Pro Gun Rights Billboard Angers (some) Native Americans

[lcpiper]

If you're comparing the effects of the influx of immigrants on current, mainstream American culture with the destruction of Native American cultures by white immigrants to North America, I have to take exception to that. There is no congruence whatsoever between the kind of shift that occurs when separate cultures encounter each other and mingle, and, well... genocide. That is what was done to Native Americans, and it's offensive to suggest that it was merely a failure of white settlers to "assimilate" to indigenous cultures that led to the almost complete obliteration of the latter.

I didn't make any comparison whatsoever did I Vanya. I made a series of comments about the process. That process can be relatively peaceful or decidedly violent. But that is just how it goes.

Now I have a question as long as we are discussing the genocide of the Native American Tribes.

Which tribes were not treated so harshly?

The process started when the white man came to the Americas, but just focusing on North America, which tribes were assimilated and which ones were almost annihilated?

I'll save you some effort particularly since the number of tribal names is, well, numerous.

The ones who peacefully adjusted to new ideas and joined themselves living among the white people were peacefully assimilated. Those that resisted violently were destroyed.

I am not saying I agree with it, condone it, or support it, it's just the way it was done.

 

[Dalek]

Apparently, far as I can tell, you are only allowed to notice historical parallels when, in the case of private ownership of firearms, folks are goose stepping down Main Street in 1930's uniforms.

Any observations prior to that are just "paranoia".

 

[hardworker]

It is essentially bringing up dead people and having them argue a point, and I believe it is in poor taste.

There's no debate that white Americans did some terrible things to the Indians. For us to then turn around and use them as propaganda is in very poor taste. It'd be like one of those child murderers putting up a bilboard showing one of his victims thinking "I wish daddy kept a pistol to protect me".

Let the dead rest in peace. Just because this is propaganda for our side doesn't make it right.

 

[lcpiper]

So if we (white people) did some terrible things.

We shouldn't ever talk about it, just never mention it, not even to say "Hey remember what happened before, what we did to those guys".

Instead, just like slavery we have to just shut our mouths and bear our shame when not one of us or any of our fathers or their fathers had any hand in what was done or the decisions made.

We didn't do these things. People before us did them. We are not doing anyone any good by carrying their sins on our backs.

The burden we are supposed to carry isn't the sin, it's the lesson.

 

[deepcreek]

I would be enraged if I saw a billboard with English men getting disarmed by Romans and a similar message. Not really.

Some female liberal arts professor is offended by something (sound familiar) who cares. Maybe she should go see her therapist or go on a new age retreat.

 

[Dalek]

Hardworker...

With all due respect..."Never Forget".

I think that few would object to reminding generations what happened during the Holocaust. It is not disrespect for the dead to warn against embracing the same ideas and policies that helped lead to their demise.

 

[Evan Thomas]

The ones who peacefully adjusted to new ideas and joined themselves living among the white people were peacefully assimilated. Those that resisted violently were destroyed.

Which tribes were peacefully assimilated? Can you give us some examples of cases in which this happened?

 

[Aguila Blanca]

There are some in Germany who don't like to be reminded that Germany perpetrated the holocaust. There are some in the United States (and Canada, and throughout South America) who don't like to be reminded that white Europeans set out to eliminate the people they found in the "new world" when they got here.

If it's poor taste to remember what we did to the Native Americans, it must also be poor taste to remember what Hitler did to the Jews.

 

[FoghornLeghorn]

lcpiper said:

The ones who peacefully adjusted to new ideas and joined themselves living among the white people were peacefully assimilated. Those that resisted violently were destroyed.

That's an absolutely preposterous assertion. You need to research your claim. Numerous tribes, particularly in the east and the Ohio Valley, attempted to "Europeanize" themselves. Many even converted to Christianity.

These tribes were still forced, along with the others, to walk the "trail of tears."

