Native Americans

Do two wrongs make a right?

How do we justify what was more wrong or what is more right.

History shows that wrongs were done....how do we place degrees on that.

Granted it is not our generation that in the first place did the wrongs......hopefully it is not our generation that continues to do the wrongs.

It does have to stop some where....and maybe that is with honesty to simply state that it is and was wrong and not allow it to continue today with the ease that it does.

Notice that this reply is applicable to all races......

 

i think you got your words crossed

ASSASSINATED, that is the right word for what happened.
Scalping was one of our lovely imported motives to help 'clear out the undesirables'. My Native fiance didn't even know that whites started the scalping thing, so much for the education system.
In Canada, whole communities died out on the coast cuz all the young Native men went overseas and fought and died for Canada. I have seen the ghost villages myself. The ones that came back.........well, they weren't allowed in most bars, or if they were, they had to come in a separate door.
Oh yeah, and they still had to wait 15 years before the Canadian gov't. generously pronounced them to be 'persons' in 1960. At last, they could vote.
Women were legally accepted as 'persons' back in the 19teens, after the suffragette lobbies.
You did not do a thing to them, true. But somebody did. Somebody fucked them over good. Chris Rock does a good stand up skit about it. Here in BC, there are lots of pending lawsuits becuz in many cases, the settlers illegally expropriated the land. One example is right in the middle of Victoria, BC's capital. The original inhabitants were 'temporarily' relocated, and never compensated. If the many cases of 80% unemployment, three times the incarceration rates of the average Canadian, the highest suicide rates of any demographic, the lowest average income of any demographic, and the overt, blatant, condescending bigotry and discrimination that I saw every day I went out shopping, dining, etc. with my honey.........if you honestly support the idea that there is no problem, and it is their fault, they just have to wise up............well, I disagree. The actions of my and your ancestors, or their neighbors, or coworkers, etc. were nothing short of attempted genocide. And the Beothuks might argue that it was not only attempted, but achieved.....they might......if there were any still alive.
The mess that has been passed down to us, is not our doing. But what do we do? Pass it on to our kids? Or try to heal a bit, at least try.
i thought that I had seen the ugly face of bigotry clearly as possible when I was with my ex., who taught me a lot about covert bigotry. The treatment I witnessed with my fiance was far more open, and disgusting. It was pathetic. I cannot speak for elsewhere, but here, bigotry is alive and thriving. If they're not whining about the Asians 'taking over', or the 'East Indians' dressing differently, they are bitching about having to give a tiny fraction of what was stolen back to the people we tried so earnestly to make go away...............

 

one of my interests in reading is native american history and culture. and personally i am ashamed of what our ancestors have done with this land. the native americans used this land to the fullest and now we have tons of cities and pollution. i'm not saying that we should have lived the exact same way as them but i think that if we valued the land as much as they did and shared the land with them and exchange knowledge for knowledge then this land could have been much better.

 

um, i dont know what else to call them. "indians" is offensive to many of them.

and i agree with the rest of your post.

 

so true. the "modern" u.s. is killing the planet. we all are but mostly the u.s.- it CAN'T go on like this for too much longer. but most people dont care cause it doesnt effect "them".

the natives to this land were living in a very peaceful, harmonious way. they were not perfect but they were living a sustainable lifestyle. "we" come in... fucking kill most of them and make the rest be our pawns... pollute and destroy our mother earth...

they now live in more poverty then any other ethnic group in this country and they are commonly called "the unheard of" in sociology classese...

and then "we" bitch about their casinos.

how fucking pathetic.

 

Have any of you been on a indian res? My mother grew up on the yakima res in washington, she said it was the most depressing thing .somebody was always drunk always fights and people offing themselves. She said noone had dreams they just got up in the morning like blind souls... as though there souls had been taken hundreds of years ago..

Honestly i think res idea is stupid.. i think our government should back down and let the natives have it back, we will be living in "their land"Start over . learn from them.

