U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#981

Post by kyuudou » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

ConcernedCoder wrote: post #234

fermienrico wrote: post #16

Can someone explain why America has reservations? From what I know, Native Indians had this land almost 2+ centuries ago. Why have a special, looks like an autonomous, region and special treatment to people that are a few generations down from when this happened? How far back into the history should we go?

Think of it like this: You own quite a bit of fenced-land and have built some dwellings on it, a main home, a couple outbuildings, a barn, etc... you and your family farm it, raise livestock, hunt, fish, etc... and live quite well off the land without ever needing to leave or venture beyond the fence. One day you see some strangers outside your fence, looking quite haggard, and ill setting up a camp using nothing but…

This analogy falls apart some since there was never a concept of land ownership (to my knowledge) amongst the various North American tribes, so there wouldn't have been "fenced-land" semi-permanent dwellings to take over to begin with. Also, not all of them were welcoming in the romanticized way you present and many of them were very brutal to rival indigenous groups.

In short, it's a little more complicated than that. Certainly there was much evil committed towards indigenous peoples in many places, though. However, the Aztecs weren't very nice to their neighbors and the fact that they were betrayed by the Spanish seemed like an apt comeuppance for a group led by bloodthirsty warmongering maniacs.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#982

Post by danShumway » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 7:52 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #970

danShumway wrote: post #941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no personal guilt over my ancestors. I have sympathy for the problems they created, and I have some culpability in benefiting from them. But it's not about guilt. The problem hasn't been fixed yet, and we are responsible for fixing it. Since HN is the world of programming analogies: I inherit a broken, bug-filled codebase when signing on for a new job. A year into continued development, a team mentions to me t…

I don't think this is a particularly good analogy either. you don't have some moral obligation to fix up the old code for the other team. you do it because that's what you're getting paid for. if you really don't feel like fixing it, there's nothing wrong with quitting the job.

Point taken, but I'm not sure what quitting a democracy looks like. I guess legislators in Oklahoma are free not to run for government positions? And citizens are free to either stop voting, or possibly move to a different state?

But my instinct is that if someone says to me, "I don't want to deal with fixing inherited broken systems", at the very least my response to that is going to be something along the lines of, "that's fine, but then don't get in the way of other people who are fixing them."

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#983

Post by woah » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 9:04 PM UTC

abqio wrote: post #825

woah wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happens if you go to Canada or Mexico. What's the big deal?

See my other comment.[0] Particularly the part about checkerboarding. I can't end up in Canada or Mexico by accident. Nor do I have to drive through them to get from one part of my state to the other. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23788209

You're saying the Native Americans should have better border control over their territories?

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#984

Post by ivalm » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

sam36 wrote: post #979

ivalm wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow in all of this you forgot the word genocide. Oh wait...

Debatable on whether "genocide" is the correct term. But sure, use it if you want. "Genocide: The systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group." But I don't think that the giving of land (no matter how terrible the land is) for a group to live on truly counts as "attempted extermination".

US government displaced and murdered native Americans for a long stretch of history. For multiple tribes this included extermination based on ethnic group. US soldiers acting in official capacity killed defenseless Native American civilians including young children based on their ethnicity. The genocide of Native Americans is well documented.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#985

Post by gwright » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

sjy wrote: post #901

gwright wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course they are responsible, who else should be if not the one who are getting the historical benefits? This idea of generational responsibility, taken to its full extent, might have some unintended consequences. For example, aren't there historical records that indicate that the at least some Native American tribes themselves fought over territory? How should those claims be adjudicated? How does this logic wor…

The argument for reparations is not about punishment for past crimes. It is about remediating inequity that still exists today as a result of those crimes.

But presumably the reparations have to be paid from one group to another group. And perhaps there is a third group that pays nothing and gets nothing (recent immigrants?). So if you are in the group that has to pay out the reparations aren't you being punished for the actions of your ancestors?

As complicated as these considerations are, I still wonder about the unintended side effects if there were indeed some sort of substantial transfer of wealth from some subset of Americans to descendants of slaves. Wouldn't that create a terribly animosity between those groups and what if that transfer of wealth didn't actually resolve the disparities? What if 10 years later the metrics used to measure those disparities indicated that they still existed? More reparations? It isn't clear to me that wealth transfer can actually remedy many of the disparities that are observed. I think it is quite a bit more complex than that.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#986

Post by vlovich123 » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 12:10 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #705

vlovich123 wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are statutes of limitations on crimes.