If they weren't marked for extermination, they were definitely marked for segregation. In fact, our excuse for moving them onto reservations was to centralize them in order to convert them to Christianity. The irony was that many of them had already converted.

We wanted their property and their resources. Period. We never intended them to become part of us.

And the reason we were able to do all of this was not because they didn't have guns. It was more fundamental than that.

The early Native American was fiercely individualistic. That's what the white policy makers couldn't comprehend, viz. that no one Indian had the power to make a treaty that would be binding over all other Indians.

But if those early Indians had had the foresight to band together and follow a single leader, this might have been an entirely different country.

They were just too fragmented to oppose us.

 

[mayosligo]

I think the media will find the people who want to be offended and write their story. The fact that a message can be promoted that uses indigenous people to point out the role of government strong arming a people and have it correlate with the actions of their president is troublesome for them. They cannot argue the facts so they resort to emotion and thus find those who can be offended. It is the only way to combat logic.

 

[Gallstones]

My son is Chippewa-Cree and he is offended by codependent, white liberals who don't recognize how patronizing it is to presume to speak for anyone as if they are children who can't think and speak for themselves.

 

[SPEMack618]

I took a Poli Sci course entitled 'The Rise of European Centric Powers", covering England, Germany, Spain, and America(based on our colonial roots).

The course was a bit of a joke, taught by an aging hippy who was an avowed fan of Bill Ayers, but she made one good point.

"All white empires at one point in time committed some from of genocide."

Being the token right wing frat boy my arm shot up and I asked what the Americans had done.

And to my everlasting chagrin, she replied with

"Mack, didn't you say you were an Armored Cavalryman? Do they not list Wounded Knee as a great victory in the Army?"

Redfaced I ceded the point. Might be the one thing of import I took from that class.

I agree with the sentiment that white washing the elimination of the Native Americans is akin to overlooking the Holocaust.

 

[btmj]

"All white empires at one point in time committed some from of genocide."

A more honest view of history would be that all cultures (not just "white") engaged in barbaric acts including what we today call genocide. Any dominant culture you care to study will, by todays standards, seem quite brutal, and some of them were absolutely ghastly.

It is important to realize that genocide is a twentieth century term. Prior to 1930, wholesale slaughter of enemy populations was often used as part of war. Sure it was considered un-gentlemanlike, but it happened pretty often. The Thirty-Years War is an example of extreme brutality, and if those people (Prussian, Austrians, Swedes etc.) had been given access to gas chambers and cluster bombs, they no doubt would have achieved Hitler-like levels of atrocities. They just had to make do with hacking and beating of helpless civilians, along with policies of enforced famine. In more ancient times, Julius Caesar achieved peace in Gaul (France) by defeating what we would today call a guerilla insurrection. How did he achieve peace? He slaughtered 1/3 of the population, enslaved 1/3 of the population and shipped them back to Rome, and the remaining 1/3 were happy to live under Roman authority. The point is this: What makes Hitler, Lenin/Stalin, Mao, The Japanese Imperialists, and Pol-Pot so utterly evil to us is not that they behaved in an uncharacteristically bad way. No, we are horrified that the rest of the world moved beyond its barbarous past, and they did not. They applied their medieval mindset using industrial war technology.

The oppression that Native Americans were subjected to was not uncommon or excessive by the standards of the time. Only by today's standards do we find these barbarous acts to be appalling. We read the noble words in the Declaration of Independence and we are so dissapointed in our ancestors. But compared to other events around the globe between 1800 - 1900, the oppression of Native Americans was entirely reasonable.

Throughout human history, barbarism and despicable brutality has been the rule, not the exception. Only within the last century has it become rare enough to be considered “beyond the pale”, and only in the most advanced of cultures. Given human nature, I doubt we have seen the last of genocide and industrial-level slaughter. It emerges with predictable regularity whenever there is a societal breakdown. Anyone who argues that the Human Race has evolved beyond barbarism, and that genocide is no longer a risk, is naïve at best… willfully myopic or delusional at the worst. Anyone who argues that "whites" have some kind of monopoly on barbarism is not a serious scholar.

