Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America • Hacker News Board

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#261

Post by seebetter » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #108

seebetter wrote: post #13

[flagged]

> Human society was beyond brutal then. Was it really? There is very little evidence of Paleolithic warfare (especially evidence that is direct evidence of war as opposed to perhaps being capital punishment or the like). It's not until you get sedentary populations that you find clear evidence of warfare, and even then, there's still a great many settlements in early periods whose layouts suggest that defense was not…

Was the word rape even a word 12,000 years ago?

It's shocking that my comment which is a balanced, reasonable, principled perspective, is considered controversial. John Locke is debatable now? Well let's hope the European Union and China know better how to prevent individuals from abusing others by ascending through government structures.

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#262

Post by rexpop » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #231

rexpop wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some ideas are best conveyed through richer media. Don't hesitate to read Indigenous People's History of the United States, and stop demanding bread recipes on fortune cookie slips.

I'm sure you understand why this sounds suspiciously like a claim that there is no end.

Truly? I do not. Of course there is an end; equity and the abolition of continuing systems of oppression.

I am honestly blown away that there exists in your mind some set of beliefs which, paired with what I've said, imply I suggest there is no end. Please, what are they?

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#263

Post by dylan-m » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

There's a straightforward rebuttal to about 90% of the horrible arguments (which is at least half of the comments - seriously, hacker news?!) in this thread.

1. Did [other country that was also previously somebody else's] finish their genocide?

2. Would you prefer that Canada and the United States did?

I know your answer to the second one because I know humans are, eventually, (once they stop pretending that they live in a statistics textbook) usually not assholes. So to the whataboutism, I simply ask: understanding that this is not history, but the present, what the fuck do you think you're advocating?

Re: Whose Land – Indigenous Nations of North America

#264

Post by filoeleven » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #249

filoeleven wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Russia claimed it owns part of Ukraine earlier this decade. Sudan split into two countries. There’s an ongoing dispute over islands between China and Japan. There’s also Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The Kurds get pushed around by the 4 nation-states who each claim part of their ancestral territory. India, Pakistan, and China all claim Kashmir. Last century, Israel was created after a war. The Ottoman Empire was parti…

I'm not sure I follow the question. A lot of the disputes you mention here are terribly violent, which is why I so strongly oppose efforts to create more of them. A border should almost always remain a border - the process of unmaking a border is so inherently dangerous that only the most extreme circumstances can possibly justify it.

Sorry, missed your response until just now.

I guess I’m questioning how much the establishment of “more fixed borders” changes anything. I for one don’t know how frequently the indigenous nations in the Americas had fights over territory.

People being people, my suspicion is that it wasn’t all that different from today: peaceful agreements about who uses what land when, with bouts of violence or negotiation when circumstances changed. Wars take a high toll, so they aren’t pursued for fun, especially when they involve a much larger portion of a nation’s population than they do today.