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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

#71

Post by javert »

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…

Everything you are saying here is oversimplified to the point of being grossly inaccurate (for example, 600,000 Americans died in a war to END slavery---why do you ignore that?). Basically, this is an apologia for hating Americans.

It is selectively historicizing something to justify your final sentence, which is an apologia for hating Americans.

If you hate Americans, maybe you shouldn't post on a website full of Americans.

And don't say you don't hate Americans. There is no reason to present a bunch of completely slanted history and just be like, "oh yeah, this is why other people hate Americans, but they are ignorant because they are selectively historicizing it." That is clearly not your attitude or your point.

By the way,

- Natural resources do not belong to whoever happens to live near them but simply ignores them. They belong to the person who extracts them. Property rights are acquired by use, not by where you were born or by your nationality.

- There were many cases of peaceful co-habitation with Native Americans and many cases of Native Americans initiating force against the settlers. Probably these categories account for a lot more than the category of outright brutality against natives, though that did happen some, particularly under Andrew Jackson (which is relatively late in our history!).

- It is worth recognizing that Americas founders were adamant about maintaining neutrality, so foreign interference is in many ways un-American. Moreover, it is worth recognizing that America has a moral right to interfere in foreign countries that threaten force against its citizens or their property, as does any country.

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

javert wrote: post #71
jasonisalive wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Everything you are saying here is oversimplified to the point of being grossly inaccurate (for example, 600,000 Americans died in a war to END slavery---why do you ignore that?). Basically, this is an apologia for hating Americans. It is selectively historicizing something to justify your final sentence, which is an apologia for hating Americans. If you hate Americans, maybe you shouldn't post on a website full of Am…

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by jasonisalive »

javert wrote: post #71
jasonisalive wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Everything you are saying here is oversimplified to the point of being grossly inaccurate (for example, 600,000 Americans died in a war to END slavery---why do you ignore that?). Basically, this is an apologia for hating Americans. It is selectively historicizing something to justify your final sentence, which is an apologia for hating Americans. If you hate Americans, maybe you shouldn't post on a website full of Am…

Natural resources... belong to the person who extracts them.

Wow, you must be a legal scholar. So let's say one day you come home to find that I've demolished your house and started drilling for oil. You're cool with that, I'm sure.

There were many cases of peaceful co-habitation with Native Americans and many cases of Native Americans initiating force against the settlers.

Good job at whitewashing. Let's say one day you come home and I'm camped on your front lawn. You tell me to get off so I beat you and take your living room as punishment for your "bad behaviour." A few weeks later you get angry and try and force me out again. This time I kill your wife and kids and give you the basement as a "reservation." Shouldn't have initiated force against me, right?

America has a moral right to interfere in foreign countries that threaten force against its citizens

This is just so laughable. If you think that the history of American 20th and 21st century foreign policy is about self-protection then... well, I guess you could say all those democratically elected leaders of third world countries were sort of threatening American citizens right? Threatening them with fair prices for natural resources maybe? Maybe if you consider all resources everywhere property of America, then anyone who refuses to sell you them for next to nothing and suppress their own citizenry for kickbacks is an aggressor...

I've been to America and the majority of the people I met - and this is in the nicer cities - were like big, stupid puppies, who thought America was the greatest country, and were completely confused when you said, well, no, actually... As I've said elsewhere there's no excuse for doing the wrong thing. Americans love to play the moral high card but they brutally annexed their country from a weak and vulnerable pre-existing population with much deeper historical and spiritual ties to the land. Then they've proceeded to do some of the nastiest things of the last few hundred years. Heaven forbid they be forced to admit any of that. The onus is on them though. The moral corruption of never acknowledging one's foundational guilt is inexorable.

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

#74

Post by chema »

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.

History should be more than being "reminded". Few American could name the three largest Native nations today, much less 100 years ago, or what their systems of government, leaders, or social structures were.

I learned a lot in school about the Puritans, and Ancient Europe and even Egypt and Asian history, but little to nothing about the people who lived in California less than 200 years ago.

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

#75

Post by chrismcb »

Trombone5 wrote: post #55
b6 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, putting aside the ease with which you deflect an prolonged episode of systematic repression based on ethnicity, did you look at the map? The scale of the forced displacements is literately continent scale! Its probably the biggest settler colonization in history. Compare with the colonization of South America, where the Spaniards aimed to use the existing population for labour, and thus gave them some rights an…

And pales in comparison to Kahn.

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

#76

Post by sveme »

b6 wrote: post #18
sveme wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace "America" with "Germany" and "Eastern Europe" and consider whether you would like to uphold your position. The author's point was that the common narrative of European settlers colonizing an empty continent, alternatively European colonists bringing civilization to wild, barren lands has to be extended with European settlers bringing mass extermination to the indigenous population, through many different mean…

I don't think I'm strongly pushing any particular position -- I think the author is, and I'm asking why. Basically, what makes this particular story of human savagery, out of all of them, crucial right now? If it's high time for Americans to acknowledge that the US is built on someone else's land, is it also time for everyone else in every other country to do the same thing? Is there any country whose borders don't i…

But isn't "same old, same old" a dangerous position? I understand what you are saying, there have constantly been wars in every possible inhabitable area, everywhere in the world and especially at the end of the 19th century. So the US is not special in that respect. But the outside view of the US is that they deem themselves special - the shining beacon on the hill - a narrative that cannot be accommodated with its history. Germany had to come to terms with its past, acknowledge its past, is it too much to ask American citizens to do that as well, and continue onwards with a little more humbleness? The history of the US is not particularly nasty in comparison to other countries' histories, but it is not particularly exemplary as well.

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

#77

Post by protomyth »

CalRobert wrote: post #41
protomyth wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Europeans destroyed them. It's a crime against history that can hardly be expressed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices

You do know that there are tribes other than the Mayans?

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

#78

Post by protomyth »

happyscrappy wrote: post #29
protomyth wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Almost" is not all and given the responses in this thread, I get the feeling that people are not aware of the number of tribes in the Americas.

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

#79

Post by cmurf »

mr_luc wrote: post #47
kingmanaz wrote: post #40

> 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. As usual, the concepts of "native United States citizen" and "native North American aborigine" are being conflated. The United States is a "nation of colonists". The Republic did not precede the North-Western European colonists who founded it. Demands for non-Aborigionies to acknowledge "s…

I agree that "someone else's land" is a bit much. Saying that "North American Aborigines lived outside the republic" is a bit misleading, because it insinuates that they weren't interested in assimilating, and becoming a part of that struggling, triumphing mass of people that identified as Americans at that time. More truthfully, leading up to the times when they were forcibly relocated to reservations, they were nev…

This is a bad analogy because Israel continues in the modern day to usurp land from Palestinians, forcing them to self-dispossess. So if you're going to say exportation and colonization is wrong and should be illegal, you're right, this was learned during WWII and codified in the Geneva Conventions after it and why all Jewish settler land acquired on Arab villages is considered illegal by the international community minus Israel. And yet this land transfer continues as settlements are expanded, today. So it is not moot to question the rightness of modern day Israel or any other state that forces an indigenous population to self-dispossess.
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