, there's a complication here in that some Indian reservations were created by the Indian nations themselves (particularly in the Pacific Northwest), while others were created as part of the genocide of Indians carried out by Europeans in the Americas.

So let's focus first on the second category. Imagine that some people from elsewhere showed up, rounded up you and all your relatives and everybody else living within a 400 mile radius, killed 80% of them, then marched the rest to a patch of land you'd never seen before and said "you'll be living here now, it's yours in perpetuity". Then a hundred or more years go by, and the descendants of those people say to your descendants "Well, actually, that land we said was yours isn't really yours, and so the problems with resources, jobs, social order, purpose and meaning you folks have had for a while are going to get worse".

And then someone shows up and says "why should these particular ethnic groups get treated differently from any other?"

If you then turn your attention to the self-created reservations, the story is a bit different. Now imagine that some newcomers show up in your part of the world. They seem ready to fight, and you've heard stories from people who have travelled east over the mountains that they are brutal nasty SOBs. The newcomers say that they are ready to strike a deal, so you decide that this makes more sense. You tell them that they are welcome to come and live in this area, but that you want a treaty that recognizes that you will reserve areas for your own people, along with certain distributed rights like fishing. The newcomers sign the deal, apparently quite happy with it. 200 years later, your descendants realize that the treaty rights are no longer recognized, and that the newcomers have changed everything so much with their logging, mining and dams that even the original terms of the treaty don't much sense any more.

And then someone shows up and wonders why your people should treated any differently from anyone else.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#49

Post by majormajor »

chrisco255 wrote: post #27

The idea of the stable borders is so new. The Ottoman Empire still controlled much of the middle east before World War I. The British Empire was also still quite expansive at the beginning of that war (and into WW2). The fact that so much of the world speaks Latin-derived languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian...nearly 1 billion people in total) is a relic of the Roman empire's own expansive conque…

> From a certain perspective, all of human history can be summed up as an endless series of blood feuds.

Is it so bad that people think we should try to do better?

In my history classes I learned about Europe - itself very much in flux as you mention through the past thousand years - being "invaded" and America being "settled." Things need to be properly acknowledged before they can be moved past. And some of these things that are painted as "revisionism" when they aren't glossed over have lingering harmful effects even today.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#50

Post by m0zg »

Wait until the indigenous folks start going back further in time and revising their own conquests. That should be fun to watch. Oh, and they had slavery too, in case where their enemies weren't exterminated outright or even eaten sometimes.

Quote from Wikipedia: "Native American groups often enslaved war captives, whom they primarily used for small-scale labor. Others however would stake themselves in gambling situations when they had nothing else, which would put them into servitude for a short time, or in some cases for life; captives were also sometimes tortured as part of religious rites, and these sometimes involved ritual cannibalism."

And when Europeans arrived, natives held African slaves, too, as well as sold their own _native_ war captives to Europeans, much like Africans did in Africa. I wonder what they think of the idea of "reparations". But I digress.

So when someone says that Mount Rushmore belongs to the Lakota tribe, if we aren't willing to let the sleeping dogs lie, other tribes might want Lakota to revise that statement. Unwind it far enough, and who knows what tribe settled there first (assuming it even exists nowadays).

Cursory search suggests that Black Hills (now Mount Rushmore) was first settled by Arikara, and then, quote: "The Arikara in the Black Hills was followed by the Crow, Pawnee, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Lakota Sioux, and then to the United States. The Lakota Sioux arrived in the region after getting kicked out of Minnesota in the late 1770s by other tribes. The Sioux took over the region after they drove out the Cheyenne Indian nation. The Sioux forced the Cheyenne to move West."

So yeah, if we're going to unwind, why stop at when the United States took the land. Let's unwind all the way.

Or maybe, just maybe, the SCOTUS decision was idiotic.

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