[threadbear]

Daryl,
I think the moral equivalency argument goes a little too far here. The atrocities that Europeans committed against the Indians have never been properly addressed. This is what sets them apart from other genocides.

Carl Jung wrote, "The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering." I think the same thing can be said about legitimate guilt. Everytime you commit an act of atrocity as a group against another group and it isn't properly addressed you eat away at the collective soul of your own culture and you pass that emptiness on to your children. Is this one of the reasons we are so screwed up, why we return to the survivors of our own genocidal abuse and ask them to bail us out with dream catchers and sage? We are very sick puppies indeed.

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daryl', 'A')t the same time, looking back on this event in isolation, many people nowadays will overromanticize the victims. They had their problems and faults before the Europeans came.

[TommyJefferson]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hotsacks', 'T')he world's first aboriginal university has opened in Regina,Saskatchewan.You can't teach unless you are native.No white men allowed.

[frankthetank]

Native Americans currently want about 13billion(some large amt) from US taxpayers(who seems to always end up with the bill)...

My family came over on a boat around 1900...from Germany...I doubt they want us back!

[oowolf]

Can someone explain "legitimate suffering " (a la Jung) as opposed to what? Illegitimate suffering?
My direct ancestors were stripped of their lands and most of their possessions and sent to the Americas, in 1746, and dumped off for joining Bonnie Prince Charlie in his failed attempt to free Scotland from English rule.
By the 1760's my direct ancestor, James Finley, became the first white man to live at what is now the city of Spokane, WA. He married the daughter of the chief of the Kootenai Tribe. One of their children, Jacques Raphael Finley was David Thompson's guide.

That's why there are so many Salish/Kootenai with the name "Finley". A name that ironically, in old Scottish, means "of a pale complection".

[holmes]

my 3rd and 4th grade history classes had alot of iroqoius history and culture tied into it. We all built a model long house each out of natural forest products. I got an A-, becuase the Iroquios did not believe in perfection. Our constitution was molded from the Iroquois constitution. Well of course our early history was brutal. the old world was overpopulated and starving. the last continent was a feeding frenzy. Things happen.Of course the dutch and english were capitalists with breeding rates much higher than the indians. It was a clash of opposite cultures. to condemn them while not being there is emotional insanity. and yes slaughter was evident. the indians went wacko really when there lifesupport systems were becoming polluted and destroyed. I would have fought back as well and killed babies and women en mass. I read some daily journals of the area I grew up in in the hudson river. the indians in that valley helped the whites alot and that is easily found out through research. The slaughter started when the whites let there cows ruin the pristine waters of the Rondout . cows were found filled with arrows. this began systematic cleansing of the valley. Of course our white for fathers had puritanical beleifs. they were godsend and capitalists. It was THEIR continent. The Iroquios were a wonderful culture. u see to much of the indian tribes wealth was in the form of living things. In the old world their was not hardly any living thing to value becuase it was already cleaned out multiple times. so value dead things for the most part. we basically turn living things into dead things. so it was a clash.
and Is ee here its turning into a kill whity thread. Yeah the other races are so much more enlightened than us whites. Please. The indians were once proud and great with an ecological paradigm. they had to be to survive. Today no race besides the rainforest and other tribes are enlighted. they are all greedy and consumerists. we all are a product of a death march paradigm. no ones innocent anymore.

[oowolf]

http://www.televar.com/gmorin/jocko.htm

[holmes]

yeah i look at my paycheck and ask "where the fuck are all these taxes going to". Disgusting. welfare and corporations basically. paying for people I do not know or care about to have babies and things. I am 100% for a revolution. I would also have no problem finding out exactly where and who these massive amounts of cash are going to. and then dragging them all into the street and having mass beatings. Cut the flow off 100%. they riot. crush the riots with extreme force. hey I am paying for these pigs. Do not expect one iota of respect towrds u and your piles of babies. MORE PROGRAMS! when it crashes its gonna crash. Its really disgusting. I would have no problem if all this money was going to environmental restoration, farming preservation, land restoration, small business rehab, housing rehab, wilderness preservation, etc.. things that responsible self sufficient caring healthy citizens take part in. But to give to multinational/multiculturalistic corporations and slovenly welfare scum I a grow enraged each day. And the devlopement industry to destroy more land and create more death sprawl as we subsidize this industry through our taxes. Its a full spectrrum rape. take our money and then destroy the last colors and beuty of the planet which sooths the soul. Horrible times for sure. evil. The day will come sooon enough when we will not be able to keep paying for these cretins. that will be the day shtf. and oil running out will not help one bit. the gubmints on the ropes looking for anything to make a profit off to keep the programs going. they got hourds dependent on the programs.

