(during a tangent about genocide of native Americans in the 1800s, unrelated to the main discussion)
We taught the Native Americans Christian values and saved them from their separation from God. We also gave them vast tracts of free land where they could govern themselves. How is that "genocide"?
53 comments
Seriously? I can't even...
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee . Read it. Understand it.
And stop trying to revise history to make your religion and your country look better. Both are guilty of attempted genocide and slavery, both deserve equal condemnation.
That’s part’s not the genocide. The brutal extermination of the native americans who DARED to not like the fact that a bunch of arrogant, cruel, hypocritical assholes came over and ruined their entire way of life was the genocide.
So why is it that my nearest reservations are miniscule and the largest reservation in the state is little bigger than the smallest county? And what about those Native Americans who used to live here, whose remaining descendants are scattered across the West, deprived of their religions, their languages and their cultures?
So, if I were to bring a few dozen heavily armed men to take over your house and land, rope off a small corner of your back yard and put a pup tent on it for you to live in, you'd defend me and tell everyone that I gave you a tract of free land? Sweet! Be right over!
Damn, tfaddict, you beat me to the Holy Grail reference!
@OP:
We also gave them vast tracts of free land where they could govern themselves.
And they even got escorted there with military honours! I guess that “Tear Of Trails” is named for the tears of joy they cried on their way
Before you arrived, they had ALL the free land where they governed themselves, and they had their own religions and didn't need "saved" from anything.
And it's genocide because the white man conducted widespread slaughter and moved them off their land by force. Ever heard of the Trail of Tears?
So insulting them, stealing from them, raping & murdering them, & shoving the survivors onto tiny areas called reservations isn't genocide? Who knew.
I think this just literally blew my mind. I have to go lie down now.
how about the gift of smallpox, starvation on land with little game to hunt ?
The Great spirit was doing nicely managing the spiritual needs of his people, they didnt need a Jewish Zombie.
"We taught the Native Americans Christian values..."
Taxation, want, poverty, shame, subservience, self-doubt, greed, sloth, "right" of Immanent Domain, private ownership of resources ...."
We taught the Native Americans Christian values and saved them from their separation from God.
By sending them in residential schools?
We also gave them vast tracts of free land where they could govern themselves.
Whych was the smallest and least useful part of the land they owned before .
How is that "genocide"?
When 90% died; admitedly it includes Western diseases but forced work and massacres did their part.
Lets see, the Spanish empire butchered the empires of South and Central America, then turned north when they didn't find gold. The first European visitors brought diseases that wiped out huge percentages of the north American and Caribbean tribes, to the point that several islands were completely depopulated. After a few years, permanent settlers arrived and took the land from the survivors, killed the ones the fought back, and used the others as mercenaries. Then when more arrived, forcefully resettled tribes further and further west. Until the point that several tribes were living in the same tiny areas which maybe a few hundred or less individuals left out of populations that used to be in the 10s of thousands if not orders of magnitude greater.
Oh we also banned their cultures with the threat of force, destroyed cultural artifacts and structures, and introduced invasive species that irreparably damaged the American continental ecosystem.
I think its pretty safe to say, we can never be sorry enough for the harm we've done. As far as I'm concerned the OP can go fuck themselves with a small pox blanket.
That's a great question, Bachmann! Come out in your front yard so we can discuss it. Never mind those men going into your home and removing your things, you'll be given a hovel later. Are you cold? Here--take this blanket.
How can you give someone something that was theirs to begin with, Oh Batscat one?
I think poster #1797729's analogy works just perfectly!
So if you had 1,000 acres and the government took it and then gave you back 1 acre, you'd thank them for giving you a "vast tract of free land where you could govern yourself"?
It's a shame Christ didn't thank their devotion by giving them immunity to smallpox.
We came to a land that they already inhabited, murdered them for it, kidnapped and enslaved them, disallowed them from using their own languages and participating in their own religions and cultures, took their children away, forced them to move from their ancestral homelands, kept murdering them for sport and profit, and erased them from their own landscape so totally that most people have no idea who the tribes were that inhabited the areas that they live in today, or that they even existed at all.
Even Hitler admitted this was genocide. He greatly admired what was done here and used it partially as a basis to commit his own genocide.
I sometimes feel guilty for living here in the Americas. I'm basically benefiting from all the nastiness committed against the First Nations. I would love for all this to be reversed or rectified somehow but I feel like a hypocrite.
Anyone in America ever feel this way?
Probably the best way to "give it back" is to have IndigAmericans run for office from top to bottom then ditch the Rez and live among everyone else while having lots of kids (provided they can handle it).
However, for many, there's barriers to overcome.
I remember some Indigenous folks in my native state of New York who were buying up a bunch of land. Maybe First Peoples who can should do that as well.
"Our ancestors murdered them in droves, threatened to murder them even more if they didn't adopt our clearly more enlightened beliefs and then generously gave them back some of the land they'd just booted them off of (which was reached via a death march but that's neither here nor there) How does that make our ancestors the bad guys?"
Eichmann had a similar line of argument, about removing the Jews from Germany and Poland to protect them, giving them free train rides, etc.
This is why I can't get too mad at Turkey over their Armenian denials; people in this country say the exact same damned thing about our genocides.
@SpukiKitty
A little....but then I realized it’s not my ancestors fault, i’m an irishman. Thus, my family is exempt.
I’m very weird when it comes to guilt.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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