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Info about Native Americans

casebro said:
YOU are talking reparations now?

I'm saying, if you want to make good our forefather's past deeds, where are you going to stop? Should the Spaniards pay back the Aztecs? Should the Aztecs also pay back the Mayans? Should the Shoshone pay back the Anasazi? The Italians pay for taking over Britain by the Romans?
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I'm not talking reparations. First off, I said there is still a question, not that I have an answer to it.
Secondly, and more importantly, I suggest that we might have an obligation to do something about current inequalities that have historical causes. This doesn't mean reparations. It might mean putting more educational funding into native american communities.

I would see that not as reparations, but as trying to solve a problem that these people are facing whose cause is the same as the cause of our own wealth. That is, I don't think that native americans can be said to "own" america. I don't think they should be payed back for it's conquest. I do think that they have as much right to it's wealth as we do.
Yet history has put them in a poor position to take advantage of that. For the same reason that you and I are in a good position to do so. Whatever responsibility I'm suggesting is just that those of us who are in a good position because our ancestors took advantage of theirs might have a responsibility to offer them some aid from their current position.

In other words we should try to level the playing feild. How to go about that is beyond me. i don't know that I would support any really agressive action, but I do think it's an important goal. Partly for historical reasons, and partly for humanitarian ones.
 
casebro said:
See above post, #26
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Fair enough. I don't see that there is any moral authority here though.
What I mean is that I don't see that just because a society is more technologically advanced it should conquer other societies. But I see that idea implied in your posts.
 
casebro said:
YOU are talking reparations now?

I'm saying, if you want to make good our forefather's past deeds, where are you going to stop? Should the Spaniards pay back the Aztecs? Should the Aztecs also pay back the Mayans? Should the Shoshone pay back the Anasazi? The Italians pay for taking over Britain by the Romans?
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By the way, I'd just like to say that this doesn't respond to any of the points I made in that post. Except maybe the point about reparations (falsely).
 
hodgy said:
I think some reasonable (when qualified) posts by casebro - there is a distinct tendency to judge our forebears by current liberal standards, This is stupid - if all you judgers were there at the time you would not be weilding your 20th century attitudes.

Further, we (Eurpoean descent) are only guilty by good luck - historical accident determined our ascendancy. Be assured that an advanced Sioux empire navigating the Atlantic would not have implemented the world's first racial awareness classes in British schools in 1700.

There's a hard world out there and we are here because our ancestors were able to meet its demands more successfully than those who were not our ancestors.
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What does any of this have to do with the moral claims being made in this thread? I know it's a hard world. I know people tend to take advantage of each other - native americans were doing it to each other long before europeans crossed the pond. But what happened when the europeans did arrive was on a horrendous scale.
Would something similar have happened if the situation as reversed? Probably. So what? Does that make it any less wrong?

And just to say it again, I'm not suggesting we "give them their land back" or something like that. I'm only suggesting that we recognise that this was a tragedy. This contrasts strongly with casebro's response when asked if it was justified for a wealthy neighbor to kill a weaker one: "Well, on a national scale, and according to history, yes."

And once that tragedy has been admitted, what then? Try to undo it by doing as much wrong to the decendants of the conquerers? No. But deal with the current situation that has arrisen out of it? Yes. How? No idea.
 
casebro said:
White men didn't kill off 95% of the Amerinds, disease did. At the time, even the most advanced scientists didn't know what caused diseases. Don't blame germ warfare on the Euros, they had a vested interest in keeping indians alive- slave labor.
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Okay. Point taken. I'm not about to argue that european settlers were the equivalent of nazis. But they certainly didn't make any concessions for the native inhabitants either.

Anyway, regardless, my original point still holds, they are no less victims because they abused others in the past. If mexico led a steady invasion of the USA backed by (not known to them) a disease which americans didn't have immunity to, would this not be wrong because the ancestors of americans had done the same thing?
 
Roboramma said:
And once that tragedy has been admitted, what then? Try to undo it by doing as much wrong to the decendants of the conquerers? No. But deal with the current situation that has arrisen out of it? Yes. How? No idea.
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Ditto.

It makes me crazy that here in WA state, pissing and moaning about treaty-granted Indian rights is a constant. For instance, a vocal minority of waterfront property owners -- an overwhelmingly white, affluent group of libertopian zealots -- just can't deal with the fact that Indians have rights to the tidelands that others don't. Similarly, sports fishermen piss and moan to no end about inequality of fishing rights.
 
Has the US ever paid Britain for the land we 'stole' from them?- Casebro.


We've been meaning to talk to you about that...
 
Corpse Cruncher said:
It is wrong to claim the Indians as being victims, they too had much blood on their hands by their own massacres.
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It's funny, but I've heard the very same thing said about the Palestinians. I'm not sure how to draw the parallel, could it be, . . they had dangerous weapons to use against us, . . . no wait . . . they were ruled by a vicious dictator, . . . that's a good 'un, heh, heh . . . hang on, heh, heh, . . . we invaded their country to bring them Democracy . . . that's right! Heh, heh.

P.S. I love your handle!
 
I just had another thought about the history of the new world. I wasn't the Americans that did most of the damage to the Amerinds. Since most of the damage (epidemics) were started before the American revolution, it was the Spanish, English, and French governments that were responsible. Yup, I think that in the name of the Amerinds, the US gov should persue reparations from the old world.
 
Read the book

Hi all,
during the last days, I managed to read " An History of the Indians of the United States " by Dr. Angie Dabo, a book with good reviews by " Choice " and The New York Times.
I have read about numerous abductions of Natives from their places, often by forced marches which lasted fo days and which left women and children in unhospitable territories.
Often those adbuctions required a high death toll, according to Dr. Dabo
There are also described the violences done to women and children, of the robberies that have been performed on the Natives to steal their land by authorities of the U.S., not to speak about the rapes on Native women, etc.
My question is: is this all true?
If yes, are those topics studied in U.S. schools?
 
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