[oowolf]

So you see my white ancestors have lived in the area I now inhabit for 250 years, and my native ancestors for 15,000 years.
(the reference to Jock's mother being Chippewa is NOT correct.

[jesus_of_suburbia_old]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')et the Latvias who now live in teh USa open a all Lativan "white " school and see the lawsuits fly....One good thing of post peak...Say bye bye to double standards! We are in the Twilight of this stupidity!

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('holmes', 'a')nd Is ee here its turning into a kill whity thread. Yeah the other races are so much more enlightened than us whites. Please. The indians were once proud and great with an ecological paradigm. they had to be to survive. Today no race besides the rainforest and other tribes are enlighted. they are all greedy and consumerists. we all are a product of a death march paradigm. no ones innocent anymore.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', 'M')aybe by understanding how we as a species went wrong, we can figure out how to go right.

[ALBY]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', ' ')It is about life ways. In the same way that there was a clash between the Indigenous and the Imperialist life-ways ..,

[hotsacks]

Yes,they are human beings.
Since the bias of this board runs against that species,we're well prepared to accept that any racial group,given its head,will burn,bomb and belittle any who oppose it.
So with the Haudosaune.Bastards would kill anything in their way.
What's your point? That Longfellow and J.F.Cooper were full of shit?
That ain't news.

[ALBY]

First let me say, the original sin of 'we the people' was genocide against the Native Americans. I can post ad nauseum about that also if anyone is interested.

IMO, we AMERICANS can actually begin to answer for that sin around 1700, at the very end of the Beaver Wars. At that point, the Iroquois were largely defeated and placed under the protection of the British. Prior to this point, the Iroquois had done most of the killing and ethnic cleansing in the great lakes basin.

And they clearly did so for their own aggrandizement with little prompting from their european trading partners. It quite simply was anithetical to the Europenas interest to have the Iroquois consolidate that much power.

Assertions that whitey is responsible for 9 million native deaths is gross exageration and hyperbole. Smallpox was not purposely used as a wepon until the mid 18th century. The Iroquois confederacy did a lot of the killing, both direct, and indirect by driving refugees into hostile tribes or taking their land from which they derived sustinence.

In terms of the great powers arming their various indian allies, consider that the Europeans truly feared (with good reason) the power of the Indian tribes with whom they traded. It was not truly in their best interest to Arm the Indians with muskets. At a few key junctures, the Indians demanded these weapons and the genie was out of the bottle. I think it would be a disingenous (racist ?) to underestimate the political savvy of the Iroquois before this point (1700) as they held their cards to close to the vest and manipulated the Europeans to their benefit. Smallpox and a two front war finally took them down and that can largely be attributed to overreaching on their part.

OK, my points (and I can only speak to the eastern tribes of North America):

Blaming whitey for the ENTIRE Indian Genocide is factually incorrect.

Assuming that natives lived with balance with each other is factually incorrect.

Assuming that natives did not commit all the sins we later did is factually incorrect. The had slaves, they had an economically stratified society, they were greedy and self serving, they were violent, they were ignorant... all the traits we loath in ourselves.

Indians were not deep environmentalists. They were few in number and did not have the technology to degrade their environment at a fast pace. That is why their environmental footprint was so small.The only reason native americans did not kill more people or degrade the environment faster is because they did not have the technology. We should not hold them up some kind of example of harmonic balance with gaia or whatever.

No amount of nostalgia or revisionist sophistry can change these facts.

Nature is indifferent to morality. Man is a part of nature. Rather than deny our nature, we need to fear the dark depths of our souls.

[ALBY]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hotsacks', 'Y')es,they are human beings.That ain't news.

