People always talk about the oppression as ancient history, but it has been perpetual for many groups, not just limited to indigenous. Allotment ran until 1934, giving away native lands. After that they moved to Termination, where they tried to dissolve reservations and negate treaties.
The 3rd largest nuclear accident in human history happened on US soil, but it wasn’t Three Mile Island. A tailings pond used by a United Nuclear Corporation uranium mill broke and released over 1,000 tons of nuclear material and nearly 100m gallons of contaminated water into the Puerco river and surrounding land.
The disaster happened in Church Rock, New Mexico a few months after TMI occurred, so it should have had national attention since nuclear accidents were still fresh in everyone’s minds. However, most people don’t know about it. Why? Because it happened next to a Navajo reservation, and the people primarily effected were Navajo. The US government pretended it didn’t happen until the 1990s, and refused to clean it up until the early 2000s. In the meantime, cancer and diabetes have skyrocketed in a community without any genetic history of the diseases, the dust on the reservation has become contaminated and blown all over the place.
Oh yeah, and the UNC built another tailings pond, but this time they decided not to line it so now the groundwater is contaminated too.
I’m sure many families in the west did. I don’t know the heritage on my mothers side, but she is white, and goes back at least to the 1800s in the US, so I can’t imagine I haven’t in someway benefitted from allotment or other genocidal policy of the US Gov. I don’t think any living individual is responsible for anything they didn’t directly contribute to, don’t get me wrong, but I think its important to recognize the immense privilege certain classes of people have had historically, and the immense lack of privilege other classes had, and how those privileges translate into systematic injustices in the present day that we should work to correct.
You are absolutely right that we need to recognize both genocidal and oppressive policies in our countries and where possible restitute people or their descendants, the majority of society usually did directly contribute to those policies. However the case example by the person that answered you is actually more relevant than you would think. While we can’t make our ancestors pay for their direct and indirect crimes, oppressed people who make use of horrendous policies should be exempt even in the level of thought.
To give a modern-day example of international law. Asylum seekers can’t legally be punished by the mode of entry. Not because it changes it into a good thing but because oppressed people have so few options that are sane.
Reconciling and instituting is also not enough by a mile. We as Western countries need to stop these inhumane policies. I am not American. But mine while being better than most (based on rankings not my opinion) has shit ton issues.
Heard a Catholic guy go all nuts about the fact that he had hard limits on the fish he could catch, but the Ojibwa could fish unlimited in their own sovereign lands. I tried for a few minutes to explain it’s their right they were given in recompense, and is hardly any compensation.
He just had to go on about liberals and eco terrorists and how they should be mad at Ojibwa fishing instead of the keystone pipeline.
There were too many things to unpack in that 2 minute conversation.
Btw, nice to see you in the wild outside of the folkpunk community!
Not even bothering to work out the logic, is he. If he did, he wouldn't have any right to be angry, and he really, really wants to be angry. Imagine some foreign government gracefully granting you the recognized right to fish in your own damn house.
Same guy was memeing hard about election 2016 and how you’d never see a self respecting conservative throw a temper tantrum about losing, we fell out of contact by the time January 6th happened because he kept calling me nicknames alluding to various communist leaders.
That and the same tired “LGBTQMNOP Alphabet people” statement I’ve heard several times a week since ‘05.
I mean, trying to explain is understandable for anyone. A ton of people just really desperately need to be part of an exclusive group and wouldn't backtrack under torture. Because the main reason they even need in/out-groups at all is
A.) Community and belonging B.) (in the extreme political cases) A sense of pride that's already propped up on a single wobbly stilt.
They'd lose that and all their friends at once. Admitting fault and seeing nuance both take an amount of character that would have made it unlikely for them to mindlessly join in like that in the first place, though I do have fragile hope.
I'm willing to bear a good bit as long as we're both decent towards each other in doing so, but idk how you stayed around him even that long. In no other circumstance would it be considered healthy to keep company with the same guy openly insulting you and everyone else at every turn, and there are reasons I'm not allowed at Thanksgiving anymore.
They were my boss. We’d get out the kitchen and go to the bar next door. They weren’t as terrible as they could’ve been, but definitely one of those “I don’t care till it affects me” conservatives.
They let up on the alphabet people jokes after their kid came out, still not an ally.
Believe it or not I’ve had worse more conservative business owners in my career.
I just hope to one day be able to be in business for myself and to stop slaving away for someone else to gain more means to produce.
I've had a boss like that 😬
My condolences. Naturally, he'd only keep his mouth shut for fear of looking like an asshole to his own family. His kid must be "one of the good ones" /s
I'm just gonna redirect my efforts to animals. Cats don't do any of this to each other. Even bats will literally give their food to strangers if they appear to be starving. My cousin is less christian than a vampire bat.
Yeah this was beaten do death in American history classes in middle and high school in the 1980s along with the internment camps during WW2 for Japanese and German citizens.
They taught me some things, but they left out most of it. I was still taught the pilgrims and Indians thanksgiving in the 90s. In high school they talked about the Trail of Tears, but not allotment and termination periods. We were also taught that the US “tried to civilize” the indigenous.
We weren’t taught about the attempts to systemically murder and enslave them. The towns destroyed, the crops burned, all were left out. We did learn about the eradication programs for the Bison, but that was presented as an aberration rather than the norm it had already been for decades by that point.
I’ve not met anyone who’s heard about this letter from Washington to Major General John Sullivan, or the policies around it.
The expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the six nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible…I would recommd. That some post in the center of the Indian Country should be occupied with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provision; whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner; that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed …It should be previously impressed upon the minds of the men when ever they have an opportunity, to rush on with the warhoop and fixed bayonet. Nothing will disconcert and terrify the Indians more than this… But you will not by any means, listen to any overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements is effected…Our future security will be in their inability to injure us; (the distance to wch. They are driven) and in the terror with which the severity of the chastizement they receive will inspire them… When we have effectually chastised them we may then listen to peace and endeavour to draw further advantages from their fears.
Residential schools were mentioned in passing, but not their lasting legacy. Any missteps that were presented were always justified as the US trying to the do the right thing and just missing the mark. That things like that could never happen again. As if the Americans showed up, had a few fights, and then the Indians just moved into reservations and everything was peachy.
Oh, yeah. I distinctly remember reading in my textbooks in the 4th grade how they were the pilgrims' good friends and agreed to move. This was in the late 90s. That same year, we went to the nearby burial mounds on a field trip. 8yr old me did not put a lot of thought at the time into how the lecturers and their exhibits seemed to depict all of this as happening in the blindingly distant past, as if they'd gone the way of the neanderthal. Adult me only started assessing how it had been presented a couple years ago when I was telling someone else about it, and I am still horrified.
Stuff like this flyer, I never saw until today. That the state of Tennessee is entirely the result of Americans setting up shop on land that still legally belonged to the Cherokee at the time, and that everyone just sorta went along with that except for, increasingly, the Cherokee, was not something I ever heard until I was doing some semi-related reading on my own at the start of this year.
There are middle aged people who were kidnapped from their homes by the government, beaten for using their language, and taught not to ask questions when a classmate disappeared. Anyone who thinks that the oppression of native Americans is some ancient history thing needs to actually talk to some because we still aren’t treating them with any decency
Yeah it was pretty surreal the first time she told me. So many stories she tells me. She’s pretty sure the cops killed her uncle in Utah, and her life is filled with MMIW(Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women). I’m indigenous, but separated from my culture because my family wanted my father to grow up as white as possible so he would have a chance in this country, so I have been privileged in my experiences, despite my heritage.
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