But you and I did NOT. I see a lot of people online who can’t make the distinction.
EDIT: Thanks for replies, all. Some good conversation here
That doesn’t mean everyone living on stolen land gets a pass just because they weren’t the ones to steal it. They have an obligation to make it right.
Land shouldn’t be owned indefinitely and passed through families. It’s not right to have created a dynasty based on one guy in the 1800s claiming everything in sight and having his idiot descendents be wealthy simply based on the fact. They didn’t do anything except inherent land.
Land that isn’t your primary home should have to be leased and not owned, that way it’s being used most effectively and not privatized for the sole benefit of the owner. It leads to land speculation and squatting of land that someone else would like to use.
Additionally, natural resources should also belong to the people and companies should have to pay fair compensation for their extraction.
Of course I’m gonna assume good faith from you here, but I feel like some people boil down issues like this to “well I mean I didn’t do it so stop complaining”, and that’s wildly reductive and irresponsible at minimum.
Arguing the situation in this way sidesteps the uncomfortable and inconvenient reality that the United States is yet still occupying native land, whether it be Hawai’i, Alaska, or the contiguous territories. Yes it’s entirely possible that mine or your ancestors didn’t perpetuate these things as immigration is and has always been ongoing, but the point everyone misses is that we are still here.
I couldn’t possibly imagine belittling natives for acknowledging the fact that their land was taken from them by force. Some real colonialist shit.
I feel you, and also acknowledge it is a hairy subject on a grand scale.
I also try to frame the issue in the actual, real moment. I try my damndest to do as little harm as humanly possible to anyone. Should I be forced to give money to someone affected? Land? Should I be punished?
Who benefits? A grandson of someone displaced? A great great grandson? Whole family trees? How do you make shit like this right after so much time?
Mostly, I’m trying to encourage thought and discussion. Fundamentally, I think people should be judged on their own merits and actions, not their lineage.
The outcome needs to be negotiated and yes, the Tax Payer should foot the bill for the redress for the actions of the State and individual wealthy Families should foot the bill for the crimes their wealth stems from. For example: the entirety of Oklahoma’s rather impressively inhumane treatment of the Native Tribes needs to be dealt with as the People that profited from the malfeasance are still holding the proceeds of those crimes.
The way I understand it is that even if we omit any ancestral blame for what happened, the Native Americans are still dealing with the impact while European descendants benefit from it. It’s kind of like if I went to school with a very bright kid that was horribly abused and kicked out into the streets, so they performed poorly and dropped out, allowing me to get into the best college possible and have a great career. Why should I have any compassion for this kid if I didn’t abuse them myself? Why would I help them get housed and into college? Why would I even acknowledge that they were abused and forced out of their home? I’m one that earned it by working hard to get into college and graduate.
This omits the possibility that this kid might have outperformed me and taken the college spot, leaving me to be in a worse off situation.
That will always be an issue until the US government actually has real communication and cooperation with native people.
I don’t necessarily think that citizens of occupied land are automatically responsible for the past actions of a government (not to say that’s what you implied), but said government that committed the atrocities is. As far as the other part of the equation, I suppose the beneficiaries should be determined by the natives themselves.
we are still here
Yes, people don’t leave occupied land. It’s never happened historically and certainly won’t happen now, that’s the point of occupation. People can acknowledge what happened but in practical terms thinking that somehow all native land will be returned is just naive.
Oh well of course, at this point in time it’s been made extremely clear that natives will be getting absolutely no land back, even unoccupied land in the plains for example. There’s no major figures in government even remotely speaking on this stuff in a substantial way, so it may as well never happen. Fucked up stuff on top of all the other fucked up stuff.
And also to be fair, implying that most anyone here believes that all land should be returned is pretty naive in and of itself - there are absolutely more options than ALL OF THE LAND and NONE OF THE LAND
What about the tribes that lost wars to other tribes? Do they get their old land? How far back are we going?
So by that logic, the Turks should give Constantinople back to the Romans?
