The Native Americans Had A Better Society Than We Currently Do

the didn't have A better 'society'. they had 300 of them!
world wide, possibly thousands.
the mean thing i think, besides knowing where the air you breathe comes from, is everything being local.

people today, the dominant culture, think where they live is people and money and partys and guns,
i look at the world i see rocks and trees and trains and little furry creatures.

its just a different way of looking. of course everything is still there, either way, but seeing things in the way of the culture that dominates is such a complete cutoff from the real physical universe that doesn't begin and end with what's inside of people's heads.

better and worse are egg sucking words, but different, diversity, that is the real universe, and it is good.

 

then maybe you should leave your basement occasionally.

 

or maybe the ignorant majority should leave there televisions and cars and air conditioned offices 'occasionally'.
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the one thing that's bothering me about this conversation, is the appearant ignorance of the reality that whether played for dark or light,
indiginous isn't some kind of idealized historical fantasy. it isn't an exibit in a museum.
these are people you're talking about here. very ordinary every day people, for the most part.
who are very much alive today. are frequently victimized by racial profiling, who haven't forgotten their cultures, however much mainstream society tries to force them to, or even, many of them, their languages.

 

This is my main problem with them; an enforced lack of diversity of thought. I have the same objection to Old South culture.

Unfortunately, smallpox wiped out millions, if not tens of millions. The epidemic crossed the continent much faster than the European explorers that had brought the disease.

I don't think we have much awareness of it along the east coast, partly because it took place so long ago, and most existing tribal reservations are out west. Somebody from Oklahoma might give you a totally different answer.

 

There certainly are lessons to be learned from indigenous people, and some of their mindsets could be useful to modern man.

But, how can you say, OP, that they had a connection with nature that

How might you even begin to make that claim? Just curious, since none of us were around during that time and history must be a bit tainted. Were they happier? Was their quality of life better? Those are important questions, too.

 

Is there a link to a sharper version where we can zoom in and read the details?

Mississippi / Alabama border area? Wow. I had no idea.

 

^
Edit: see next post

 

http://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianenreservaat#
I picked a link out of all of the others. There is too much junk to navigate through on my first link.

Click on the image on the page that it takes you to for a clear view of the map.

 

OK, this version lets you see all the numbers at 400% zoom:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Bia-map-indian-reservations-usa.png

 

Strange thing about the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is most of the council members look decidedly African American - Interesting convergence of DNA


Hotwater

 

you don't suppose that might have something to do with native americans not being euro-americans?

 

“They are African Americans” who claim their ancestors were escaped slaves who found refuge among the Indians and through mixing created a hybrid or (with all due respect to Cher) a half-breed.


Hotwater

 

whatever the point of singling out one thing to like or dislike, i think more to the point is how much the rest of us have lost, by throwing out with the bath water, what most indiginous cultures had learned from the land itself where they were, and in many cases still are, for thousands of years, living.

i mean for example, our idea of zoning, based on money and politics, is often mostly a farce from any logical environmental perspective, and yet mostly, we claim that to be the reason for it.
and how land as property prevents rational use allocation. there are other things of course, but this is one of big main examples. the other of course, is perspective, as i've already mentioned.

and yes you can find individual contrary examples for everything, mostly because, there simply is, no such one thing as a "the" indiginous culture. just hundreds of different ones.
each evolved in and in accordance with, each particular place where it has.

there is no homelessness in a place under the soverignty of an indiginous culture in its traditional form, where there is no law that says you can't go out and build your own shelter, using local materials found in nature. only places where you will be told not to build it and places where you can. and those based not based on money or politics, but mostly environmental consideration and the sacredness of all places.