Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

whose.land

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 264 posts

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#111

Post by dang »

waffle_ss wrote: post #63

Human history is a story of conquest, and Native Americans fought - fought , not rolled over on their bellies - and were conquered by white settlers. It might not have been a very fair fight given the disparity in technology but it was a fight nonetheless. The natives were certainly fighting each other before whites arrived, too - the warrior role is an important part of many tribes' culture. Should the Comanche give…

Why do you use the word 'occupied'? I don't see that on the OP, and it seems like an unnecessary step into predictable flamewar to bring that up here instead of reacting to the specific and interesting content that's posted there.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#112

Post by pdonis »

atombender wrote: post #92
pdonis wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clearly this results in confusion, and can't stand I'm not so sure. The only real effect of this decision is that everybody now has to recognize that a certain class of criminal cases (those in which all parties are members of the Creek nation) in eastern Oklahoma can only be tried in Federal courts (or, for some, Creek tribal courts), not Oklahoma state courts. Nothing else has to change. The Creek nation is alrea…

The Chief Justice doesn't agree with you there. He wrote the decision "will undermine numerous convictions obtained by the State, as well as the State's abil­ity to prosecute serious crimes committed in the future ... [and] may destabilize the governance of vast swathes of Oklahoma."

> The Chief Justice doesn't agree with you there.

I know. I don't find his claims compelling, for much the same reasons that the court majority doesn't, as discussed in some detail in the court's opinion.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#113

Post by jml7c5 »

baddox wrote: post #12
simonsarris wrote: post #4

Somehow I doubt the Russians, English, Spanish, French etc that arrived in the Americas landed on a Westphalian continent. I think maps like this give the wrong impression. Wabanaki (among others) invited French colonists to settle Quebec in part to check (and perhaps attack) the Mohawk, among other conflicts. ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Wars I think it is almost universally agreed that the French treate…

This map contains a lot of overlapping and very rounded regions that I think convey that it's rough areas of settlement rather than some internationally-recognized partition of the land.

I wonder if something more like a smooth probability map would make more sense, rather than overlapping borders. The hard lines can give an unreasonable sense of certainty, even if the intent is to indicate uncertainty.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#114

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Gunax wrote: post #109
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The territory is "owned" by the tribe(s) although that ownership is subjugated by federal (not state) interests. Imagine if MA tried to claim that RI was really part of its territory. Eventually, the case reaches the Supreme Court, which rules that in fact RI is actually its own thing. MA has no jurisdiction to prosecute in RI, but the federal government still does. Except that eastern OK is a lot larger than RI, and…

I'm really not trying to discuss the legality of it. However, that analogy does not match up with what I read. >The first is that going forward, certain major crimes committed within the boundaries of reservations must be prosecuted in federal court rather than state court, if a Native American is involved. So if a Native American is accused of a major crime in downtown Tulsa, the federal government rather than the s…

> certain major crimes committed within the boundaries of reservations must be prosecuted in federal court

(emphasis mine)

> So it's not the territory that determines jurisdiction

Seems like there is some contradiction here.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#115

Post by 29athrowaway »

When the Spanish arrived to Mexico, they asked one native what was the name of that area. The person replied: "Ma'anaatik ka t'ann" (I don't understand you"), and the Spanish hispanized that phrase to Yucatan.

As a result, a large extent of territory is now known as Yucatan Peninsula. And many names given to territories in the Americas have similar stories.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#116

Post by krapp »

rukittenme wrote: post #102
krapp wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There probably isn't an easy, simple or universally acceptable answer. But... the US taking its treaty obligations with native peoples as seriously as it does with other nations would be a good start.

As I said yesterday in our conversation, we are in agreement there but I'm not quite sure it solves the problem. A "good start" isn't a solution to the problem and even the "good start" requires enforcing some form of racial governance model otherwise its just another county of the United States. The situation is at the very least complex and will likely require a "morally impure" solution.

It wouldn't solve the problem, but it would solve a problem. And the USG refusing to act in good faith is a pretty big problem. Any mutually beneficial solutions would be at best infeasible or at worse impossible without at least that.

Yes, it would be messy and complex. International relations already are, why would intranational relations be different?

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#117

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

Maps like these give the false impression that nearly every square mile of land - even inhospitable desert regions, were once occupied by some native polity.

Reality check: Most indigenous peoples lived in Mesoamerica, with < 10 million in what is now USA/Canada and that's being generous. There are regions of North America today that have no residents. By what grounds are these native lands - because some nomads once wandered through there?

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#118

Post by sgrove »

29athrowaway wrote: post #115

When the Spanish arrived to Mexico, they asked one native what was the name of that area. The person replied: "Ma'anaatik ka t'ann" (I don't understand you"), and the Spanish hispanized that phrase to Yucatan. As a result, a large extent of territory is now known as Yucatan Peninsula. And many names given to territories in the Americas have similar stories.

It seems that this is one of three proposed origins of the name [0] - and only one of two possible meanings of the "miscommunication" hypothesis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucatán#Origin_of_"Yucatán"

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#119

Post by s1artibartfast »

neonate wrote: post #69
MockObject wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that you seem to be assuming a particular result from "hearing", excluding the reaction of "I hear you, and I just don't care." which is surely a possibility?

I'm talking about hearing from the heart and not just in the technical sense that might say "Ok, you said your piece and I heard it, now can we just move on". I believe that most people won't respond dismissively to the suffering of others, if the conditions for hearing each other, really listening and acknowledging, are in place. But it's painful and we avoid those conditions as much as possible. For example, I hear…

how do you differentiate "hearing from the heart" and "agree with me and acquiesce to all remedies that I alone propose"?

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#120

Post by 300bps »

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #117

Maps like these give the false impression that nearly every square mile of land - even inhospitable desert regions, were once occupied by some native polity. Reality check: Most indigenous peoples lived in Mesoamerica, with < 10 million in what is now USA/Canada and that's being generous. There are regions of North America today that have no residents. By what grounds are these native lands - because some nomads once…

This is why Adverse Possession has been a principle of law for thousands of years.

Without such a concept, there can be no private ownership of land. Because someone can always come out of the woodwork with an old document that says the land your family has owned for tens or hundreds of years is actually their land.

http://dirt.umkc.edu/archives/dirt2003/mar2003/adverse%20pos...

Post reply on HN