Not realistic i know, but that would be the fair thing. We have done so much for the black community for how we did them wrong(still needs work i know but....), what has been done for the natives?? nothing!

 

you cant compare time periods.

Most of the american indians died before 1850. Before the Industrial revolution. White Americans during george washingtons time were hardly killing the planet.

 

my aunt, uncle and two adopted cousins lived on a reservation for ten years. i was there three times. the third was when my aunt died and was buried there... she was the only white person ever buried there (well, the first anyways)... it is sad.

i can guarantee the nay-sayers have not been to one.

 

so you are denying that the way you are brought up, being in poverty or with parents that have issues... has an effect on your future?

(and yes, i know it's possible to escape it but not everyone does)

 

not sure hwo that related to what i said, but i'll answer anyway.

Yes, i think it has an effect on your future. Does it determine your lot in life? No. All you can do is work hard and hope. Good things usually happen.

 

it related cause you said i cant compare two time frames. i was trying to explain how they are connected.

of course it's possible- i even stated that. but it's not always easy. and well, they are at a huge disavantage.

 

'what i want to know is why they are called native americans.
What makes them natives of america when they immigrated there?'

megara

Okay, we are taught that they crossed over the bering land bridge around 25,000 yrs. ago. But is that true? Many researchers say absolutely not. Natives say no way. We are told that the immigration is 'fact', when there is human habitation sites in the south half of south america that are 40 000 years old. So they may very well not have immigrated, though the schools are certainly selling that line.
Why Native? Why aren't Canadians considered Americans? We live in America too......labels are arbitrary. The pc term here is First Nations people, but Native is more commonly used.
BG13





Well thats from whence the ethnicity was born, a merger between natives and europeans.
Europeans didn't kill of the natives... disease did.
What happened was eugenics...
it was destined to happen.
Lodui


You're just tryin to push my buttons, swear to God.
Eugenics became famous after that one infamous example, the Holocaust. Eugenics is total bullshit.
A merger is good, i am all for it, and even hoping to play a little part.
It was destined to happen.........I think so.........for whatever Godforsaken reason.
PS. Euro's did actually snuff out the odd one here and there. They used to have jars on the sales counter at trading posts, and if you plunked a Native scalp in there, you got shopping credits.......neat huh?

Someday I hope there will be balance, and the hate will be forgotten.........someday.....there is a lot of shit to heal though.

No time like the present. BG13

 

hahhaa IM not bitching. Im stating a fact. and actually I do like getting gas cheap from them. but hey, Im giving money back to the indians, like I said. Im not complaining one iota.

 

besides, what I wrote was a bit toungue in cheek, anyways........ but I guess some people dont have a sense of humour.

 

I dated this black lady for five years, and I told her all the black jokes i could recall from memory, and that kids called brazil nuts ****** toes, and licorice kids, ****** babies, etc. You know, she had not heard any of the jokes, and was shocked to hear the slang names for the nuts and candies. I found out that the jokes must have always been behind her back.........huh, that says something.

And my Native fiance, didnt know whites started the scalping thing, and knew very few of the Native jokes I told her, one or two. Same thing, they were unknown to them, cuz they are unkind, and the people clearly knew that or else they would not have kept them from the targets of their 'humour'.

I lost all my jokes...............fuckin puters. piss me off....

I bet my east Indian friends never heard all the 'Paki' jokes either.....but that is just a guess, from my experience.

 

yes, my sense of humour has been lacking lately.

 

hispanics is the title given to native, inhabitiants of mexico, central america, south america, and the caribean who were colonized by spain. north american natives arent hispanics.

 

I don't know what to say........what do they teach in schools these days. Hispanic and Native are separate. Hispanic means of Spanish ancestry, and has naught to do with Natives, north, central, or south american. Honest. I am pretty sure on that. The Native people of Mexico and central america have a number of different cultures, Huichole, Coggi, Queche, etc.

 

then there are the mestizos and mullatos.......

how do you classify them?