 

[deepcreek]

"All white empires at one point in time committed some from of genocide."

Not just white. All Empires. It still goes on today as we speak in Africa, Asia and many other places, the white guy with the funny hat just makes a good scapegoat.

 

[lcpiper]

That's an absolutely preposterous assertion. You need to research your claim.

It is not. Go find a phone book for any large city and you can thumb through it and find people who still have "Indian" last names. The are not living on a reservation or living in another culture, they are examples of those who have been assimilated into American society.

If you look at that history as if it were a slice of time you can find many examples that show the American Government wanted to assimilate the Indians and tried to assimilate them into our society. There are also times when good policies were executed poorly, ignored, or even worse.

But if you open the window up to today you can't say that I am wrong because the facts of the day show otherwise. The woman who was offended by the bill board is an example with one reserved distinction, she want's to wear her heritage on her sleeve even though she herself has lived her entire life as a normal American citizen.

Like so many, "I am special", "you owe me". She likes that card.

And I'll say it again, it's not the sin we are supposed to carry, it's the lesson.

Quote:
"All white empires at one point in time committed some from of genocide."
Not just white. All Empires. It still goes on today .....

And this is correct, he said the same thing as I did just another way. This is just part of the process and it will happen one way or another. This is what man does, not just white man.

Wait and see, here in America see how the history plays out as Latin America's culture continues to gain influence on our own. There may be violence on a large scale or it may be a peaceful process, but one of them will win out although it may change some as well. What is left of the die-hard loser is extinction or relocation, voluntary or otherwise.

 

[Evan Thomas]

That's an absolutely preposterous assertion. You need to research your claim.

It is not. Go find a phone book for any large city and you can thumb through it and find people who still have "Indian" last names. The are not living on a reservation or living in another culture, they are examples of those who have been assimilated into American society.

This fails to support your original claim, which was that there were entire tribes that successfully assimilated.

The process started when the white man came to the Americas, but just focusing on North America, which tribes were assimilated and which ones were almost annihilated?

I'll save you some effort particularly since the number of tribal names is, well, numerous.

I'm still waiting for you to provide examples of these tribes which you claim were peacefully assimilated.

And if you're at all familiar with urban Indian life, you'll agree that the success of "assimilation" is dubious at best. Poverty, illness, alcoholism, and violence are all too common in these communities; this doesn't speak well of the acceptance of Native Americans into mainstream culture.

 

[lcpiper]

I offer exhibit A:
From the very article the OP posted this topic on.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/30/native-americans-incensed-over-pro-gun-rights-billboard-in-colorado/

Irene Vernon, a Colorado State University professor and chairwoman of the ethnic studies department, said the message on the billboard is taking a narrow view of a much more complicated history of the Native American plight. She said it's not as if Native Americans just gave up their guns and wound up on reservations.

"It wasn't just about our guns," said Vernon, a Native American.

I wouldn't say this is a person who has any serious problems as a member of our society.

Exhibit B:

On September 27, 1830, the Choctaws signed Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek and the first Native American tribe was to be voluntarily removed. The agreement represented one of the largest transfers of land that was signed between the U.S. Government and Native Americans without being instigated by warfare. By the treaty, the Choctaws signed away their remaining traditional homelands, opening them up for American settlement in Mississippi Territory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_assimilation_of_Native_Americans

Here is the first.

Exibit C:

The site of the signing of this treaty is in the southwest corner of Noxubee County, Mississippi in the United States; the site was known to the Choctaw as Chukfi Ahihla Bogue (Dancing Rabbit Creek). The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was the last major land cession treaty signed by the Choctaw.[citation needed] With ratification by the U.S. Congress in 1831, the treaty allowed those Choctaw who chose to remain in Mississippi to become the first major non-European ethnic group to gain recognition as U.S. citizens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Dancing_Rabbit_Creek

The Treaty is basicly sell you land and take up new land with a pansion, or stay on as a US citizen and accept deeded land grants.