False equivalence, that’s an entirely different historical context. Things can apply to one situation and not another
If you steal someone’s TV and give it to your kid, does that mean the person who it was stolen from shouldn’t get it back? Its the kid’s now???
So… Average history?
How’s the genocide of a whole continent “average history”? The magnitude of destruction in the Americas is not common and this downplay of a continent-wide genocide is annoying.
Because you’re lumping in the unavoidable disease transfer of first contact with intentional conquest and violence. Take away that, which was going to happen whenever any Afro-Eurasian community first interacted with people from the americas, and you get a very comparable situation to many things throughout history.
The genocide didn’t happen solely after the first contact, the massacre of natives lasted centuries. Many nations were wiped out in the XIX century.
And a quote for you
Proponents of the default position emphasize attrition by disease despite other causes equally deadly, if not more so. In doing so they refuse to accept that the colonization of America was genocidal by plan, not simply the tragic fate of populations lacking immunity to disease.
Professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Because there are other examples of continent wide genocide.
Humans are the fucking worst and it isn’t unique to one area
Other examples existing does not change that it is historically unprecedented and far from the norm. And its just a really strange and pointless thing to point.
Person A: “my dad died in a car bomb” Person B: “ehh, average family death” A: “uhh what?” B: "well, there are other examples of people dying in car bombs, dude! "
because there are other examples
…ok? I guess I don’t get why there needs to be any comparison, since it inevitably ends up sounding like “oh, well this one wasn’t as bad as that one. Happens all the time.”
Did they? I was under the impression they came in, did a conquer, and basically left with the conquered understanding that the horde’d be back for their tribute.
China/Russia/Europe are largely inhabited by people whose ancestry traces back 1000s of years to the same region. That’s very different from North America, where most natives where killed (either through disease or “policy”).
That’s not to excuse their past behaviour (Europeans started the genocide in North America), but it’s still very different.
Yup. That’s the biggest difference. My ancestors trace back to Beringia (what is now the Bering Strait) but my national leader is an 80 year old European American.
So the same as literally every other country in existence yeah?
Nah, not even close. Educate yourself on the history of other countries before you try calling them out.
For fucks sake… 1st off, whether or not this qualifies as a “meme”, it doesn’t fit the accepted norm of what most people expect to see when they click on “memes”
Secondly, and this may sting a little, but peace as we know it is a relatively new thing in world history. I’ve seen a multitude of other comments here proclaiming all those other genocides were okay because they were thousands of years ago. It’s that “in my lifetime” mentality that just fucking grinds my gears. Through thousands of years of history, one genocide is cherry picked and held up as the worst ever, and the citizens who"benefitted" from it are supposed to pick up the tab? My ancestors weren’t Spanish or English, and my family has been here for about 130 years having come from Germany in 1890. How much of the tab am I supposed to pick up?
Fact of the matter is, the only constant in human history is war. We’re in a (relatively) peaceful era now, and that’s taking into account Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Palestine, and probably another 20 or 30 wars I’m not up to speed on because I’m American and our media doesn’t seem to actually inform us on world events from countries we don’t buy shit from.
I’ve seen a multitude of other comments here proclaiming all those other genocides were okay because they were thousands of years ago.
Where did anyone say it was okay because it was longer ago? Please point me to it, because I read the entire thread and did not see this once.
The genocide of native new worlders is historically unprecedented and that is fact. I highly doubt that genocides on the same scale, magnitude and horror are commonplace throughout history. I would urge you to support your claim with evidence or examples if you are going to repeat it, otherwise it is entirely baseless.
How much of the tab am I supposed to pick up?
However much it takes to bring up the status of the natives to what it would have been had they not been massacred and expelled, and undo the propping up of Western civilization on their backs. If you’d like more specific examples, I’d be glad to give them to you. Just ask.
We’re in a (relatively) peaceful era now
Source? That’s a pretty big claim.
