I'm not here to downplay the atrocities committed against the Indians in the 17th and most of the 18th centuries (and beyond), but after reading this book on it (The Long and Bitter Trail by Anthony Wallace, if you're interested), there was a lot of legislation passed in the late 1700's-early 1800's trying to make peace with the Indians and to generally treat them as their own sovereign nation. Not to try and defend a lot of what the gov't did during this time, but they made an honest effort to back off of Indians once they'd overrun the continent and kind of realized "whoa, we've overextended ourselves here." I mean, this kind of thing had never been done before - the reactions were understandably delayed and when legislation was finally passed in 1795 to make Indian grounds "theirs," the idea of this entity of the "Indian nation" was pretty ambiguous.

Again, I'm not trying to make it seem like the US government didn't push the Indians out the door here, but this prevalent idea that they were the big bad machine that just wanted to roll right over the Indians and never thought of them as human isn't really justified. A couple of our earliest presidents really made honest attempts at granting them sovereignty.

Ever read a book from the perspective of the Natives?

A couple of early presidents making efforts that were absolutely steamrolled by successive administrations and Congresses isn't enough to sway me an inch. What was done was on the same level as slavery.

Like I said, I'm not trying to defend the government or what happened, I was just always taught in school that the US goverment never did anything to help the Indians or try to help fix the problem. That just wasn't true. All throughout the 18th century there are tons of examples of the US giving resources to the NA's to try and get them back on their feet after all of the disease and death in the 16th and 17th centuries.

You're right though - starting with Andrew Jackson, Indian attrocities just got worse. He started digging the hole that the US couldn't dig itself out of. It isn't like some later administrations wouldn't try to fix the problem, it just never went anywhere.

When I first went to college, I wanted to be a HS history teacher.
After 2 history courses and 2 conversations (1 with a professor and 1 with my HS history teacher) I knew there was no way I could do it. The amount of bullshit kids are fed about history is unbelievable. It's like 2+2=3, just utter bullshit that is indefensible, but somehow through prejudice, heroification, and nationalism...it goes on...

Dude (parchy) he (Athletic Supporter) is politely telling you, your teachers lied to you. Consequently he is suggesting you are a wandering child lost when it comes to Native American history.

That's not at all what I'm saying.

He knows quite a bit if he read that book. I was just taking the conversation a different direction since Parch mentioned this:

He knows he was lied to. I'm not trying to be pandering or condescending or call him a lost child or whatever. I was extending the opening he gave about being lied to in school. I was so disgusted with the lies I was fed in school and the near impossible task that it would be to right the wrongs of HS history cirriculums that I changed my career path immediately.

You won't find any supporters here in Howard Zinn land, my friend.

That's precisely why I want to be a history teacher. After I finish my phd (only two more years!) I'm going to go back and teach high school history

Part of the problem with the various treaties etc is that the mnay of the indian tribes didn't have a social structure that had leaders capable of signing treaties that would be binding for the entire tribe. Leadership was too decentralized, ideas of ownership were different.

I'm with you, but after a long talk with a HS teacher, I found out how difficult it is to teach what you want rather than teaching what the pre-determined cirriculum is. In some districts, teachers have virtually no say whatsoever.

*fixed

I don't think that the injustices are overplayed.... definately underreported.

I do think that the compensation scams, sorry.. schemes, are wrong. Nothing will undo what was done, no amount of money or gambling licenses. It's also wrong to blame today's generations for the actions of past generations.

Blaming generations, and asking them to compenstate for advantages that they have unjustly recieved benefits from is not quite the same thing.

What advantage have you personally recieved? Not having buffalo crap in your yard? We never asked for the advantages, never took them from someone else, and should not be forced to compensate those who don't have them.

Should we hit ultra-high IQ people in the head with a hammer because they possess an advantage over the rest of us? Should we put weights on fast runners?

Native Americans, all Americans, should be equal under the law. The end.

The yard itself is the advantage. The land is what we took. Without the land, we couldn't have done anything else here.

I don't get your metaphors.

It might not be fair, broken_iris, but every generation is left with the responsibility of taking care of what people before us fucked up. Just as we can passively accept the advantages of having a whole nice continent to mess with (thank you older generations), we have to accept the consequences that came from their systematic removal, murder, and subjugation of a huge population of people (thank you older generations).

That's just the way it is.

Good luck teaching history the way you want to. Many states, VA for example, have very specific instructions on what you are to teach. Anything else might get you in trouble. Good luck though.

I was trying to say that all sorts of people have all sorts of advantages that they should not be punished for. Could be intellegence, atheletic ability, or not being born native american.




I never said we don't accept the consequences, but I don't believe we need to carry the burden of reparations. Nothing can be done to undo that. No amount of money will bring them back. The best we can offer is absolute equality, not egalitarianism.

It's important to remember that what was done, was done according to our laws at that time. That fact that we recognize that act as evil doesn't mean we can go undo it. We recognize the folly of WWI, but do not compensate the victims. It's like if we outlawed capital punishment, because it's wrong, should we go back and compensate the descendants of those who were executed 100 years ago?

I'm going to approach this from a different angle.

Did you know that every American with a verified native tribal affiliation receives free healthcare for life? Indian Health Service has free hospitals and clinics set up on every reservation in the country, and in every rural village in Alaska. How does that make you feel? It's a 'reparation' that you and I pay for.

The Federal Government in the latter part of the 20th century made the decision to try to give Native Americans assistance. Their plans weren't implemented perfectly. There was a lot of bureaucratic bullshit. But the fact remains that they offered assistance to people who had been wronged by previous governments. Was this a poor decision? Shortsighted? What do you think?

I didn't find that at all in my high school and college educations. In fact, one of my supplemental text books in my junior year of high school was The People's History of the US by Howard Zinn. Every American history class I've ever taken has speicifically focused on the attrocities commiteed during that time in history. Reading this book was an eye-opener to me to what Americans actually did to try and accommodate Native Americans at one point in time. Whether that's liberal agenda or whatever, I don't know. What I do know is that in my education (and the typical education of most of the folks I know) over-emphasized Indian "war-crimes" to the point of not getting to anything else.