UN to US- Return Land to the Native Americans

[OsoCoreyell]

I would go with "sphere of influence".

Just finished "Empire of the Summer Moon" about Quanah Parker. While the US army was building forts piecemeal to extend our influence another 30 miles, the Comanches were raiding 500 miles from their camps. Amazing.

That was a brutal book. Consider this - The Lipan Apache were some of the meanest, cold-hearted, hard-cases that ever rode the plains...and they fled to Northern Mexico to get away from the Comanches.

[Maxwell's Silver Hammer]

The way I see it, about 1.2 billion Han Chinese need to return southern China to the Polynesians, the Aryan population of India needs to skeedaddle, and about 6.5 billion of us humans need to return the earth to the monkeys.

[The Banterer]

The native Americans got a raw deal, but it occurred during a very different time. There's nothing we could do that would make up for it, and anything that gets close would severely violate the rights of people who had nothing to do with our nation's actions toward native Americans. It sucks that we did it, but it's over. The UN needs to focus on the present and the future.

[Jellybear]

The way I see it, about 1.2 billion Han Chinese need to return southern China to the Polynesians, the Aryan population of India needs to skeedaddle, and about 6.5 billion of us humans need to return the earth to the monkeys.

So close, us 6.5 billion humans need to return earth to the common ancestor between us and monkeys :P

[Maxwell's Silver Hammer]

Besides, what do the Native Americans want? We already gave them smallpox in exchange for North America . . . .

[GolemII]

Besides, what do the Native Americans want? We already gave them smallpox in exchange for North America . . . .

Don't forget all the hairspray they can drink...

[merckywaters]

Indianz greatest gifts to civilization- popcorn and tobacco

[quash]

Indianz greatest gifts to civilization- popcorn and tobacco

Peyote?

[merckywaters]

[Keyser Soze]

I thought this issue was settled when we gave them the casinos.

[cowboycwr]

Why do people want to settle past trangressions by having someone in the present suffer?

Banterer said it best. It happened. It was horrible, it sucked but the country and people have to move on. If the proposal was for unused federal land to be given to the tribes for farmland that would be one thing but the article makes it sound like it would be large stretches of the country that would be given to the Indians.

[BCC97]

UN: Or else we will be very angry with you... and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are

Team America reference? Nice.

[OldBear83]

The thing that jumps out at me, is that Native Americans have let time work against them. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the tribes were every bit as advanced and functional as the European settlers who came to North America. But by the late 19th Century, the tribes were deficient in every salient aspect, including the means to feed and protect their people. They knew how to use guns, for example, but no tribe ever developed a system for making their own firearms, none ever learned to make use of permanent fortifications, and most of all, the tribes refused to acknowledge that the world around them was changing. Native American completely lacked innovation and long-term strategic planning. As a result, the tribes lost wars, territory, and declined to near-irrelevance as a people.

Another way to look at things as using Toffler's Wave theory. European civilization advanced from first-wave agriculture through industrialization to the modern information society. Native Americans never progressed from the first wave.

Fortunately, there are options for the Native Americans, and perhaps the best model is to follow the Japanese. Following World War 2, Japan lost 90 percent of the territory it held as an empire, yet its people are among the longest-lived and most advanced in living standards in the world. Japan learned to make effective use of its people, to overcome a lack of physical resources through development of intellectual capital. The remaining tribes could succeed in a similar manner.

[bubbadog]

The thing that jumps out at me, is that Native Americans have let time work against them. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the tribes were every bit as advanced and functional as the European settlers who came to North America. But by the late 19th Century, the tribes were deficient in every salient aspect, including the means to feed and protect their people. They knew how to use guns, for example, but no tribe ever developed a system for making their own firearms, none ever learned to make use of permanent fortifications, and most of all, the tribes refused to acknowledge that the world around them was changing. Native American completely lacked innovation and long-term strategic planning. As a result, the tribes lost wars, territory, and declined to near-irrelevance as a people.

Another way to look at things as using Toffler's Wave theory. European civilization advanced from first-wave agriculture through industrialization to the modern information society. Native Americans never progressed from the first wave.

Fortunately, there are options for the Native Americans, and perhaps the best model is to follow the Japanese. Following World War 2, Japan lost 90 percent of the territory it held as an empire, yet its people are among the longest-lived and most advanced in living standards in the world. Japan learned to make effective use of its people, to overcome a lack of physical resources through development of intellectual capital. The remaining tribes could succeed in a similar manner.

They were never every bit as advanced. In fact, they were so far behind the Europeans technologically that they became dependent almost immediately upon European trade goods — not just guns but especially iron pots for cooking. Within a generation or two of first contact in the 17th and 18th centuries, some of the Eastern tribes began losing their ancestral skills because they were so dependent on European technology.

The Indians were quite aware that the world around them was changing. But once they had allowed the Europeans to gain a foothold, there wasn't much they could do about it. The Europeans kept coming in numbers the Indians could barely imagine; as settlement move west across the continent, that sense of awe and amazement and foreboding was something all of the Indian nations experienced. Some of the Eastern Indians, notably the Iroquois Confederation, were skillful at using diplomacy to play the French and English off against each other, and later the British in Canada off against the new American nation. But it was not a strategy that could work forever.

When you talk about no permanent fortifications, you're talking more about the Plains Indians. Those tribes had to be nomadic because resources were scarce and they followed the buffalo herds. The Eastern tribes were more permanently situated and most did have fortified towns.

[OldBear83]

Thanks bubbadog, point taken. I do still think the Japan model could work for a number of the tribes.

[cowboycwr]

Bubba I would agree with much of what you wrote. They were never equal to society as a whole but to the frontier they were. The individual family and the native Americans basically lived the same way. All the way back to Plymouth. An Indian village and a early colony would not have had much difference. Same goes for every frontier home as the frontier moved forward. The exception would be the plains Indians because their lifestyle did not allow for much advancement.

But these would be exceptions and what you wrote would be the rule.

[BooBooFan]

Everyone should read the book 1491, it will change your opinion of "Native Americans".

[bubbadog]

Everyone should read the book 1491, it will change your opinion of "Native Americans".

In what ways? Tell us more.

[quash]

Everyone should read the book 1491, it will change your opinion of "Native Americans".

Outstanding book.

[bubbadog]

Haven't read it yet. I'm hoping someone will hit the high points.