As I’m too stupid and it’s to early for me to do these inline…
Your 1st point, here’s one, had to scroll about 1/8 down the page for. Granted it doesn’t explicitly say it was “okay”, the point stands:
"China/Russia/Europe are largely inhabited by people whose ancestry traces back 1000s of years to the same region. That’s very different from North America, where most natives where killed (either through disease or “policy”).
That’s not to excuse their past behaviour (Europeans started the genocide in North America), but it’s still very different."
As you also wanted to be pointed to a source for genocides on the same or larger scale throughout history, allow me to search Wikipedia for you:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
As to point 3, who exactly determines who is responsible and who will benefit from this paln to raise up America’s indigenous population to their proper station? Are 1st generation immigrants from Ghana going to be required to pay up? How about Natives who’s ancestry dates back to a tribe that exterminated another tribe? Surely that should also qualify as genocide?
And as to point 4, we, in the west, as I did point out I was American, are in a (relatively) peaceful time, which implies that throughout history it has not been, but I guess I need to spell it out for some people.
At the end of the day, you’re not looking to be enlightened or to learn anything, your post was directed to completely discount my points, or to “troll” I will admit I was getting heated reading some of the off the wall bullshit I was seeing, but superlatives aside, I stand by everything I’ve posted. I apologize if you TRULY didn’t know about other genocides, or if your worldview has jaded you to the point where you don’t initially see posts that clearly illustrate what I said, at least in the abstract, and you took the time to go back and reread them and allow it to sink in.
Feel free to pick apart this post, too. Nothing is more entertaining in a meme thread than for 2 idiots, myself included, to argue about genocide.🙂
Your first quotation is not about someone excusing a genocide because it happened a long time ago. They are saying that unlike the US, the current inhabitants in those regions can be traced back to the inhabitants thousands of years ago. Which means there wasn’t a major genocide or displacement of people. I am not endorsing this statement btw, I don’t know enough to confirm it. But it is not a condonation of genocide. It is in fact remarking that a genocide similar to what happened in North America did not happen in those other regions.
As you also wanted to be pointed to a source for genocides on the same or larger scale throughout history
You provided me a list of genocides on Wikipedia. None of them match the genocide against native Americans. Your link proves my point.
I guess I need to spell it out for some
I didn’t ask you to paraphrase or restate your point. I asked you to prove it or provide evidence. But I never expected you to be able to anyways, so don’t worry about it.
Human history is not really a constant war, but that is how Americans have been taught history: as a sequence of wars.
What’s relatively new are the concept of mass conscription, economic warfare, and total war. The ability to enact war and destruction on a global and constant level is new. The brief cessations in conflict aren’t peace, you’re right, but it is also a newer concept that we are constantly in a forever war.
While I mostly agree, I never said constant war, but where I will disagree in a sense is, the prospect of total annihilation would have been a factor millennia ago had the technology been there. Pick your era, the Romans, the various Chinese dynasties, the English, etc… if they had the means, they would have likely used it, having zero regard for the impact it would have later, mostly due to a poor understanding of the technology. I do believe, at least between “the big three”, meaning the US, Russia and China, nuclear war is an extremely potent deterrent to all out war. It’s the “kids who want to be in the club” that worry me, everyone from NK to Israel. It sucks, but the atomic cat is out of the bag in a world we’re all forced to live in, and the polarization of politics and other bullshit only work to drive that wedge deeper and push us closer to… bad shit.
Sure. I get what you mean: greek antiquity has records on the decision to exterminate an entire island of people. The capacity is absolutely there.
But I think a better perspective here is human history is one full of technological and social advances that resolve and prevent conflict. Even, yes, that unbagged atomic cat. It can be power for civilian use or it can be a bomb to burn their shadows into the concrete. War is when the actual prize of humanity: civility, breaks down.
Here is an interactive map that shows current ongoing conflicts around the world.
Interesting, and you just happen to stumble upon and share with us this crucially important and unknown trivia gem of a fact, right?