Sure, I'm not saying that it's reasonable to prosecute the neighbor for the prior act of building on someone else's land (though I'm not sure that's a crime; at worst I expect it'd be a form of trespassing, but would otherwise be a civil matter). I'm just noting the weirdness that the legal status of the property was changed through an initially illegal act. But I guess on second thought maybe it's not that weird? Li…

That's again not accurate at all. If you buy stolen property & the original owner makes a claim to it within the statute of limitations, that property is returned to the original owner.

Anyway, as many others have noted, the problem isn't that the statute of limitations hadn't expired. What was actually happening was that the government was regularly breaking the current treaty that was in force. The ruling was that the government has to follow the law or change it but it can't just apply it however it wants.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#987

Post by ponker » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 12:45 AM UTC

landryraccoon wrote: post #973

ponker wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian Duma could revoke the sale of Alaska to the United States and declare that they still own it. What stops them from doing so? The fact that the US military would stop them from trying to repossess the land. The "promise" to the Creek isn't worth the paper it's written on because they don't have enough military might to enforce the terms of the agreement. The US operates with them as it does with every one…

> The "promise" to the Creek isn't worth the paper it's written on because they don't have enough military might to enforce the terms of the agreement. This is patently false, because the Supreme Court has ruled that the promise is enforceable. > The US operates with them as it does with every one else, on the principle of "might makes right." This is also completely false. Does the military answer to the President o…

The Supreme Court has merely ruled that Congress must first tear up the paper before violating the promise written on it.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#988

Post by doodlebugging » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

AlotOfReading wrote: post #959

ryanmarsh wrote: post #948

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This map shows why Houston is such a shit hole (I live here). I often explain there were no dominant indigenous tribes in the Houston area when white men settled because it was a malaria infested swamp. That's what the summers feel like. No one in their right mind would live here without air conditioning.

I believe the atakapa did live in the area. The map is just incomplete, unfortunately.

Actually I had a problem with that map too if you are referring to the one posted today showing ancestral tribal lands. There is no mention of the Karankawa tribe who lived along the Gulf Coast. Interestingly enough they are one of at least two Texas tribes known to have practiced ritual cannibalism, the other being the Tonkawas.

I lived in Houston for nearly 10 years and totally agree with the poster you replied to, that area is a shithole that is really unpleasant if you don't have air conditioning. The local tribes were mostly naked and covered themselves in mud to avoid the mosquitoes so they had workable options they employed.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#989

Post by doodlebugging » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 1:27 AM UTC

sam36 wrote: post #778

jake_morrison wrote: post #747

We have to recognize how much we screwed over the Native Americans. We took away their prime land on the East coast. We gave them some shitty land in Oklahoma that we didn't think we would ever want. We made them walk there in the "Trail of Tears", and lots of them died along the way. Then we decided to screw them out of the land in Oklahoma after all, but didn't go though the process properly because we didn't think…

It's certainly something to think about when so much today revolves around giving the government even more power and control, all the way down to what we can say. The Cherokees made up a large portion of the "Trail of Tears". The saddest part is they were largely fully "assimilated" into the "American" culture at the time. Most were fully "Christianized", spoke English, they translated many church hymns into their na…

And some of them that had intermarried with whites and slaves and had mixed blood passed themselves off as Black Irish or Black Dutch to avoid being labelled Indian and sent west. This allowed them to keep the homes and businesses their families had founded and maintain their places in white society. They just needed to look believably white.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#990

Post by patcon » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

knodi123 wrote: post #560

ISL wrote: post #49

I found the conclusion compelling. I haven't yet had enough time this morning to read the dissent thoughtfully. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-9526_9okb.pdf "The federal government promised the Creek a reservation in perpetuity. Over time, Congress has diminished that reservation. It has sometimes restricted and other times expanded the Tribe’s authority. But Congress has never withdrawn the promised…

> Unlawful acts, performed long enough and with sufficient vigor, are never enough to amend the law And yet "adverse possession" allows my neighbor to keep a slice of my yard, because he build the fence shortly before I bought the house (while it was unoccupied!) and I assumed it was proper after I moved in, and now that I've had a survey done and realized his fence is 5' off target, it's too late because he official…

Maybe it's different with a "nation". If a Frech national comes and builds some fences in Maine that stay for 10 years, can he claim they've moved the border of France?

A little absurd, yes, but I'm not sure adverse possession applies so cleanly to state boundaries as people seem to be implying in a few HN threads...