On Sunday, March 19, 2000 2:13 PM James Rogers jamesr@best.com wrote:
> > The one difference, however, with Native Americans, is that their
nations
> > are still recognized. The right thing to do in their case, would be to
give
> > as much land as is possible back to them and allow them to find their
way in
> > the world. We can't undo the last 500 years, but we can give all that
> > Federal land in the US back to them -- where it can be proven that it is
> > their land. Then recreation (skiing, boating, etc.), mining, and
logging
> > concerns would have to pay a more equitable price for its usage and be
less
> > likely to damage it in the process.
>
>
> This is a rather simplistic view of the issue.
>
> For one, the Native Americans were quite busy doing their own empire
> building as recently as the first half of the 19th century. This was
> documented by American and European explorers in addition to tribal
> histories.
I don't disagree with this claim. I don't make Native Americans out to be
helpless victims of European imperialism. E.g., the Aztecs and the Incas
were just empires. That Spain conquered them was merely one empire
conquering another.
> As far as I know, this has never been taken into consideration
> and is the reason that you find tribes that are clearly from the Great
> Plains living in the Pacific Northwest and other odd distributions of
> related tribes. It is interesting to note that the Warrior-Merchant
tribes
> were among the most economically successful, both before and after
European
> domination and controlled relatively large sections of North America at
> various times. The historical patterns of Native American politics and
> conquests closely mirror European history in many respects.
>
> As for Native Americans being better stewards of the land, this concept is
> largely a cultural myth. In fact, some of the most egregious acts of
> environmental destruction I have ever seen were perpetrated by Native
> Americans on their own land. They are no better or worse than anyone else
> at environmental conservation. In my experience, small private
> agricultural and forestry concerns run by ordinary Americans have among
> the best records for good environmental management (necessarily -- many
> of these people have been earning a living off the same lands for many
> generations, something that mandates excellent conservation practices).
I don't disagree with this. James is reading more into what I type that
what I actually put there. What I meant was Federal stewardship of that
land is probably much worse than will be private Native American ownership
of it. (If the given tracts land the Federal government now holds in vast
regions of the country can be shown to belong to certain tribes and given
back to them, then I think the latter will take better care of it, simply
because they will have an interest in not polluting or exhausting their own
backyard.)
Again, just ot make sure no one misinterprets me, I don't paint Native
Americans as total innocents or Red gods who know best about everything. I
merely talking about how private ownership of land is better than public
ownership.
> Additionally, I am strongly against making "reparations" to the Native
> Americans in general. A lot of people don't realize that the U.S.
> government has already paid enormous sums of "reparation" money to many
> of the tribes to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars per person.
> I grew up on a couple different Reservations, and I have a lot of
> first-hand experience with the Native American communities. Most of them
> *grossly* mismanage their assets and money. The reparations to date have
> done nothing but turn most Native American tribes into welfare cases writ
> large, waiting for their next big check from the evil white government.
> Their have been some movements within some of the Native American
> communities to get everyone off their collective asses and to become
> productive members of society, but most have failed.
Where that has been done, I would advocate that nothing is owed to those
particular people. I advocate doing this on a case by case basis. Note:
I'm not advocating giving money at all, just land. I don't want the Federal
government to tax James and me to pay anyone for crimes committed by that
same government in the 1800s. See below.
> And lastly, to pick a nit, the Native Americans/Indians are no more
> "native" than I am. The current "native" Americans occupying the
> contintental U.S. are, to my understanding, invaders who pushed the
> previous occupants south.
I don't disagree about both of us now being natives. I only use the term to
designate an ethnic group in the least confusing fashion. (I live in New
Jersey, where there are lots of Indians. I like to eat their cuisine. I
work with a number of them. But they are from the other India.:) Perhaps
is we use American Aborigines, it would be better? (This also ignores the
inbreeding between Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans.)
But one has to admit, some tribes have treaties with the US government which
the latter has continuously set aside in a very arbitrary way. This is why
I advocate, where practical, giving back these tribes their land -- but only
when it can be demonstrated that it is theirs and comes out of Federal land.
(I'm not looking to take away James' home.:)
Also, though every piece of land on the planet with the exception of
Antarctica has been fought over or stolen at one point or another, this has
to be proven in each individual case. The truth is, we do know that certain
Europeans did take land and make treaties then broke those treaties with
Native Americans. I don't want to use the abstraction I started out this
paragraph with to underline the historty which we are completely sure of.
And that is the only wrong we can redress.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/
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