[hotsacks]

I agree with most of what you say.We could quibble about dates: e.g.the troubles the Tuscarora had with white settlers in the Carolinas after welcoming them in the 1600's.
But,in the main, the Iroquois followed the genetic code and welded up as good a defensive/pro Iroquois strategy as they could,slaughtering any that might weaken them.
So it's true the big fish eat the little fish and the white man's technology was so much bigger the Injuns had to go.
But instead of just recounting the old Jared Diamond paradigm,why not talk about our fascination with these brutes?In one sense.North American history can be seen as a series of 'what ifs' or 'if only'. There is more to the Indian tale than their role as corporate lackeys.Why is it that this one group stands out so clearly amongst other tribes? Their sophisticated politics,their war prowess,their religion and agriculture,made them the envy of of most indigenous and many immigrant leaders.What's up with that?
Your point about environmentalism is too harsh a view IMHO. Left on their own,the natives were a more self regulating society than whites ever were.Their religions insist on reverence for nature as the sustainer of life.The rapacious trapping of beaver was a direct result of HBC pressure to bring in the fur.If you consider how they managed to guide the development of wild corn to being a sustainable crop,you get an idea of the patience and ingenuity they bring to the table.Remarkable.

[ALBY]

Militia with the Colonel Sullivan remarked that they had never seen such corn as they were burning when they destroyed the Haudensaunee towns and castles. And the quality of the towns was also much better than the colonial settlements. But with the proper inducements, they would trash it all. A few steel knives, tobacco, whiskey... Just like us.

[holmes]

well Tom Brown the famous tracker who was tuaght by an apache might have a different view of the Indians. according to the journals and the experience I have on the ground. the indians placed alot of value on living things. also believing that they all were these balnced environmentalists is a bleeding heart fantasy. Human nature. They were hunters. they killed. they also knew hunger, thirst and stavation well. This made them protect and value the herds, crops, water sources and flocks, etc.. much more than the europen cultures. pre contact. whatever happend post contact cannot be compared. Things were set in motion and all changed. They were defiantley not prepared for the mass of humanity that followed. But all I have to do is observe just one "law" they had. They did not shit, piss or live near their water sources. we flush and dump into them. still.
Our rivers turned to shit with the arrival of the europeans. Just this is closer to an ecological paradigm. Our rivers are vile now. The rondout was so clear J. Burroughs used to describe it as crystal, cold and transluscent. it is now a vile superfund site. So Albeys argument that they were no different than the europeans at the time is false. Lets see also the council fires area up in syracuse. It is now layers and layers of mercury byproducts and lake onandaga has the highest level of mercury in the country. Cousin has been studying it for years now. I fish it and I wouldnt eat a mouthfull. So human nature is human nature but pre contact it was whole different ballgame. Sure brutal stuff. but to say that the indians had no ecological paradigm is false. now u want to talk about today. i work with 2 reservations. the leaders are corrupt and racist and there surely arent any cheif josephs or crazy horses anymore. and yes with the massive increase in popualtion the beavers and all the animals were driven to near extinction. with the arrival of the capitalist fur trade the indians were right along with the slaughter. The iroquois wiped out the hurons and they also enslaved many. But on a magnitude and scale pre contact cannot be compared with post contact. Thats why when u read journals of the last leaders of the indians u hear much sadness as they observed things that they could not have imagined pre contact. Thats why I say we are all guilty now.

[holmes]

they had awhole differnt way of doing things. My pawneed aunt as an example. they grew their crops by throwing a whole variety of seed into and area and let it grow alongside with the wild edible plants. europeans have to control nature. they let it work for them. thus the europeans thought them lazy. They like to minimize "work". a pristine healthy environment does alot of work for the people. a denuded monoculture requires lots of work and input.
They mainly let nature be. and to think about that is only natural. why stress oneself out controlling when they had many more things to worry about along with down time. europeans have major control problems. The indians just let things "be" for the most part. sure some tribes used more than they needed. The grains and corn they cultivated was the best and hardiest. This was due to letting it grow "wild" with the wild plants. our crops cnanot compare. they need oil and massive ammounts of enrgy in times of normalcy. In times of stress even more. and the freedom they had pre contact was as close to pure freedom as anyone can get. They grew and killed all their food. had clean cheap water. lets see we keep paying more and more each year.....
no race is perfect obviously.