Exhibit D:

"ART. XIV. Each Choctaw head of a family being desirous to remain and become a citizen of the States, shall be permitted to do so, by signifying his intention to the Agent within six months from the ratification of this Treaty, and he or she shall thereupon be entitled to a reservation of one section of six hundred and forty acres of land, to be bounded by sectional lines of survey; in like manner shall be entitled to one half that quantity for each unmarried child which is living with him over ten years of age; and a quarter section to such child as may be under 10 years of age, to adjoin the location of the parent. If they reside upon said lands intending to become citizens of the States for five years after the ratification of this Treaty, in that case a grant in fee simple shall issue; said reservation shall include the present improvement of the head of the family, or a portion of it. Persons who claim under this article shall not lose the privilege of a Choctaw citizen, but if they ever remove are not to be entitled to any portion of the Choctaw annuity."[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Dancing_Rabbit_Creek

Details of the offer of citizenship.

Exhibit E:

The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida and now residing in Florida and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation came into existence in the 18th century and was composed of renegade and outcast Native Americans from Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, most significantly the Creek Nation, as well as African Americans who escaped from slavery in South Carolina and Georgia. While roughly 3,000 Seminoles were forced west of the Mississippi River, including the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, who picked up new members along the way, approximately 300 to 500 Seminoles stayed and fought in and around the Everglades of Florida. In a series of United States wars against the Seminoles in Florida, about 1,500 U.S. soldiers died. The Seminoles never surrendered to the US government. The Seminole of Florida call themselves the "Unconquered People." Federally recognized Seminole tribes today include the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and Seminole Tribe of Florida.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Civilized_Tribes

The Seminoles that never left Florida were later set up with a reservation, basically that land they already claimed and hadn't been beaten out of. They existed that way and did nothing until about 1953 when they were told the Government was going to take back the reservation lands. In short, they got busy, they petitioned for time to organize, they created a government, and in essence created something that the federal government could recognize as a functional governed society possessing mechanisms for business, commonwealth, and growth. Through these efforts they have retained their reservation lands.

Now if anyone actually bothers to read these then please take one more moment and read this from my earlier post.

A group of people, of another culture, move in and are not assimilated by the host culture. Instead the new culture refuses to be assimilated. Instead this new culture will make some small adaptions but only enough in order to continue to gain traction and reach a point where they can actually influence change in the host culture. Some in the host culture will resist, there will be conflicts fondly remembered as the battles and struggles of the conquered and the conqueror.

 

[Alabama Shooter]

Holy cow! You are invoking the Trail of Tears as a "peaceable assimiliation"?



Speechless.

 

[lcpiper]

You act like the Trail of Tears was always as bad as it was for the Cherokee and it was not, but it was also a choice and at the time how could anyone have not known what they were signing up for. Do you think they didn't know it was going to be a hard move?

According to that source the Choctaw accepted a peaceful offer of treaty, that offer included an offer of citizenship and deeded lands. Of 15,000 that moved, about 2,500 didn't make it. But 5,000 - 6,000 stayed behind and accepted citizenship. They were not treated well but this was more due to local prejudice and poor governance by the local governments then the federal Government.

Once the Fed had what they wanted they did what the Fed always does, they forgot about it.

But would it have been different if all 20,000 + had stayed behind? Would they have made the transition and had the numbers and support to weather the problems of that time?

I can't tell you, and I am not saying all this was right. I am saying this is how the ball bounces. The native Americans were here, the white Europeans moved in, we kept our culture, we didn't change anymore then we had to. And when we had reached a point where we could influence the change we did. And that's how it will happen over and over if the newcomer isn't assimilated into the existing culture.

 

[Dalek]

Already covered here but, as a noisy sort with a penchant for history, I do wonder what group of humans have not, at some point, been decidedly nasty and even engaged in some manner of genocide.