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The Invasion of America: New Visualizations of Native American Dispossession

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Re: The Invasion of America: New Visualizations of Native American Dispossession

#21

Post by happyscrappy »

jasonisalive wrote: post #19
b6 wrote: post #7

> It is high time for non-Native Americans to come to terms with the fact that the United States is built on someone else's land. Land has been changing hands more or less continuously, forever. Before North America was "seized" by the people who came to be called Americans, parts of it were being seized and re-seized and re-re-seized by various groups of people who lived there at that time. What is the author's reas…

America has long held itself up as "better" than other countries - more virtuous, more wise, more free, more advanced, etc. etc. When you actually look into it you see: a) the utterly brutal dispossession and extermination of a weak and technologically primitive existing population b) the callous and self-serving enslavation of vast numbers of people c) vicious and destructive interference in weak countries across th…

They are widely hated by Europeans who do not even realize they are a vassal state. Most of the rest of the world would do anything to get to America.

Re: The Invasion of America: New Visualizations of Native American Dispossession

#22

Post by rayiner »

javert wrote: post #5
chema wrote: post #2

Very interesting visualization. It complements the recent release of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, an excellent introduction to a consistently ignored aspect of US History. http://www.beacon.org/An-Indigenous-Peoples-History-of-the-U...

Consistently ignored? Not at all. We are constantly reminded of this topic these days. It's very popular. For instance, all you hear about on Columbus Day is about how (supposedly) horrible Colombus was, and how people are insulted that we still celebrate him.

Columbus was awful and we should be ashamed for celebrating him. We also learn way too much about native Americans, in some weird cultural guilt trip for past misdeeds. That isn't new--much of my childhood was wasted on learning native American history in the early 1990's.

Re: The Invasion of America: New Visualizations of Native American Dispossession

#23

Post by happyscrappy »

trextrex wrote: post #13
kghose wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the OPs point is that we should not stop there either, because it is an arbitrary point in history. Also, as the number of immigrants increase in US schools, White guilt and other forms of self flagellation lessens. If you are not European, and your parent immigrated you have less of a complex about where the land came from, and are less likely to want to carry some burden foisted on you by some one with a funny…

Yes. Ideally history taught in schools should present all sides in an unbiased manner without leaving parts out and go all the way to the present. But it happens all too often that parts of history are left out because of political agendas, ignorance, or lack of data. My understanding of the article is that the auther is pointing out one part of history that is consistently not taught (but should be).

They should also teach that Native Americans owned Negro slaves, but that doesn't fit the narrative.

Re: The Invasion of America: New Visualizations of Native American Dispossession

#24

Post by swatow »

Vaguely reminiscent of maps of Israel and Palestine. Of course in the case of Native Americans, they are primarily to blame for obstinately refusing to accept the very generous division of 1807, in which they had the majority of the land. Instead they attacked the European settlers, leaving them with no choice but to expand for the purpose of self protection.

Re: The Invasion of America: New Visualizations of Native American Dispossession

#25

Post by protomyth »

WalterBright wrote: post #8
CalRobert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Perhaps things have changed since I lived in the US (two years ago) but most people I knew were more or less completely ignorant of pre-colonial American history, and had only a passing familiarity with Columbus' misdeeds. I hope indeed it has changed.

Relatively little is known about pre-colonial history in North America, due to the absence of writing from those times. This is pretty much true of all peoples that did not have writing.

Quite a lot of the history has been written from the stories carried down, and I do believe the central and south american tribes had writing which is still largely ignored.

(Edit: quite a lot of the old stories are written down, downvoters- I cannot help if you don't value the current efforts. I won't be providing links as there is Google and I have to deal with a damn blizzard)

Re: The Invasion of America: New Visualizations of Native American Dispossession

#26

Post by b6 »

atlantic wrote: post #14
b6 wrote: post #7

> It is high time for non-Native Americans to come to terms with the fact that the United States is built on someone else's land. Land has been changing hands more or less continuously, forever. Before North America was "seized" by the people who came to be called Americans, parts of it were being seized and re-seized and re-re-seized by various groups of people who lived there at that time. What is the author's reas…

So presumably, if some foreign power invaded the US next week, violently exterminated most of the population, and herded the survivors into a few tracts of land, you would be fine with that? After all, land changes hands continuously.

Not at all. Nor am I "fine with" what happened to the natives.

All I'm asking is, would it be any major abberration, considering human history? Or would it just be: after atrocious violence and savagery, land briefly under the control of vague human entity X now seems to be under the control of vague human entity Y, episode #37,093,840?

Re: The Invasion of America: New Visualizations of Native American Dispossession

#28

Post by protomyth »

"Of this self-identified population, only a fraction are visible minorities, subject to the discrimination that shapes identity and forges political movements."

Yeah, right. I think the author did very little research into the modern problems. Also, self-identified might cut it for the news media, but each tribe has a list of enrolled members. If you are not on someones list, you are not Native American for a vast majority of purposes.

Re: The Invasion of America: New Visualizations of Native American Dispossession

#29

Post by happyscrappy »

protomyth wrote: post #25
WalterBright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relatively little is known about pre-colonial history in North America, due to the absence of writing from those times. This is pretty much true of all peoples that did not have writing.

Quite a lot of the history has been written from the stories carried down, and I do believe the central and south american tribes had writing which is still largely ignored. (Edit: quite a lot of the old stories are written down, downvoters- I cannot help if you don't value the current efforts. I won't be providing links as there is Google and I have to deal with a damn blizzard)

>central and south american tribes had writing which is still largely ignored.

They were almost completely destroyed by Europeans.

Re: The Invasion of America: New Visualizations of Native American Dispossession

#30

Post by rmxt »

happyscrappy wrote: post #23
trextrex wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Ideally history taught in schools should present all sides in an unbiased manner without leaving parts out and go all the way to the present. But it happens all too often that parts of history are left out because of political agendas, ignorance, or lack of data. My understanding of the article is that the auther is pointing out one part of history that is consistently not taught (but should be).

They should also teach that Native Americans owned Negro slaves, but that doesn't fit the narrative.

I don't think that a few sentences can do a complicated topic justice, but it would folly to point out what you are saying without also acknowledging that Europeans are indeed the people that brought that specific form of slavery to Native Americans. No Europeans, no Native American ownership of Africans, but I agree that a holistic view of Native American culture should be presented in textbooks, etc.
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